Shoplifting

How bad is shoplifting in San Francisco compared to LA, NYC? New study provides insights.

An analysis of shoplifting rates in 24 major cities yields surprising results

By Alec Regimbal

When compared with shoplifting rates in 23 other major U.S. cities, San Francisco’s monthly shoplifting rate ranks somewhere in the middle, according to a new analysis of shoplifting data from the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan criminal justice think tank. 

The council’s analysis, released this month, used law enforcement data to calculate the per capita rates and total number of shoplifting incidents reported to police in 24 different cities between 2018 and the first half of this year. The goal of the study was to assess how current shoplifting trends compare with prepandemic trends. 

The study results may surprise people who are used to seeing San Francisco painted as an ongoing hotbed of theft. In fact, between January 2019 and June 2023, San Francisco’s reported shoplifting rate decreased by about 5%; in the first half of this year, reported incidents were down 35% compared with the first half of 2022, representing the largest percentage decrease among the 24 cities included in the study over the same time period.

The analysis acknowledges that the data used in the study likely doesn’t represent the full picture; it only used incidents reported to police, which means factors such as the effectiveness of newly installed anti-theft measures, or an unwillingness among retailers to report shoplifting crimes to police, weren’t examined.

In most months, San Francisco’s reported rate of incidents per capita was significantly lower than the 24-city average. In the last month analyzed, June 2023, San Francisco reported 22.99 incidents per 100,000 residents; the average across the 24 cities was 38.6 per 100,000. 

Shoplifting reports in San Francisco peaked in November 2021, during which the city saw a number of high-profile smash-and-grab incidents, with 525 reported incidents at a rate of 60.34 per 100,000 people — nearly twice the average rate seen that month across all cities studied. That was the only month of the study period in which San Francisco’s reported shoplifting rate topped rates in either Seattle or New York City, according to the analysis.

Other major cities consistently fared much worse than San Francisco. The shoplifting rates in Chattanooga and Memphis — two cities in Tennessee — never fell below 81.5 and 71.3 per 100,000, respectively, during the study period. The shoplifting rate in Little Rock, Arkansas, hovered above 65.2 per 100,000 throughout 2018 and 2019.

The analysis contained some other surprises, including a number of cities reporting a decreased rate of shoplifting in mid-2023 compared with pre-pandemic rates, including Chicago (-13%), Denver (-17%) and St. Louis (-48%). While San Francisco’s 5% decline in shoplifting wasn’t as large as the decreases in those cities, it’s still an improvement over places like New York City and Los Angeles, which saw 64% and 61% increases, respectively, in shoplifting during that time. Dallas, Minneapolis and St. Petersburg, Florida, had some of the lowest shoplifting rates throughout the study period. 

The analysis comes amid a broader discussion about shoplifting — and especially organized retail theft — in San Francisco. Many stores have resorted to locking up items deemed easy to steal, and companies such as Walgreens and Target have announced location closures in San Francisco over concerns about theft. The operators of the downtown San Francisco Centre also announced this year that they would be abandoning the facility, citing “challenging operating conditions” in San Francisco, including retail theft.