Middle class shoplifting: I nicked it, darling

Yoga, lunch at Daylesford, then a spot of shoplifting? The middle classes have now embraced stealing. Kate Wills reports

EMMA, 37, a PR from south London has a tried and tested method. While she's waiting patiently in the queue at the supermarket, she syphons off a few smaller, higher-value items from her basket into a tote bag - a packet of smoked salmon, a wedge of Brie, a punnet of blueberries.

When it's Emma's turn to pay, these won't make it through the self-checkout machine. "I do it nearly every time I go shopping," she says. "No one has ever noticed or stopped me or asked to check my bag." This is not just shoplifting. This is middle class shoplifting.

Recently Archie Norman, the chairman of Marks & Spencer, said the rise in retail crime was down to affluent customers who were helping themselves to a five-finger discount. "Some of it is by gangs or people stealing to fuel a drugs habit. No doubt that's probably increased a bit, it's always been there," he told LBC.

"Then you get the sort of middle class... with the reduction of service you get in a lot of shops, a lot of people go in and think, 'well this didn't scan or it's very difficult to scan these things through and I shop here all the time, it's not my fault, I'm owed it." In October, reports came in of shoplifting hitting a record high of 1,000 offences a day, with shopkeepers complaining about police inaction. Shop thefts cost retailers £953 million every year and the outgoing John Lewis boss Sharon White has described it as an "epidemic".

But forget every image you have of what a shoplifter looks like. Now it's just as likely to be a middle class professional who is putting through that £7 artisan sourdough as a 50p loaf of sliced white. Well, they do say every little helps.

Emmeline Taylor is a professor of criminology at City, University of London, and the host of the podcast Retail Crime Uncovered. She calls this type of criminal Swipers - it stands for Seemingly Well-Intentioned Patrons Engaging in Regular Shoplifting.