Research Paper on:
Shoplifting, Racial Profiling, and False Accusation in Retail

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
in Maryland. They were simply shopping with friends but by virtue of the color of their skin, their age, security officers assumed that he must have stolen the shirt he  was wearing with the stores logo and arrested him. The jury ultimately decided that the security guard had not singled out the young men because of their race but the  young men were still awarded $1 million in personal damages. In a Wal-Mart in Virginia, an African American woman who had been a Wal-Mart detective was falsely arrested and accused  of stealing from the store. A jury decided to award her $1.05 million in damages. In an Alabama K-Mart, two African American women were arrested but exonerated when a Kmart  employee admitted that she had been forced to lie about seeing them steal. A jury awarded the women $4 million. Other cases, with far less well-known or large-scale retail operations  and those that never make it to the legal system are certain to have taken place throughout the entire nation. It is undeniable that retailers of all types and sizes  are losing enormous amounts of money because of shoplifters but they still must recognize when their security procedures cross the line from prudent action to undeniable racism. Enormous Losses,  Enormous Problems It certainly is no surprise that retailers consider shoplifting a major problem and are overly zealous in terms of accusations. Adler (2002) refers to statistics from Checkpoint,  a retail-security organization that in 2000, approximately $13 billion worth of goods were stolen by shoplifters. Adler also makes note of the fact that "... in the current recession, the  company [Checkpoint] is predicting a $1 billion jump in shoplifting losses, with more people out of a job, and fewer salesclerks to watch them" (Adler, 2002, pp. 52). A report