What if we’re looking at the wrong problem?

Rethinking retail security and community behaviour, and why prevention starts long before the crime…

Over the weekend, we took the kids to Jubilee Park.

What should’ve been a quiet post-football wind-down turned into a lesson in modern youth culture.

A group of young girls hurled abuse at our kids, swearing, filming each other, and threatening to get people “down here to smash your head in” all over a turn on the swings.

It was like something out of a Channel 5 doc.

These weren’t kids from a rough background… quite the opposite. They come from decent homes and good schools. And yet, when challenged, one of them simply said: “It’s how we’ve been brought up.”

That’s the line that stuck with me.

Because if that’s the case, if they’ve been raised with those values where respect, empathy, and basic manners are optional extras then no number of cameras or guards is going to solve that.

What we’re really dealing with is the slow erosion of community norms. The kind that used to shame drink drivers into changing their behaviour.

ASB is often framed as a police or retail problem. But it’s not, it’s a cultural one. And until we find ways to rebuild that social contract – through families, schools, and through innovative modelling – we’ll be stuck reacting
instead of preventing.

Of course, that shift in thinking can also apply to work. Last week I found myself tweaking our usual approach to retail security. Nothing drastic, just a shift in thinking that might end up making all the difference.

Typically, we build security models that focus on protecting the store.

You’ve got your static officers, your mobile teams, maybe someone a bit more tactical to deal with persistent offenders.

But here’s the issue: stores don’t commit crimes against themselves. Offenders do. So shouldn’t our models start with them?

With the support of our risk practice team, we’ve introduced a new layer of modelling focused on antisocial behaviour (ASB). We’ve built dashboards that highlight UK hotspots not just for theft, but for the kind of disruptive behaviour that eats away at a community.

It’s early days, but the goal is simple: create a specialist third tier of ASB-focused champions whose job isn’t to patrol stores, but to understand the people behind the problems. Where do they hang out? What schools do they attend? And how do we reach them early and differently?

This kind of strategy won’t fix everything. We know it’s a societal issue, not just a security one. But if we can identify patterns and engage communities meaningfully, that’s a better use of resources than just putting more boots on the shop floor.

On a lighter note, I did manage to hit a personal best in the gym this week. Three reps of 50kg dumbbells – one in each hand. Not bad for a bloke with a dodgy femur and a few years behind him.

It’s the one place I can fully switch off with no phones or noise, just focus. Everyone needs something like that, especially in this line of work.

But back to the big picture. Whether it’s in retail security, local parks, or your own home, the question remains: are we still trying to fix the wrong problem?

Peter Fisher

Director of Risk & Intelligence