The New York Times and Washington Post get snowed by the retail industry.

A couple of newspapers tracking this trend do provide hard numbers. The Philadelphia Inquirer story "Tough Economy Boosts Shoplifting" reports a rise in shoplifting arrests from 361 in 2007 to 658 this year in one township. In Philadelphia itself, 4,300 retail theft arrests this year versus 4,090 in all of 2007. Police tell the Asbury Park Press("Shoplifting Rings on Rise as Economy Turns Sour") that shoplifting arrests are up 45 percent from last year, totaling 276.

But a couple of jurisdictions doesn't make a national trend. A San Francisco Chronicle story headlined "Shoplifting on the Rise as Economy Stumbles" acknowledges that shoplifting arrests are down in suburban Pittsburg, Calif., and that San Francisco and Oakland police aren't recording any increase. Likewise, in "Shoplifting on Rise in Tough Times" from the Florida Times-Unionin Jacksonville, an assistant police chief tells the paper that shoplifting is "pretty much flat" this year at the Regency Square mall.In an Associated Press story, Minnesota Retailers Association President Buzz Anderson goes off the usual retailers' script by saying he can't determine whether shoplifting is up because of the recession or because retailers generally see more shoplifting during the holidays.

A news outlet that hopes to prove that the failing economy is causing an increase in shoplifting has two big jobs in front of them. First, they must demonstrate a genuine—as opposed to anecdotal—increase in shoplifting arrests. Then they need to link that increase to the economy. Although academics may have proved such a correlation in the past, none of the shoplifting articles I read this week cited any such authority.

Organizations produce "mythical"—that is, bogus—numbers when no constituency exists for keeping the numbers accurate but a large constituency exists for keeping them high, as Peter Reuter observed in the Public Interest in 1984. Where there is a lack of scholarly interest in the numbers, even greater liberties can be taken. Until somebody produces harder data, the shoplifting epidemic reported in the Times,the Post, and elsewhere is mythical. And bogus.

******

Afterthought: What if shoplifting isn't on the rise but the detection of shoplifting—thanks to the ever-tightening electronic dragnet—is? Also, thanks to William Gardner, who first e-mailed me suggesting the shoplifting stories as a bogus-trend topic. Reuter's article, titled "The (Continued) Vitality of Mythical Numbers," appeared in the Public Interest, No. 75, riffing off of Max Singer's brilliant "The Vitality of Mythical Numbers" in the Public Interest, No. 23. Send shoplifting stories, statistics, and mythical numbers to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

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