Organised retail crime does not respect store boundaries, business boundaries or police force areas. What appears to be an isolated theft, fraud or suspicious transaction can be one part of a much wider pattern of offending, spanning locations, retailers and channels. The challenge is seeing enough of that picture to act.

Retailers and policing each hold important parts of the intelligence picture. Retailers have visibility across their businesses, transactions and customer interactions, supported by established fraud, loss prevention, security, investigation and intelligence capabilities. Policing brings different intelligence, investigative powers and a perspective that can extend across businesses and geographic boundaries.

Neither sees the complete picture in isolation.

The opportunity, therefore, is not for retailers to collect more information or for police forces to receive more reports. It is to connect these different perspectives more effectively, so that information held across organisations can contribute to a stronger, more coherent intelligence picture.

This matters because organised retail crime rarely presents itself as a complete picture. A theft, fraudulent refund, compromised account, suspicious purchase or payment fraud may initially appear to be an individual incident. It is often only when information is assessed collectively that recurring identities, accounts, locations, delivery details, devices or methods begin to reveal potentially significant patterns.

The challenge for practitioners on both sides is turning those different pieces of information into an intelligence picture that can support prevention, investigation and disruption.

No single organisation sees the whole picture

Looking at individual incidents remains important, but some forms of retail crime cannot be fully understood one incident at a time.

Retailers can hold information relating to customer accounts, payment methods, delivery and collection addresses, contact information, devices, vehicles where lawfully recorded, locations and recurring methods. Many have sophisticated teams already analysing that information across fraud, loss prevention, security, investigations and intelligence.

Policing brings a different view. Information held by police may provide wider context around individuals, groups or offending that crosses retailer or force boundaries, alongside investigative capabilities and powers that sit outside the retail environment. In turn, information held by retailers may add detail about activity across stores, platforms, transactions and customer interactions that is not visible from policing records alone.

Neither perspective automatically provides the complete answer. However, where information can be brought together appropriately, connections that are difficult to see from one vantage point may become clearer.

The scale of retail crime makes building that shared intelligence picture increasingly important. Office for National Statistics figures show that 519,381 shoplifting offences were recorded in England and Wales in the year ending September 2025, a 5% increase on the previous year. The British Retail Consortium’s 2026 Crime Report also highlights the role of organised criminal groups in repeat offending, including their exploitation of gaps in enforcement and online resale platforms.

And organised offending creates a particular intelligence challenge: groups can operate across multiple retailers and police force areas, meaning activity that appears isolated to individual organisations may be connected at a national level. This is already visible through policing’s national response: by March 2025, the Opal organised retail crime team had made 108 arrests involving offenders collectively responsible for more than £5.2 million in losses to businesses.

Against that backdrop, understanding individual incidents is only part of the challenge. The wider opportunity is to establish whether information held across retailers and policing can contribute to a broader understanding of repeat and organised offending.

Building intelligence from different sources

Information and intelligence are not the same thing. Information becomes intelligence through evaluation, context and assessment alongside other relevant information.

A delivery address, payment method, vehicle or account identifier may carry limited significance within a single incident. Its relevance can change when it appears repeatedly across reports, locations or investigations, or when assessed alongside information held elsewhere.

For retailers, that information may sit across fraud, loss prevention, retail operations, ecommerce, customer service, compliance, security and investigative teams. Police forces and national policing capabilities may hold different pieces of the same wider picture. The practical challenge is helping practitioners identify where those fragments intersect while maintaining the controls required around sensitive information.

This is not about starting from scratch. Considerable expertise already exists within retail and law enforcement, and collaboration between the two has developed significantly. Initiatives including Opal, the Pegasus Partnership and the Retail Crime Fusion Cell show that practical work is already under way to bring industry and policing information and expertise together more effectively. The next step is continuing to make those connections easier for practitioners to identify and act upon.

This includes preserving where information has come from, understanding its reliability and handling requirements, and maintaining appropriate controls over who can access and share it. It also means creating a clear record of how intelligence has been assessed and what decisions, investigative activity and outcomes have followed.

These disciplines matter whether intelligence originates within a retailer, policing, or is shared between the two.

Better connections matter more than greater volumes of data

Information sharing is an important part of the response to organised retail crime, but volume alone is not the objective.

More information does not necessarily create greater understanding. Its value depends on its relevance, provenance, reliability and context, together with the ability of practitioners to assess it alongside other information.

This is particularly important when intelligence moves between organisations. Retailers and policing operate within different environments, with different responsibilities, information holdings and capabilities. Effective collaboration therefore depends on information being shared lawfully and proportionately, with its origin and handling requirements retained.

Quality matters too. Inaccurate records, inconsistent information or assumptions unsupported by evidence can complicate investigations rather than improve them. A stronger intelligence picture does not necessarily come from accumulating the greatest possible volume of data. It comes from making relevant information easier to understand, connect and assess.

For both retail and policing, the opportunity is therefore less about generating more information and more about extracting greater intelligence value from information that already exists.

Connecting people, incidents and investigations

Technology has an important role to play in making that possible, but it should support rather than replace professional judgement.

In practice, that means giving authorised intelligence and investigative teams across retail and policing a secure environment in which information about people, organisations, locations, accounts, devices, incidents and methods can be connected and assessed together. Recurring entities and relationships can be identified across incidents and organisational boundaries, while provenance, reliability and handling requirements remain attached to the underlying information.

Technology can also support the wider investigative process by helping practitioners manage intelligence and investigations, record decisions and actions, retain a history of outcomes, and share relevant information with authorised teams and organisations under appropriate access and handling controls.

That combination matters. Identifying that the same address, account, device or individual appears across several incidents may provide an avenue for further assessment, but the connection itself is not proof of organised criminality. Context, corroboration and professional judgement remain essential.

The purpose of technology, therefore, is not to make that judgement for practitioners. It is to help them bring relevant information together securely, see connections that might otherwise remain obscured and maintain an auditable record of how information has been assessed and acted upon.

From separate perspectives to a stronger intelligence picture

Retailers and policing approach organised retail crime from different vantage points, and that is precisely why closer connection between the two can be valuable.

Retailers can bring detailed visibility of activity across their stores, platforms, transactions and customer interactions, backed by established fraud, security, investigation, loss prevention and intelligence expertise. Policing contributes different intelligence, cross-boundary perspectives and investigative capabilities.

Progress is already being made in bringing those perspectives together. The opportunity now is to build on it.

A stronger response does not depend on any single retailer, police force or technology platform having the entire picture. It depends on making it easier for practitioners to understand how the pieces they legitimately hold relate to information held elsewhere, while maintaining appropriate governance, provenance and accountability.

Technology can provide the secure, controlled and auditable environment that supports that process, but people remain at its centre. It is the combination of connected information, professional judgement and effective collaboration between retail and policing that can turn fragmented information into a clearer intelligence picture and support better-informed prevention, investigation and disruption.

Matt Horne is Director of Intelligence and Investigations at Clue, a software company helping organisations identify risks early, prevent harm and demonstrate impact.