Shoplifting arrests are up more than 261% in Boston compared to the five year average in the city, according to recent police data.

From 2024 to 2025 alone, those types of arrests have more than doubled, according to Boston Police, up about 116% from last year.

Police Commissioner Michael Cox discussed the numbers at a recent community CompStat meeting and a city press conference earlier this month.

Cox said that shoplifting is “an issue in our city,” and asked retailers at a community meeting to be in communication with the department about it.

“Our officers in every district are now trying to reach out to the business community to be as responsive as possible,” Cox said at a CompStat meeting focused on shoplifting in Back Bay. “We need to hear from you.”

BPD has reported several shoplifting incidents during the holiday season around the city’s retail centers, including the Prudential Mall and Newbury Street.

The Commissioner and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office attributed the increase in arrests to more reporting and more enforcement, as city and county officials make shoplifting a higher priority.

“We fully anticipated an increase in shoplifting arrests and prosecutions because of the targeted police operations as part of the Safe Shopping Initiative,” said Suffolk DA spokesperson James Borghesani. The initiative is a combined effort of the city, police department, DA’s office, and businesses to increase shoplifting enforcement.

“As with any enhanced enforcement operation, when there’s greater focus on a particular crime category there’s going to be an increase in arrests and prosecutions,” Borghesani said. “Increased reporting by our retail partners is also a likely factor.”

He also noted that inflation and higher prices for groceries and other goods might be contributing to the problem.

“But we are very pleased with the strides made by the Safe Shopping Initiative and we look forward to even greater success in the coming year,” he added.

Cox has said that the focus has been to target repeat, high-volume, and/or violent shoplifters.

The efforts under Cox and Suffolk County DA Kevin Hayden’s leadership sit in stark contrast to the approach taken by former Suffolk DA Rachel Rollins, who had pledged not to prosecute shoplifting along with a list of other misdemeanor crimes.

Rollins argued that those misdemeanors “are overwhelmingly crimes of poverty, mental illness and addiction.”

But business leaders have said enforcement prevents shoplifting which can have a big impact on their bottom line, and thus their employees and the larger economy.

“It’s good news,” Retailers Association of Massachusetts President Jon Hurst told The Herald. “It’s good that everyone is now considering this an important thing.”

Hurst said that the higher arrests don’t show that more shoplifting is happening. “I don’t feel like it’s that the incidences have increased. I think it’s the enforcement of such,” he said.

But he said that during the pandemic, there was a bump, when it seemed like the issue of shoplifting was ignored. “That was the wrong attitude,” Hurst said.

Hurst also blamed changes to Massachusetts larceny laws in 2018 that increased the value threshold for misdemeanor larceny from $250 to $1,200, saying, “We went off the rails dumbing down the laws.”

Hurst also described what he called “professional shoplifters,” who steal items, repeatedly, in bulk, or both, and then sell them online. Merchandise losses take a cut at businesses’ revenues, which can impact wages and hiring or whether a business can stay open all together.

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Shoplifting also makes workers and customers feel unsafe, Hurst noted.

The issue isn’t unique to Boston, it’s happening in big cities around the county, he said.

A survey from the National Retail Federation noted that businesses around the United States saw an 18% increase in all shoplifting incidents from 2023 to 2024, as well as a 17% rise in incidents that included a threat or act of violence. The survey included responses from 70 companies (representing 68 brands), the majority of whom said that they report less than half of their shoplifting incidents, in part, because of a lack of enforcement.

At least in the Boston area, Hurst said, “everyone from law enforcement to elected officials to the retailers themselves are taking this much more seriously and actually looking at enforcing the law.”

Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
Products sit behind a locked display at a pharmacy in New York as retailers contend with an increase in shoplifting. Boston Police data shows arrests are up over 260% compared to the 5-year average in the city. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images, File)