Optic Security’s Nick Dynon Questions Retail Crime Narrative in New Zealand.
Nick Dynon Questions Retail Crime Narrative – Nicholas Dynon, group brand strategy and innovation director at Optic Security, has questioned the way retail crime statistics in New Zealand are being interpreted, arguing widely reported figures may overstate the scale of the problem.
Speaking during a recent interview on RNZ Nights with Emile Donovan, Dynon said the rise in retail crime reported in recent years needs to be understood in a broader economic and reporting context. Retail crime, including ram raids, smash and grab offences and supermarket shoplifting, has been widely reported in New Zealand since the pandemic period, with recorded incidents rising sharply and reaching a peak in late 2024.
The increase prompted a range of responses from government and retailers, including policing initiatives, legislative changes and investment in security technologies aimed at addressing retail theft and organised shoplifting.
Dynon said the public narrative surrounding the statistics has framed the issue as a dramatic post pandemic shift in criminal behaviour.
“Media reports and virtue signalling by political leaders point to NZ’s post-COVID crime wave as being ‘unprecedented’, part of a ‘new normal’,” Dynon said. “But it’s not.”
According to Dynon, historical data and academic research suggest the pattern is more closely linked to economic cycles than to structural social change following COVID-19.
“A weighty body of academic research tells us that retail crime, or property crime more broadly, is associated with periods of high inflation,” he said, referring to international research cited in an article he recently published in Newsroom NZ.
“We saw it in NZ with historically high inflation in 2023-24 and we saw the pattern with the 1991 recession and 2008 GFC. When there’s a cost-of-living crisis, organised crime groups respond by stealing more items and selling them more cheaply than folk might pay for them over the counter.”
Dynon also argues that changes in reporting practices have contributed significantly to the apparent scale of the increase in retail crime statistics.
“In short, the numbers have likely been substantially inflated by (i) calls by retailer association Retail NZ for retailers to report more crime and sub-crime incidents, along with (ii) the rapid adoption of crime intelligence platform technologies, such as Auror, that make it much easier for stores to report,” he said.
According to Dynon, this combination has led to a sharp increase in the number of incidents recorded in both official and industry reporting systems.
“While the imperative of addressing chronic under-reporting of retail crime is a good thing, the problem is that it’s skewed the stats,” he said.
Dynon said the response from government and retailers has included increased investment in security technology and more aggressive crime prevention measures.
“Government and retailers alike have responded to the ‘crime wave’ with reactive legislation and investments in increasingly intrusive security technologies such as the use of live facial recognition in supermarkets. Significant amounts of money, including taxpayers’, is being spent on the basis of misleading data.”
Dynon suggested organisations publishing retail crime statistics should provide greater transparency around how the figures are generated and interpreted.
“Yes, we’ve likely experienced a rise in retail crime, but the extent of it has been misrepresented by the statistics,” he said. “And now we’re seeing that the curve has been trending down since late 2024. Why? Because inflation has been falling.”
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“Optic Security’s Nick Dynon Questions Retail Crime Narrative in New Zealand.”
