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Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property

Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management

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Definition

Stealing, Use or misuse of an employer’s property or assets by an employee without permission.

Introduction

Employee theft of employer property is a major issue for organizations (see, e.g., a 2017 article on.com, claiming a 50 billion loss per year for US businesses). Even though the general scope of the problem seems apparent, exact numbers of employee theft are difficult to obtain. The dark number for employee theft is high. One reason for this is the fact that much employee theft goes undetected or is erroneously defined as another loss (Retail Shrink). It may, for example, be unclear whether an item is stolen or just lost and if stolen, whether it was stolen by an employee or a customer (Consumer Retail Shoplifting). Another reason, however, is that many employers decide not to report the theft to the police, investigating the matter themselves instead (Meerts 2018b). This contribution starts with a discussion of the issue of employee theft, after which investigations...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of law, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Clarissa Meerts

Authors
  1. Clarissa Meerts
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Correspondence to Clarissa Meerts .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA

    Lauren R. Shapiro

  2. Dept. of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

    Marie-Helen Maras

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Meerts, C. (2019). Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Law and CriminologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property
    Published:
    12 January 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-4

  2. Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property
    Published:
    22 December 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-3

  3. Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property
    Published:
    12 November 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-2

  4. Original

    Investigations: Employee Theft of Employer Property
    Published:
    01 October 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_87-1

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