Walmart’s Crime Problem
I cannot believe I am going to defend Walmart right now, but that&#x27;s how poor this article is.<p>They say &quot;There’s nothing inevitable about the level of crime at Walmart.&quot; and justify that statement by saying that if Walmart: added more greeters, scrap self-checkout, made stores smaller, it would reduce crime. That&#x27;s a nonsensical and isn&#x27;t explained in the article, we&#x27;re just meant to accept that.<p>The reality is that Walmart is a victim of their own success in some ways. They have a core demographic (the employed and unemployed poor) which they&#x27;ve been extremely successful in attracting, so much so that the demographics even at a store like Target are markedly different (middle class-ish).<p>Walmart seems to have actually extended their reach into the poorest of society, it used to be that stores like Kmart were cheaper than Walmart and the really poor shopped there, now Walmart has been nabbing a lot of their business, it comes with a lot of the problems associated.<p>What&#x27;s a solution? Walmart&#x27;s shoplifting is a symptom of social issues elsewhere: Drug usage, poverty, lacking social safety nets, criminal justice reform, and so on. If you want to decrease shoplifting you have to give people something to lose and that&#x27;s a bigger challenge than hitting Walmart over the head for having to call the cops too much.<p>It is very easy to make Walmart a scapegoat, but ultimately you&#x27;d just shift the problem to a different location if Walmart stopped serving the customer base they serve.