The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security.
Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4]
> “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call.
> “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing.
> However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.
> The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-so...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
[4] https://popular.info/p/off-target
*caveat that crime data is really complicated, don't take the numbers too literally