THE OBSERVER: Nation of shoplifters: the rise of supermarket self-checkout scams

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“There’s a mountain of good socio-cognitive criminological research that explains this under the heading of Neutralisation Theory,” says Shadd Maruna, a criminology professor at the University of Manchester. I’d asked him to take me through the psychology of self-checkout theft, to help me get to grips with the “why”. “Individuals can neutralise guilt they might otherwise feel when stealing by telling themselves that there are no victims of the crime, no human being is actually being hurt by this, only some mega-corporation that can surely afford the loss of a few quid. In fact, the corporation has saved so much money by laying off all its cashiers that it is almost morally necessary to steal from them.”

Maruna offered a personal example to illustrate the point. “Twice in the past month I have handed back change to a cashier when I was given too much,” he said. “I did this because I was worried that the individual, working for minimum wage, would have the money taken out of their own pocket if the cash till was short at the end of the workday. Had the same thing happened and a machine gave me the wrong change, there’s no question I would have pocketed it.” He finished with a flourish: “Screw them!”