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Harris Vs Trump 2024 US Presidential election - read the warning in the OP posted 18/09/24
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'some cities' indeed, the cherrypicking of data going on. "Honest assessment" eh
Data on organized retail theft is scarce. Most statistics that are in circulation come not from law enforcement but from industry groups: the National Retail Federation (NRF), a trade association of more than 16,000 retailers, and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), representing more than 200 of the country’s leading retailers including CVS, Walgreens, Target, and Costco.
However, many of the figures offered by these organizations are imprecise. In April 2023, for example, the NRF claimed that organized retail theft was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021. The claim was widely repeated and offered as hard evidence of a nationwide wave in retail theft justifying new laws and increased criminal penalties.
The claim has since been retracted following an investigation by the trade publication Retail Dive. The NRF had based its estimate on a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing from 2021, where an industry spokesperson testified that organized retail theft totaled $45 billion annually. That figure, which was also repeated extensively in mainstream publications, was in fact an earlier NRF estimate of total retail shrink in 2015 and had nothing to do with organized retail theft. Mistakenly or otherwise, the NRF had essentially repackaged its own data.
According to one review of NRF data, the impact of organized retail crime “is probably closer to” 5 percent of total shrink. In any event, the NRF “no longer releases financial costs specific” to organized retail theft, a spokesperson told Retail Dive, because reported losses are “lower than what the NRF expects them to be.”
Other industry data is simply not comprehensive enough to support the broad conclusions being drawn from it by leaders in the media, government, and business. Some have pointed to $69 billion as the annual value of organized retail theft, citing a recent report by the RILA. But that report estimated the value of all retail theft at $69 billion, not the subset of organized theft — a distinction the RILA’s own website obscures. The study was also based on data from just five Fortune 500 companies, a small and likely unrepresentative sample, leading even the NRF to question its methodology.
Still others point to surveys conducted by the NRF, which report member experiences with security and organized retail theft. These surveys combine reports of member perceptions with voluntarily reported data, so they may not be representative. In 2023, for example, just 117 retailers responded to the survey. The most commonly quoted surveys are from 2021 and 2022 when the surveys had just 41 and 63 respondents respectively. These are extremely small sample sizes relative to the tens of thousands of retailers in the United States, and statistics generated from it may have more to do with who chose to respond to the survey than with overall sector trends.
• • •
Retail theft — and specifically shoplifting — does not appear to be rising nationally, though certain cities, including New York, are indeed facing historically elevated levels of theft. Unfortunately, data on “organized” retail theft is unreliable, obscuring our understanding of the problem. Those concerned about the impacts of organized theft should focus on developing clearer data to help inform policymakers and law enforcement as they search for solutions.
Until that clarity materializes, it would be a mistake to jump to sweeping responses such as lowering felony theft thresholds or instituting new penalties, especially given the mixed and nuanced evidence on the effects of the former.
And after spiking rapidly under the Trump administration Fentanyl overdose rates have in fact, slowed under the Biden administration. Huh.
And even fell in 2023:
Although provisional CDC data show a decline in opioid deaths in 2023, the death toll remains much higher than just a few years ago, keeping this issue in the spotlight. Both former President Trump and Vice President Harris have records related to addressing the opioid epidemic, but they also have proposed different approaches to ongoing and future efforts to address the issue. Trump’s 2024 campaign emphasizes a stricter law enforcement strategy aimed at reducing trafficking, primarily through reinstating and tightening border policies and tougher punishment, including the death penalty for “traffickers and drug smugglers.” In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration’s multi-pronged strategy includes reducing supply, expanding harm reduction, and improving access to treatment, with Harris placing a stronger emphasis on increasing fentanyl seizures through enhanced detection technology at the border and ports. Along with the 1 in 3 adults who report in a KFF survey that they or a family member have been addicted to opioids (29%) or illegal drugs (27%), both President Biden and Vice-Presidential hopeful J.D. Vance have close family members who have experienced addiction.
And honest assessment shows that for making national policy, and the President of the United States not being the mayor of New York etc., Biden's administration has done a grand job on both these counts.
(NYC would probably be better off with a noncorrupt mayor, Adams is in a lotttt of sh*t with… who else? but Biden's DOJ. Funny that.)
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