‘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.”
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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.”
A foreign sex offender freed in error from Wandsworth prison has been arrested – as Sky News filmed the moment he was detained.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian national, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October.
Sky News approached Kaddour-Cherif moments before his arrest in Finsbury Park, north London, at 11.30am, but he claimed to be someone else.
He was then approached by officers next to a police van and arrested.
One of the officers said Kaddour-Cherif had been identified as the missing prisoner because he had a “distinctive wonky nose”.
Sky News witnessed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest
Officers held his arrest picture next to Kaddour-Cherif’s head to confirm his identity
In the footage, the Algerian was shown shouting to people standing nearby in the street.
An officer then held up a photo of Kaddour-Cherif on a phone, comparing the image to the man arrested.
When officers asked him whether he knew why he was being arrested, Kaddour-Cherif replied: “I don’t know.”
Kaddour-Cherif, who was wearing a grey hoodie, black beanie and black backpack, said the mix-up at the prison was the fault of the authorities who released him.
“It’s not my f***ing fault”, Kaddour-Cherif shouted.
Kaddour-Cherif shouted at bystanders as officers arrested him
Kaddour-Cherif claimed to be someone else when he was arrested
The Prison Service informed the Metropolitan Police about the error six days later – and a huge manhunt for him was launched.
It is not yet clear why it was nearly a week between the release at HMP Wandsworth and the police being informed that an offender was at large.
“At 11.23am on Friday, 7 November, a call was received from a member of the public reporting a sighting of a man they believed to be Brahim Kaddour-Cherif in the vicinity of Capital City College on Blackstock Road in Islington,” a Met Police spokesperson said.
“Officers responded immediately and at 11.30am detained a man matching Cherif’s description. His identity was confirmed and he was arrested for being unlawfully at large.
“He was also arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous unrelated incident. He has been taken into police custody. The Prison Service has been informed.”
Kaddour-Cherif shouted it was ‘not my f***ing fault’ that he was mistakenly released
Kaddour-Cherif is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure in November last year, following an incident in March.
At the time, he was given a community order and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
He was then subsequently jailed for possessing a knife in June.
He was wrongly freed from Wandsworth prison. Pic: Met Police
Kaddour-Cherif came to the UK legally and is not an asylum seeker, but it is understood he overstayed his visit visa and deportation proceedings had been started.
He was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu. Both Kaddour-Cherif and Kebatu were arrested in Finsbury Park.
A third man, fraudster William Smith, 35, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on 3 November, but turned himself in on Thursday.
After Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, Justice Secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing,” he said.
“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.
“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
A young woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been convicted of harassing the missing toddler’s family.
However, Julia Wandelt, 24, was cleared of stalking the couple.
A Polish national born three years after Madeleine, Wandelt said she suspected she had been abducted and brought up by a couple who were not her real parents.
She was having mental health issues at the time and had been abused by an elderly relative.
The relative looked like an artist’s drawing of a man who was once a suspect in the Madeleine case, which she stumbled across during internet research on missing children.
She went to Los Angeles and told a US TV chat show audience: “I believe I am Madeleine McCann.”
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from the family’s rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
She had been left sleeping with her younger twin siblings, Sean and Amelia, while her parents dined nearby with friends, making intermittent checks on the children.
Madeleine is the world’s most famous missing child, the subject of three international police investigations that have failed to find any trace of her.
Wandelt claimed to have a blemish in the iris of her right eye, like Madeleine’s, and to resemble aged-progressed images of her.
Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA
Over three years, she attracted half a million followers on her Instagram account, iammadeleinemccan, and posted her claims on TikTok.
Police told her she was not Madeleine and ordered her not to approach her family, but she ignored the warning.
The McCanns and their children gave evidence in the trial at Leicester Crown Court, describing the upset Wandelt had caused them.
Her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.
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Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.
Mark Drury – speaking in his role as representative for open prison governors at the Prison Governors’ Association – told Sky News open prisons that have had no absconders for “many years” are now “suddenly” experiencing a rise in cases.
It comes after a man who was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap and grievous bodily harm absconded from an open prison in Sussex last month.
Sky News has learned that Ola Abimbola is a foreign national offender who still hasn’t returned to HMP Ford – and Sussex Police says it is working with partners to find him.
WARNING: Some readers may find the content in this article distressing
Ola Abimbola absconded from an open prison. Pic: Sussex Police
For Natalie Queiroz, who was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner while she was eight months’ pregnant with their child, the warnings could not feel starker.
Natalie sustained injuries to all her major organs and her arms, while the knife only missed her unborn baby by 2mm.
“Nobody expected either of us to survive,” she told Sky News.
Babur Raja was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder, but Natalie has recently been told that he’s set to be moved to an open prison four years earlier than planned.
“Any day now, my ex who created this untold horror is about to go to an open prison,” Natalie said.
Open prisons – otherwise known as Category D jails – have minimal security and are traditionally used to house prisoners right at the end of their sentence, to prepare them for integrating back into society.
With overcrowding in higher security jails, policy changes mean more prisoners are eligible for a transfer to open conditions earlier on in their sentence.
Natalie Queiroz was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner
“It doesn’t feel right, it’s terrifying, and it also doesn’t feel like justice,” Natalie said, wiping away tears at points.
Previously, rules stated a transfer to open prison could only take place within three years of their eligibility for parole – but no earlier than five years before their automatic release date.
The five-year component was dropped in March last year under the previous government, but the parole eligibility element was extended to five years in April 2025.
Raja, who is due for release in 2034, has parole eligibility 12 years into his sentence, which is 2028.
Under the rule change, this eligibility for open prison is set for this year – but under the new rules it could have been 2023, which is within five years of his parole date.
Another change, introduced in the spring, means certain offenders can be assumed suitable for open prisons three years early – extended from two years.
Natalie says her ex-partner Babur Raja caused ‘untold horror’
Natalie has been campaigning to prevent violent offenders and domestic abuse perpetrators from being eligible to transfer to an open prison early.
She’s had meetings with ministers and raised both her case and others.
“They actually said – he is dangerous,” she told Sky News.
“I said to [the minister]: ‘How can you make a risk assessment for someone like that?’
“And they went: ‘If we’re honest, we can’t’.”
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What’s wrong with our prisons?
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The government told Sky News that Raja’s crimes were “horrific” and that their “thoughts remain with the victim”.
They also insist that the “small number of offenders eligible for moves to open prison face a strict, thorough risk assessment” – while anyone breaking the rules “can be immediately returned”.
Mark Drury, a representative of the Prison Governors’ Association
But Mr Drury describes risk assessments as an “algorithm tick box” because of “the pressure on offender management units”.
These warnings come at an already embarrassing time for the Prison Service after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly freed last month.
This week, it emerged two others have been freed in error since then, amid new release checks.
In response to this report, the Ministry of Justice says it “inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days away from collapse” – forcing “firm action to get the situation back under control”.
The government has promised to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and introduce sentencing reforms.
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