If someone feels like they need something really bad that they can't afford so they take extreme action and shoplift. Course that person will be caught so theres no use.

If it's a store with minimal to no security devices , no cameras, limited supervision and employees. Then hell, everything is up for grabs. Shove something in your coat and walk out.

When I was a young (stupid) kid, I used to shoplift with my friends for the THRILL of it--getting whatever you want. Now, I'll run back into the store when I get to the car and find out that my 3-year old son had something in his hand that wasn't paid for. Ha!

Shoplifting is a way for someone to get something for free without anyone knowing. If a person wants something so bad, they would have a temptation to take it. Mostly everyone has that temptation, it is normal. If you are desperate to get something and you are losing money, you feel like you need to steal. That is what makes you shoplift.

With some people, the heart of the problem is poor impulse control. They see something that looks stealable, so they grab it without thinking about the consequences. Maybe they've gotten away with it on other occasions and are confident about making another successful five-fingered discount. Even worse, they probably have no idea, or don't care about what they do to their minds when they shoplift. Repeated exposure to "I don't have to pay for things. I can just take what I want, if I'm sneaky enough." could influence someone's whole way of thinking and in other areas of his/her life, and not in a good way. Maybe shoplifters get an adrenaline rush when they make a clean getaway with the goods. In that case, it could turn into an addiction. Someone might shoplift because he/she is angry at the store management, for whatever reason, and believes he/she can somehow even the score. "They fired me for being late and it wasn't fair, so look what I did to them." The lifter might know the details about store security and the guards, or lack of them, and believes he/she won't get caught. Peer pressure could definitely cause someone to shoplift. Of course, there's always the "I've GOT to have that, but I don't want to, or can't, spend the money for it" mentality. I saw a woman try to walk out of Dillard's once with a table lamp between her legs. I say "walk", but it was more like a "waddle" - until the lamp fell to the floor. She had on a long coat, which more or less trapped the lamp and prevented her escape. Crime aside, she and that lamp on the floor made a hilarious picture. It was a good-sized lamp. I don't know what she was thinking.

Considering I was shoplifting a lot for a few months, there are a lot of reasons. If your a kid and your bored, its something to do, Its an exciting feeling, and its definately risky. At first it starts with small things you want, its a great feeling, knowing you can have some candy or something without having to pay or anything. IT gives you freedom. Later you start to think economically and steal things you hardly want or multiples of expensive, which you can steal later. Although I'm glad to say I haven't stolen in a while, and hope to keep it that way.

I guess we're all "enticed" by shiny goods we can't afford or don't want to pay for. I'd like to turn the question upside down and ask "why don't you shoplift?" There's a sort of heirarchy of levels in moral development, which are stacked up with degrees of increasing maturity. From the bottom up: - I might get caught. This is a pretty weak reason to not steal, but it works in some cases. The fear of direct consequences is the lowest layer of moral constraint -- and of course it fails if there isn't enough security around. - I would feel bad. This is a little better: it reflects that the person has some awareness that stealing is incompatible with their sense of self somehow. This has more strength, because it works even when there's no security -- as long as the temptation isn't too great. - It's morally wrong: This is even better: now the individual is thinking in terms of general moral principles of right and wrong, rather than a vague feeling about their own identity. This person will likely try to prevent others from stealing as well. - I want to help make life work for everyone: Better still, this person has transcended the simplistic right/wrong rules-based morality, and come to see that they are responsible for the wholeness and healthy functioning of life around them, including things like respecting the rights of others to keep their property or sell it for a price. - I'm the store owner: This is as far as one can go and still form a meaningful sentence. It sounds like nonsense, though, so we're starting to lose the ability to reduce what's going on to conceptual form. A person at this level does not experience themselves as entirely separate from the store's owner. They have a sense of partnership, of belonging to a relationship, with someone they've never even met. In fact, they have this sense with regard to all of humanity. You can give this person the keys to the store without concern. And if they're asked to write the rules by which society should live, they'll start out with "Well, you shouldn't kill, and you shouldn't lie, and you shouldn't steal..." -- then they'll add a P.S.: "And if you own a store you should lock your doors and turn on the alarm at night."

Shoplifting is a crime of opportunity and person will act on that alone or persons with Obsessive compulsive disorders are subject to be shoplifters as well.

Shoplifting is usually done b/c the person doesn't have the money to buy that what they see and want. Wanting the item becomes more powerful then the concequences. They don't see that far ahead.

The chance to get something for free.. but having to risk some thing first..

Describe in the exact words, the funniest voice mail greeting you have ever heard ?

That's easy! Though there is a huge subcutlure among the priviliged middle class in the industrial nations to shoplift for "fun", most people shoplift - or otherwise scavenge, steal, recycle, or build from scratch - because they are poor, because they do not have the resources to provide for themselves because the economy which we exist under forces us to "live" paycheck to paycheck. That is to say, that one makes a "living wage" precisely to the extent that one is working just enough to be healthy (and stupid) enough to go to work again the next day, in other words, the "living wage" is the slave wage - the means of mere survival for the wage slave. "If you owned a store, how would you feel if everyone that came in, thought and acted like you did?" I'd feel like the greedy, stupid capitalist that I was - expecting people to bay exorbitant fees for mostly useless or otherwise near-valueless items to ensure the profit for individuals not in any way involved in actually working, from filthy rich CEO's to the store manager whose job it is to intimidate, control, abuse, extort, or at best ignore his workers. I'm tired of seeing people cry for the business owner, who works so hard, while condemning, insulting, and just deriding the actual worker - the actual individual that turns idle objects into real wealth. The capitalist is lauded and applauded for simply being wealthy, being "successful" - as if being "intelligent enough" to extort and manipulate other people were more respectable than being intelligent enough to understand capitalism and the right of the working class to the FULL product of their labor. The same goes for such things as graffiti - the miserable concept of "private property" that ensures the mind-numbingly boring, plain grey or brown or white walls that fill millions of square miles, instead of politics and art that ought to. People are so confused to attack free speech and art as "ugly" and then in the same breath defend advertisements and obviously drab nothingness, which is openly and intentionally there to control people to buy shit we don't need. Please stop buying in to capitalist mythology and start reading and thinking for yourselves.

Its "the thrill of the catch". its like a person playing a slot machine and waiting for the big jackpot. Shoplifters are complex individuals. mainly because of the theory, that if a shoplifter steals something of a $20 value, this same shoplifter will steal something with a $200,000 dollar value, if given the right opportunity. its really not the money amount, its "the thrill of the catch". This is why a shopliter's criminal conviction will stay on their police record, forever. I was working an extra job catching shoplifters at a grocery store. 2 am. man comes in wearing a suit. follow him. goes to ink pen isle. removes a felt tip pen from package and places pen in his jacket. stop and arrest suspect. man states his son is in the service and was sending him a package and needed a felt tip pen to address the label. man had eight ink pens on his person. once again, it was the "thrill of the catch". There are other reasons why people shoplift, in addition to the above. needing food, cigarettes, beer and so on. The bottom line is this: some shoplifters steal for a need. but, most shoplifters have a psychological problem that lead them to the "thrill of the catch".

Being broke.

A feel of disconnect which leads to a need to have a rush that lets them feel 'alive'.