As Halloween landed on a Saturday this year, shoplifting incidents rose sharply – jumping 163 per cent year-on-year.
Data from the SAI One Platform, which analyses insight from more than 1,000 UK retail locations and inputs from over 30,000 cameras every day, found there was even a week-on-week jump of eight per cent.
Theft peaked between 11am and 12noon on Saturday [31 October 2026], while London remained the biggest Halloween hotspot for retail crime (61 per cent), followed by the South East (18 per cent) and the South West (10 per cent).
“Halloween’s growing popularity is creating opportunities not only for retailers, but also for offenders, as seasonal trading peaks become targeted periods for heightened retail crime,” said Clare Hoole, head of UK at SAI.
“What’s increasingly evident is that theft is evolving. Many incidents now occur within otherwise legitimate transactions, making them harder to identify and prevent through traditional methods or passive in-store surveillance systems.”
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Partial payment, where a customer only pays for part of their basket while intentionally leaving other items unpaid, was the most common type of shoplifting experienced by retailers on Halloween, accounting for 62 per cent of incidents, followed by grab-and-go (38 per cent), according to SAI’s analysis.
“Halloween is often the first real test of peak-season operations. The trends observed this year suggest retailers should expect theft pressure to remain elevated throughout the Golden Quarter,” Hoole added.
“And what we’re already seeing play out in-store reinforces the importance of real-time visibility in allowing retailers to prepare, prevent and react as they enter the busiest trading period of the year.”
Looking ahead to the rest of the Golden Quarter, SAI’s analysis forecasts that Super Saturday [19 December], the last Saturday before Christmas – and often one of the busiest in-store trading days of the festive season – will be the biggest day for retail crime, with shoplifting expected to surge 66 per cent year-on-year.
Photo by Billy Mangino on Unsplash
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