‘I wasn’t taking old ladies’ handbags’: Confessions of shoplifters who say prison isn’t the answer
Chris Downes’s piercing blue eyes stare out from the mugshot on a Cheshire Police news release.
He “has been causing problems within this town through shoplifting for over two decades”, it reads.
It announces a criminal behaviour order banning the 60-year-old from entering any part of his local town centre of Macclesfield and every Co-op store in Cheshire.
“I feel like I’ve been punished twice,” Chris says, once for the original offence and again with the banning order. It causes inconvenience with things like doctor’s appointments and shopping for him and his elderly mother.
Chris is one of those people we rarely hear from in all the talk about the explosion in shoplifting in Britain. He is one of that legion of shoplifters and agreed to speak to Sky News.
“Why did I do it? I did it because of a drug problem. I had no option,” he says.
“I know it’s wrong but it wasn’t hurting any individual as I see it. I wasn’t taking old ladies’ handbags, I’m not saying shoplifting is right but needs must I suppose.”
File pic
Addiction issues are a familiar feature of shoplifters’ stories. We have spoken to a number who, almost word for word, say the same as Chris Downes. They want things to be different, they say, but cannot break the cycle.
Chris describes the sensation of needing a hit as being “peeled alive” where even “your hair hurts”. Relieving that need for a hit is worth paying any price, he says. “It is an overwhelming urge.”
Chris says the feeling of needing drugs is like being ‘peeled alive’
Something else all shoplifters seem to say is that they never target small, independent shops but focus on the big high street names, as if their losses are somehow less important.
But there are other stories. “You’d be surprised who shoplifts,” says Chris. “Being a shoplifter you notice people and the signs more than security guards do and while they’re concentrating on me you’ll see a little old lady with a trolley lined with foil inside and putting bottles of whisky in. I’ve seen it very often.”
Read more:
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Serial shoplifter who made £500k jailed
Even shoplifters are feeling the pinch too. Chris says £100 worth of stolen goods would once net £50, now he says he’s lucky to make £20.
The responsibility of caring for his mother has given Chris an impetus to clean up his act. His career as a cabinet maker and ceramicist are just some of what has become collateral damage to 40 years of addiction.
One man who has managed to break that cycle is Cullan Mais. As we walk through a suburban shopping street in Cardiff, he ticks off a list of what he could steal and from where during his very lucrative shoplifting career. He explains in detail the modus operandi of the seasoned thief.
Cullan Mais, an ex-shoplifter, now helps others out of addiction
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‘Shoplifting was my addiction’
He shares photos of his journey: caught on a security camera going into a shop to steal, his police mugshot, a harrowing image of him clucking – that is going cold turkey on a relative’s sofa, his shirtless body marked with the scars of a fierce battle with drugs.
Bearded and healthier-looking in smart sports casualwear, he now works trying to help others make the same journey out of addiction. He remembers it well, not least the amount of money he made.
Cullan caught on a security camera going into a shop to steal
Cullan’s mugshot
“Maximum I’ve made – two or three thousand in a day. I stole millions,” he says. “When the one shopping chain caught me, they valued all the things I stole at £2.8m – and that’s just the one shopping chain.
“Of course, I never made millions, that was just the retail price.”
Addiction again was the driving force.
“Every day, without fail, you’re going to make the money you need to make,” he says. “As a drug addict you’re not going home until you’ve made what you need to make to make sure you’re okay.
“And, you know, I think as the years went on, I got greedier and greedier.”
Cullan going ‘cold turkey’ from drugs on a relative’s sofa
Even though those days are long gone, he says, like any addict, the feeling never truly goes away.
“Shoplifting to me was an addiction in itself,” he says. “It was a buzz and I loved it. Even when I kicked my addiction, it was very hard not to think about it.
“Last Christmas I was working away and the Christmas songs came on the radio and it triggered me because it reminded me of going out at Christmas time to get money.”
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He says rehabilitation rather than prison is the answer. “Prison just made me a better criminal.”
But for the police and courts, trying to tackle a problem that costs business millions every year, prison is often the only option.
Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for shoplifting, said: “We know retail crime has a significant impact on victims which is why we are committed to doing all we can to reduce thefts and pursue offenders, especially those prolific and habitual offenders, who cause misery within the community.”
The US Congress has written to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor requesting an interview with him in connection with his “long-standing friendship” with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said it is investigating the late financier’s “sex trafficking operations”.
It told Andrew: “The committee is seeking to uncover the identities of Mr Epstein’s co-conspirators and enablers, and to understand the full extent of his criminal operations.
“Well-documented allegations against you, along with your long-standing friendship with Mr Epstein, indicate that you may possess knowledge of his activities relevant to our investigation.
“In the interest of justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, we request that you co-operate with the committee’s investigation by sitting for a transcribed interview with the committee.”
The congressional committee wants to understand any ‘activities’ relevant to its Epstein investigation. PA file pic
Virginia Giuffre, who died in April, accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her after being introduced by Epstein. Andrew has always vehemently denied her accusations.
The letter to the former prince, is addressed to Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, the home he agreed last week to leave, when he was stripped of his royal titles.
It outlines his “close relationship” with Epstein and references a recently revealed 2011 email exchange in which Andrew told him “we are in this together”.
And it says the committee has identified “financial records containing notations such as ‘massage for Andrew’ that raise serious questions”.
Read more:
Andrew’s fall from grace
Can William escape Andrew questions in Brazil?
The committee said Andrew’s links to Epstein “further confirms our suspicion that you may have valuable information about the crimes committed by Mr Epstein and his co-conspirators”.
The letter, signed by 16 members of Congress, requested Andrew responds by 20 November.
It came as the King officially stripped his disgraced brother of both his HRH style and his prince title.
The move followed the publication Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs, and the US government’s release of documents from the paedophile’s estate.
Ms Giuffre alleged she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times – once at convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s home in London, once in Epstein’s address in Manhattan, and once on the disgraced financier’s private island, Little St James.
The incident at Maxwell’s home allegedly occurred when Ms Giuffre was 17 years old.
Epstein took his own life in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
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