You may have seen the wild videos of large mobs of people smashing displays and grabbing as many items as they can before running out of the store - particularly around the holiday season.

While it may seem like the outrageous video that gets loads of likes all over the internet happens every once in a while, it's actually more common than you think.

A new study from the National Retail Federation (NRF) suggests that organized retail crime (ORC) is a persistent and growing problem in the U.S.  and that they're growing in scope and complexity.

Organized Retail Theft is when thieves steal high-priced items from stores to then resell it later. What sets this a part from other versions of this crime is that these criminals have an inventory management system with marketing and sales fulfillment operations.

Retailers, on average, saw a 26.5% increase in ORC incidents in 2021. The group says that eight in 10 retailers surveyed report that the violence and aggression
associated with ORC incidents increased in the past year, according to a 2022 survey from the organization.

About 70% of retailers believe the threat of these crimes has increased over the last five years. The NRF survey shows these retailers believe the crimes have become more prevalent since 2020.

The NRF says there was a mass store shrinkage that led to $94.5 billion in losses in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020, one of the primary drivers of the losses were from external theft, including organized retail crime.

Smash and grabs, where criminals break in glass displays or rip technology off of its safety straps, have increased by 16% between 2014 and 2022, according to their latest report that surveyed 132 crime groups between that same time period.

While some would think the most common forms of this theft would be criminals stealing luxury goods, the study revealed that only about 11% of these operations do so.

Instead, the report states about 81% of these criminals stole general consumer goods like electronics were the most frequently targeted items.

The retail value of merchandise stolen by someone before arrest is typically about $5,000.

In the report, the NRF concludes that ORC has the potential to grow given the current economic landscape. 

"ORC groups will be likely to expand the scale of their operations in response to sustained inflation or an economic slowdown that causes an uptick in underemployment and unemployment. Increased economic hardship would present ORC groups with a larger pool of individuals potentially susceptible to recruitment for booster operations, thus providing ORC groups with the labor required to scale operations to serve potential growth."

To add to this issue, the lack of consistent data regarding this crime makes it harder to track down and predict. The NRF characterizes this data as fragmented across national, federal and local authorities due to the lack of a standard centralized information on the crime.