A shocking report has laid bare a “state of lawlessness” in the UK – the likes of which have never been seen before.

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Criminal gangs are now using builder’s sacks, bins and suitcases in order to swipe more goods from shops, The Times reports.

The brazen thieves don’t even bother to hide their crimes and instead simply walk out of shops with a basket full of stolen items.

Some of the goods are stolen to order by criminal gangs or appear on Facebook Marketplace – sometimes within just hours.

The report by Emmeline Taylor, a professor of criminology at City, University of London, in partnership with Co-op cited one example of a woman who was flogging stolen items just ten minutes after a raid.

Another group was selling products on Marketplace for a fraction of the retail price.

The damning report also revealed staff are at a loss over how to deal with thieves.

Some claimed they had been reprimanded by police for even reporting shoplifters, while others are left in fear of reprisals if they speak out against an offender.

One employee in Manchester said: “We have a local pub across the road which they [thieves] take our stock to, and the pub sells it off. They have a little stall in the pub.

“Our staff have been banned from the pub, we’re not welcome there, but the pub staff are still allowed to shop in our shop.

“I have a friend who recently went to the pub and he said that they had a table with all of our stock on it and they were presenting it [for sale] like trophies.”

The report, titled Stealing With Impunity, pointed out police guidance is now to tell retailers not to challenge shoplifters.

This means thieves are becoming more brazen as the epidemic worsens.

Last year, Co-Op recorded almost 1,000 incidents of shoplifting every day across its 2,400 stores – a 44 per cent rise on the previous year. 

Shockingly, there were more than 1,325 physical assaults against its staff last year, which is the equivalent to three or four workers attacked every day.

As a result of the scourge, shops are being forced to remove some items from shelves to deter thieves.

Shoplifting in numbers – how thieves are crippling Britain

Startling crime figures lay bare the anarchic crime wave blighting the nation’s high streets.

Police recorded 339,206 shoplifting incidents in the 12 months to March, yet the British Retail Consortium estimates the total number of retail thefts to be close to eight million.

Just 48,218 shoplifting cases recorded by the police, a derisory 14 per cent, resulted in a charge.

And 183,450 investigations — 54 per cent — were closed without a suspect being identified.

The BRC say retail theft rose by 26 per cent in England and Wales last year.

Other items – such as laundry detergent – have instead been replaced with empty display-only boxes.

Professor Taylor said: “Retail crime not only impacts on a business’s ability to operate safely and profitably but also causes serious harm to shop workers, both physically and mentally, and to communities that are blighted by persistent offending.

“The police in England and Wales have lost grip on the scale and severity of acquisitive crime and, in turn, retailers have lost confidence in them and the wider criminal justice system.”

While Paul Gerrard, public affairs director at the Co-op, said: “We’re seeing a level of organisation of stealing and reselling that we’ve never seen before.

“People are coming in with wheelie bins and filling them up. It’s a pretty bleak picture.”

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