Shoplifting: Corporate Copaganda
A Report by Maurice MP-Weeks & Brendan McQuade
A resource on criminalization, manufactured panic, and how the narrative of a “shoplifting surge” by corporations and the media is copaganda. This report discusses the rise of private security, the politics of crime data, the informal economy, and the need for decommodification and to end market dependence in order to build the world where we all have what we need.
On April 27th, 2023, a 24-year-old Black trans man was executed by an armed security guard at a Walgreens store in San Francisco. Banko Brown was described as a “smart and funny young man who, though shy, made friends easily.” Like many other trans people, Banko faced a lack of housing and denial of basic needs and support. In spite of these challenges, he was still known to his community as resilient and tenacious. The Walgreens security guard who executed Banko as he was leaving the store claims that he stole $14 worth of groceries.
Unfortunately, Banko's experience of criminalization instead of care is common across the country. Corporations take aggressive action against people accused of shoplifting by arresting, prosecuting, imprisoning them — and, in cases like this one — killing them. Banko Brown's killing demands a clear call to end corporations' ability to unilaterally act as judge, jury, and executioner in the name of "loss prevention." Rather than respond with criminalization which creates even greater barriers to sustainable participation in non-criminalized economies, we need to create accessible pathways to sustainable futures.
Read more about the rise of private security and why it is essential that we strip the power of corporations to criminalize.
Be sure to also check out the accompanying Shoplifting: Corporate Copaganda postcards!
For more on the impacts of criminalization of shoplifting, please see Esther's Story, a fictional narrative of the prosecution of a single mother in Brooklyn, illustrated in comic form, and What is Driving Criminalization of Women and LGBTQ people? fact sheet.
