The fluorescent lights in the back hallway of the downtown flagship store have a specific, high-pitched hum that usually helps me focus, but right now, it’s just vibrating against the inside of my skull. I’m standing in front of the heavy steel door of the evidence locker, my hand hovering over the keypad, and I have absolutely no idea why I walked back here. It happens 5 times a shift lately. I’ll be halfway through a thought about inventory shrinkage or a suspicious character in the footwear department, and then-poof. The logic dissolves. I’m just a guy in a blazer staring at a grey door, wondering if I’m looking for a lost set of keys or a 45-page report on the incident in the perfume aisle.

I’ve spent 15 years as a retail theft prevention specialist-Drew K.L., the guy they call when the ‘shrink’ hits double digits-and I’ve learned that the most dangerous thing in a store isn’t a professional booster with a foil-lined bag. It’s the assumption that we know why people take things. We build these cathedrals of consumption and then we’re shocked when the congregants try to pocket the communion wine. I once sat in a tiny, windowless office for 25 minutes watching a teenager try to stuff a $155 leather jacket into a backpack that was already full of textbooks. It wasn’t about the jacket. It was about the space. The store felt impersonal, cold, and disposable. If the environment tells you that it doesn’t care about you, why should you care about its bottom line?

That sounds like something a philosopher would say after 5 too many drinks, but I’ve seen the data. In 105 different stores across the tri-state area, the ones with the highest theft rates weren’t the ones with the fewest cameras. They were the ones with the cheapest aesthetics. When you walk into a store that looks like a sterile warehouse, your brain categorizes the items as ‘commodities.’ When you walk into a space that feels curated, intentional, and warm, your brain categorizes the items as ‘property.’ It’s a subtle shift, but it’s the difference between a $5 loss and a $5005 loss.

The Illusion of Hard Security

We spent $65,000 last year on upgraded facial recognition software. Do you know how many arrests it led to? 5. And 15 of those were false positives where we ended up apologizing to a grandmother from Poughkeepsie. We’re obsessed with the ‘hard’ side of security-the tags that scream, the gates that beep, the lenses that follow you like the eyes in a haunted painting. But we ignore the psychology of the threshold. If a store feels like a prison, people will act like inmates. If it feels like a community, they act like neighbors.

I remember one specific mistake I made about 35 months ago. I was tracking a guy through the home goods section. He looked the part: oversized hoodie, darting eyes, hands constantly moving in and out of his pockets. I followed him for 45 minutes, convinced I was about to make a major bust. I cornered him near the exit, my heart doing about 125 beats per minute, only to find out he was just a nervous father-to-be trying to find a specific type of organic baby wipe that his wife had described in excruciating detail over the phone. He wasn’t a thief; he was just overwhelmed by the layout of the store. I realized then that I had spent so much time looking for the ‘bad’ that I had forgotten how to see the ‘human.’

This led me to a contrarian realization that most of my peers in the industry think is lunacy: to stop theft, you have to stop acting like everyone is a thief. You have to invest in the environment. We started a pilot program in the 5th Avenue branch where we removed half the visible cameras and replaced the harsh plastic shelving with actual design elements. We focused on creating a space that felt permanent and high-end. It turns out, people treat a space with more respect when it looks like a home or a high-end gallery. I’ve seen it happen in 35 different locations. When we swapped out the cold, industrial plastic for something with texture and warmth-like the architectural depth you get with

Slat Solution-the atmosphere changed instantly. Shoplifting isn’t just a crime of opportunity; it’s a reaction to the environment. When the walls look like they belong in a museum rather than a bargain bin, the ‘grab and run’ impulse drops by nearly 45 percent.

The Environmental Factor: Theft Drop Correlation

There is a physical sensation to honesty. It’s a lightness in the chest. Shoplifting, for many, is a way to fill a void that the retail experience itself creates. We entice people with images of a better life, and then we put those images behind plexiglass that’s 5 inches thick. It creates a friction that some people just can’t help but try to resolve by force. I’ve watched 85-year-old women pocket lipsticks they could easily afford, simply because the store made them feel invisible. Theft is often just a very loud way of saying ‘I am here.’

The Friction of Humanity

I’m back in the breakroom now. I finally remembered why I came in here-I needed to get the incident log for the 5th floor. But instead of grabbing the clipboard, I’m just looking at the way the light hits the floor. I’ve spent so many years looking at the world through a 15-inch monitor, watching grainy versions of people live out their worst moments. I’ve seen 255 different ways to hide a steak under a shirt. I’ve seen the panic in the eyes of a 15-year-old who realized his life just changed over a $25 pair of headphones. And every time, I wonder if a different light fixture or a softer wall texture would have changed the outcome.

Retailers are currently obsessed with ‘frictionless’ shopping-the idea that you can just walk in, grab something, and leave without ever talking to a human or touching a keypad. They think this is the future. I think it’s a nightmare for loss prevention. Friction is what keeps us human. The 5 seconds of eye contact with a cashier, the weight of the item in your hand, the physical act of exchanging value-these are the things that ground us in reality. When you remove the friction, you remove the moral weight of the transaction. If I can walk out of a store without acknowledging another person, is it really stealing, or is it just ‘acquiring’?

I’ve argued this in 15 different boardrooms, and 15 times I’ve been told that I’m being too sentimental. They want more sensors. They want more AI. They want more 5G-connected shelves that can sense the weight of a missing candy bar within 5 grams of accuracy. They’re building a world where the machine is the only witness, and they’re surprised when people find ways to trick the machine. You can’t shame an algorithm. You can only shame a person, and shame only works if the person feels like they belong to the society they are offending.

Last week, we had a guy try to walk out with 55 DVDs. He didn’t even try to hide them. He just stacked them in his arms like he was carrying firewood. When I stopped him, he didn’t run. He didn’t fight. He just looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t think anyone was actually in here.’ He was surrounded by 105 cameras, but because there was no soul to the space-no warmth, no texture, no human touch-he felt like he was in a simulation. He wasn’t stealing from a business; he was interacting with a vending machine that had no glass.

The Heartbeat of Thriving Spaces

Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe 15 years of watching people on screens has skewed my perspective. But I don’t think so. I think we’re at a crossroads where we have to decide if we’re going to build spaces for people or containers for products. I look at the stores that are thriving, and they aren’t the ones with the most advanced security. They are the ones that feel like they have a heartbeat. They are the ones where the walls have texture, the floors have character, and the employees have the time to look you in the eye for more than 5 seconds.

I finally grab the clipboard. It’s cold and metallic. On the way back to the floor, I pass a mirror in the hallway. I look like a guy who’s spent too much time in the shadows of a shopping mall. My tie is 5 degrees off-center and there’s a smudge of ink on my thumb. I think about that father-to-be I followed for 45 minutes. I hope he found the baby wipes. I hope his kid grows up in a world where we spend more money on making things beautiful than we do on making them un-stealable.

If you want to know the truth about retail theft, don’t look at the police reports. Look at the way the room feels when you walk into it. If the room feels like it’s waiting for you to do something wrong, you probably will. But if it feels like it’s inviting you to be the best version of yourself, you might just find that you don’t need the cameras at all. Or maybe you only need 5 of them, just to make sure the light is hitting the wood panels at the right angle.

I walk back out into the hum of the store. A teenager is lingering near the electronics, looking at a pair of $235 headphones. I don’t move toward him. I don’t reach for my radio. I just walk up and ask him if he’s ever seen the way the wood grain on the display cases matches the pattern on the wall. He looks at me like I’m crazy, but he puts the headphones back on the shelf. He stays for another 15 minutes, just looking around, before walking out the front door empty-handed. He didn’t take anything, and for the first time today, I remember exactly why I’m here.