SHOPLIFTING IN SYDNEY

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27738, 16 August 1955, Page 16

SHOPLIFTING IN SYDNEY

Family “Teams” Worry Store Detectives (From the Australian Correspondent of "The Press”) SYDNEY. sas5 as -,. man y "Professional” shoplifting families, according to city department store .detectives. Children are taught to steal by their parents, and family groups will often work as a team to pilfer from big shops. Tv,2? e u detecti .Y. e sai< * that one of the Suh r ?n etl l< ; ams ” he had met up with m 30 years experience in Sydney w^J ed J? y a New Zealand woman. ine detectives were commenting °u il he convic tion of a mother of 11 children and one of her daughters for shoplifting. The mother, aged 48, an o her 22-year-old daughter pleaded guilty to have stolen two baby’s frocks valued at £2 4s lOd and were fined £25 and £2O.

A shop inspector said the mother took the articles and handed them to her daughter who placed them in a shopping bag.' The prosecutor said that both mother and daughter had convictions for shoplifting going back to 1950.

Store detectives said later the mother-and-daughter corribination was not unusual in Sydney. They had come in contact with similar teams on many occasions and had found that quite young children had been taught to steal by their parents. These parent-and-child teams were difficult to catch, the detectives said.

One of the methods they used was for parents to push articles before their children in stores. The children would slip them into pockets or bags. When challenged, the parents would deny all knowledge of the theft at first. Then, when the goods were found, they would severely admonish the child before the store detective. One woman used to take her six-year-old son into stores and point out to him a leather bag. The boy would pick up the bag and casually walk out of the store with it to his father who was waiting outside. If challenged, the mother would slap the boy\ and say: “That’s not Mummy’s case. You mustn’t do that.”

A detective with 30 years’ experience in Sydney stores, said parents taught their children from the age of six years upward. “By the time they are 20 they are convicted criminals several times over,” he said.