Strolling down Madison Avenue on a Saturday afternoon shopping spree with a beautiful young actress you've recently met, you're suddenly whisked inside her favorite up-market department store. After exploring countless sexy outfits among the awesome designers, your date models a pair of tight black Trussardi leather pants for you, fixing you with a look of uncontrollable longing. Despite a secret fear of exceeding your modest credit limit, you cast caution to the wind, and manfully slap the purchase on your credit card. Afterwards, gallantly carrying her bags and exiting through the revolving doors, you're stunned when three solemn-looking security guards surround you on the street.

One of the guards investigates the bag you're carrying, locating a $4,000 Vena Cava zip dress and a $2,000 Marc Jacobs clutch, both items sans receipts. What's worse, you later learn that the electronic tags were removed with a pair of scissors by your "partner-in-crime," as one security guard puts it, as you allegedly stood "lookout" in front of her changing room. Your true love, now reduced to a puddle of tears, claims it's all been an honest mistake. She's simply preparing for a role about shoplifting. Police officers arrive, but they're unmoved by her explanations and your proclaimed innocence. The two of you are charged with shoplifting.

What Is It?

Shoplifting is a slang term for the criminal offense of petty theft. Shoplifting is governed by state penal codes, but they all generally define the offence as intentionally removing an item from a store or place of business, depriving the owner of his merchandise as a consequence. When detected, the shoplifter is often arrested by the store security, then questioned and detained, until local police or law enforcement officials arrive to formally arrest the alleged perpetrator.

Shoplifting costs business owners staggering sums of money annually, and it's a loss that grows during periods of recession. "When the going gets tough," one popular adage explains, "the tough go shoplifting." Almost all merchants rely on a wide variety of sophisticated security measures, including hidden surveillance cameras, electronic tags, and in-house sleuths. While some merchants hesitate to prosecute shoplifters because of the expense and time involved in legal action, many others see successful prosecutions as sound financial strategy, especially when it's estimated up to sixty percent of shoplifting is perpetrated by a business' own employees.

There are criminal defense lawyers who specialize in petty theft and shoplifting. Frequently retained immediately after an arrest, the first goal of these attorneys is to seek an informal resolution through restitution before any official charges are filed in court. After this initial contact, talented shoplifting attorneys next match their unique set of legal tools and in-depth knowledge of precedent with all the evidence and information gathered in police reports.