Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
A few people here are advocating for automating or otherwise increasing the effectiveness of detaining people under the shopkeeper's privilege.
Have you never paid for an item but found the security tag was not removed or deactivated before exiting the store? I sure have. So many times in my life I could not count. I'd be getting locked in many vestibules, and I suspect you would be, too.
Never happened to me. But then again, I just about never buy high value items which might have security tags in retail stores. However, assuming your scenario happens, you could just pull out your receipt to prove you paid for the item. Then you're let go, and any pictures taken of you are erased from the database.
This would, at first, seem to fall under shopkeeper's privilege. And, even ignoring the enormous fire safety liabilities this solution would present to shopkeepers, there is the issue of the abuse of the shopkeeper's privilege.
The idea is to keep the person from leaving. If local fire safety codes would be violated, then the store has to figure out some other solution.
Wikipedia on shopkeepers detaining a suspected shoplifter:
"If the shopkeepers exceed the bounds of this privilege and make an arrest, the lawfulness of their action will be determined by the jurisdiction's rules governing arrest by a private citizen. The shopkeepers' privilege is for the purpose of investigation only; if, after reasonable detention and investigation, the shopkeepers mistakenly conclude that the suspects are guilty and have them arrested, the shopkeepers may become liable for these acts just as they would have been had they committed the acts without undertaking a prior detention and investigation.[3]
So, let's say I get locked into one of these vestibules because I paid, but the security tag still went off. Then, I choose not to cooperate, because I've paid for my item and I know it, and I am not under any obligation to cooperate. If the police arrive and arrest me because I refuse to cooperate with them as well (also well within my rights), that court case would then result in liability for the shopkeeper once the receipts are pulled out of evidence.
Why wouldn't you just pull the receipts immediately if you've paid for you item? Note that the premise here is the store failed to properly mark your item as paid, either by removing the security tag, or if it was RFID, deactivating it. Maybe this calls for a much more reliable method of marking items as paid.
All it takes one person doing that to render any savings from reduced shrinkage completely moot.
Sure, and this may well be why stores aren't taking more thorough security measures.
That's just false imprisonment with extra steps. I won't get into the pitfalls of facial recognition technology like false positives and privacy concerns, because rest assured, it already exists, is actively in use in both the private and public sector, and at this point everyone in this thread is nearly guaranteed to be in at least one facial recognition database somewhere.
My idea here isn't to imprison people. It's simply to flag prior shoplifters so security can kick them out. Maybe you could do that with an alarm which goes off if one these people enters the premises, but security would have to react pretty quickly if the person doesn't leave when they hear the alarm sounding. Stores have a legal right to keep problem people out. They were doing it by low-tech means for decades. I even recall one local grocery store doing this. The same guy would come in, put groceries he was buying in the plastic bags used for produce. This would screw up the price scanners. I don't know what his goal was, but his nonsense constantly delayed checkout lines. One day I was there while the manager was telling him to stop coming back.
Whether we like it or not, facial recognition will only be widely expanded in the future. Sadly, the main reason might be for marketing purposes, so when you walk by an ad display in a store, you get targeted ads. I know it's not foolproof. Maybe there are better ways.
Remember even though some of these measures might have issues, in some cases the alternative is for the store to just close up shop because the theft rate is unsustainable. Either that or securely keep the merchandise in hardened vending machines until it's paid for.
Another way to stop this is to locate and shut down the places these stolen goods are bought to. That probably has fewer legal pitfalls. Have GPS locators in random high-value items which are regularly targeted. When one of these shoplifting gangs comes in, you let the police trace the goods to their destination. If stolen goods can't be easily resold, that pretty much stops stealing cold.
BTW, what ever happened to the concept of just wheeling out a cart full of items which are all scanned on the fly, and charged to your credit or debit card? I saw a commercial for that over a decade ago. I would think this would be feasible by now. You pretty much eliminate shoplifting, while also getting rid of checkout lines.
