Middle-class shoplifters are increasingly targeting high-end shops ‘for the thrill of it’ in one of the UK’s most affluent university cities, police say.
Amid rising rates of shoplifting offences across the UK, officers in Cambridge are increasingly fighting back against thefts, only to discover that many suspects turn out to be stealing only luxury items for fun.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary has released CCTV footage of thieves targeting John Lewis in the historic city amid the increase.
It comes as shoplifting rose by 20 percent to hit another record this summer, as police recorded 530,643 offences in England and Wales in the year to March 2025 – the highest figure since records began.
Video footage released today shows a mother-daughter pair who spent 90 minutes trying on clothes in the three-floor department store while hiding clothes they wanted to steal in their handbags.
Another clip shows a woman spraying perfume from a tester before brazenly dropping it into an already full shopping bag.
Police say these offenders, targeting high-end stores, are not stealing out of necessity but ‘for the thrill of it’.
Cambridge, home to one of the best universities in the world, is one of the UK’s richest cities.
Video footage shows a mother-daughter pair who spent 90 minutes trying on clothes in the three-floor department store while hiding clothes they wanted to steal in their handbags
Another clip shows a brazen woman spraying perfume from a tester before brazenly dropping it into an already full shopping bag
The county as a whole saw a 22 percent increase this year in shoplifting compared to 2024, with 874 offences recorded in Cambridge city centre alone.
PC Emily-Jayne Matthews, of Cambridgeshire Police, said a huge bulk of thefts in Cambridge were by people who are older, middle class and with nice houses and jobs.
She runs a Facebook campaign called Wanted Wednesdays where she posts images of suspects and says many turn themselves in for fear of being exposed.
Caught shoplifters have to pay for the items, receive a lifetime ban from the shop and must apologise in person.
PC Matthews told ITV News Anglia: ‘These aren’t people stealing out of necessity, they’re people in professional jobs, taking high-end items like clothing and perfume, simply for the thrill.
‘I’ve had one suspect in interview, when she was banned from John Lewis and Waitrose, say: ‘Where am I going to get my weekly food shop?’
‘The embarrassment is often the strongest deterrent.’
In July, the-then policing and crime minister Dame Diana Johnson claimed middle class shoplifters were responsible for pushing up prices on the high street.
The county as a whole saw a 22 percent increase this year in shoplifting compared to 2024, with 874 offences recorded in Cambridge city centre alone
The mother-daughter pair placed clothes they wanted to steal into already full shopping bags
John Lewis security guards are seen confronting a mother-daughter pair caught shoplifting
Many of the offenders were caught stealing on CCTV footage shared by Cambridgeshire Police
Filled with determination to crack down on Britain’s spiralling shoplifting epidemic, she said: ‘It’s a crime. If you’re middle class, or whichever class you want to determine that you are, it’s a crime. That is just not acceptable because we all know that people end up paying higher prices if people are stealing.’
In a bid to combat the crime, which is crippling the retail sector and pushing up prices, the government previously announced plans to invest £200million into neighbourhood policing.
It comes after the government also axed previous legislation that made stealing goods worth less than £200 a ‘summary-only’ offence.
There are also plans to make assaulting a shopkeeper a specific offence under the Crime and Policing Bill.
The rise in shoplifting offences is attributed to multiple factors including the cost of living crisis and increase in self-service check-outs.
On average, 793 offences a day went unsolved in the last year.
