'Trafficked Romanian teens are forced to shoplift in UK'

Shoplifting gangs are smuggling children as young as 12 into Scotland from Romania, a recent report has stated citing a senior detective.

Detective Superintendent Steven Bertram, who leads Scotland’s anti-trafficking operations, stated that young teenagers are being flown into the country from some of the poorest villages in southeastern Europe to steal from shops in the UK.

Shoplifting incidents in Scotland have soared by a third in the past year, even as overall crime remains at some of its lowest levels since the 1970s, according to official statistics released last week.

“The number of Romanian people being exploited in Scotland is vastly under reported,” The Times quoted Bertram as saying. “Romanian trafficking victims don’t feature highly on the national referral mechanism [a framework for identifying and referring potential victims of modern slavery] but the NRM is only as accurate as the people who give consent to be included.

“Alarmingly, we are seeing children, mainly teenagers, forced into criminality, shoplifting and organised thefts by adults.

Bertram revealed how in one case, a young girl was responsible for well over £140,000 worth of thefts from shops in Scotland and England over a three-year period, this child while all the money will have been handed over to the crime gang.

Stephanie Karté, of Retailers Against Crime, a Stirling-based group that helps companies counter crime in shops, also reported that “juvenile” shoplifters were being seen in stores “on a daily basis”.

She added, “A lot of them have been groomed since the age of 12 to go out and steal, say, high-value alcohol for specific people.

“We don’t know who these specific people are. We only see the kids going into the stores, but it’s escalating because there are no consequences as these children are juveniles. We don’t know what kind of pressure they’re under but retailers should not have to be putting up with the violence and the abuse that is involved. The children are throwing bottles of alcohol at staff, hitting them in the head and the face, in order to make good their escape. We know that they are on social media brandishing weapons.”