http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... shops.html

IMO this is like giving a burgular a job on the police force to make him stop robbing peole n

Make em clean the cages at the zoo

Make em live in the zoo
with the animals

I don't think it's a terrible idea, but the former stricter punishments would probably lead to less shopliftings than this new policy.

"Alright, you've been caught shoplifting, so we're going to employ you in a shop where you'll learn intimate knowledge of how the security systems work, and how to easily dispose of those silly security tags. Not to mention give you great control and liberty in and around the shop, as well as certainty that you'll be alone with a few 600$ cellphones sooner or later. Good plan?"

I think quite a lot of teenage shoplifters steal stuff because of peer pressure, whether because their peers actually want them to steal or whether they get status from getting nice trinkets and neato gadgets, the spoils are what matters first (or so I would think).

Letting them work with the staff turns those into peers, too, so there is peer pressure to cancel the other. There are also many many other ways to look at this (I admit this one is highly simplified ), but it could be rather effective. Mind you, these are not recidivists yet, so there is little reason to believe they have already developed into cleptomaniacs.

Sure, there'll always be cleptomaniacs amongst them, but this pilot might do a good job.