Breaking The Cycle: How Drug Treatment Innovation Can Transform Dublin's Retail Crime Crisis

Retired Detective Chief Inspector Jason Kew has been one of the most influential policing voices on harm reduction and diversion in the UK over the past decade. In recent years he worked with Irish policymakers, An Garda Síochána and health stakeholders sharing evidence from pioneering initiatives such as the Thames Valley diversion scheme and the West Midlands Offending To Recovery partnership. His work has helped shape thinking in Ireland on how health led policing and modern treatment options can reduce crime, improve public safety, and support people out of addiction. Drawing on that experience, he offers the following perspective on Dublin’s burgeoning retail crime crisis – and the opportunity for evidence based innovation to break the cycle.

Over to Jason...

Walk into any pharmacy, convenience store, or retail outlet in Dublin city centre, and the staff can tell you stories that have become grimly routine. The same faces appear day after day, desperate individuals cycling through a predictable pattern of theft to fund their addiction.

For retailers, it's a relentless drain on resources and morale. For those trapped in addiction, it's a destructive spiral that traditional responses have failed to break.

Retail theft in Dublin has increased significantly, and Gardaí and retailers report that a subset of prolific offenders — many with unmet addiction needs – account for a large proportion of incidents. Retailers and retail representative bodies report losses running into thousands of euro per week in some city-centre locations. High-value items - designer sunglasses, clothes, cosmetics, electronics - disappear with alarming regularity, often stolen by the same prolific offenders operating across multiple stores. The human and financial costs are staggering, yet our response has remained stubbornly stuck in a revolving door of arrest, release, and repeat that serves nobody well.

If we want to understand how to break this pattern, we need only look to the places where similar crises have been tackled with measurable success.

The evidence for a radically different approach already exists, and it's compelling. Randomised controlled trials led by Professor John Strang and colleagues demonstrated rapid and substantial reductions in acquisitive crime among people receiving supervised injectable opioid treatment. Similarly, the heroin-assisted treatment trial in Cleveland showed significant crime reductions in very short time periods. These weren't marginal improvements – they were transformative changes that benefited individuals, communities, and businesses alike.

The mechanism behind these successes is straightforward. People with severe opioid addiction often commit crimes not out of criminality but out of desperation to avoid withdrawal and satisfy overwhelming cravings. Remove that desperation through effective treatment, and the motivation for crime evaporates. This isn't soft on crime—it's smart on crime.

A treatment innovation now available in Ireland has the potential to change this dynamic entirely: long-acting injectable buprenorphine. Unlike traditional daily methadone that require weekly if not daily clinic visits and can still leave patients vulnerable to cravings, LAIB provides stable, month-long relief from opiate cravings through a single injection. For someone previously committing crimes multiple times daily to fund their habit, this can mean liberation. For those prescribed LAIB there are much fewer appointments and queues; and no more constant cravings which has been a main driver for them to steal. For a subset of people whose offending is closely linked to untreated opioid dependence, LAIB can significantly reduce the drivers of repeat theft when combined with appropriate support.

The West Midlands in England has pioneered an approach that Dublin would be wise to study closely. Crucially, the model is police led but strongly supported by local retailers, who recognised that investing in evidence based treatment for prolific offenders directly protects their staff, reduces losses, and strengthens community safety. Their Offending to Recovery scheme brings together retailers, police, and treatment services in genuine collaboration. Information-sharing protocols allow police and treatment services to coordinate responses to prolific offending, within data-protection constraints. Treatment services identify unmet treatment needs. Importantly, modern treatments like LAIB are deployed strategically for those who need them most. The results speak for themselves, with substantial reductions in repeat offending.

From my work with Irish partners in recent years, it’s clear that the foundations for this kind of collaboration already exist. Dublin is already showing innovative leadership through initiatives like Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery, which brings together key stakeholders across the city. This collaborative foundation is essential, but it needs the next critical ingredient: meaningful financial engagement from the retail sector itself.

The mathematics are compelling. A month's treatment with LAIB costs approximately €250. Consider a typical prolific offender stealing four pairs of Ray-Bans daily at €250 per pair – that's €1,000 in daily losses, around €20,000 monthly from a single individual. Even accounting for recovery rates and insurance, the cost-benefit analysis is overwhelming. Investing in treatment isn't charity; it's sound business sense.

Building on Dublin's innovative platforms, a coordinated fund supported by major retailers could target the most prolific offenders with comprehensive treatment packages. Evidence from similar schemes suggests crime reductions of up to 78% within six months are achievable. Imagine halving retail crime across Dublin's city centre in half a year - not through increased security or harsher sentences, but through addressing the root cause.

This approach requires a pragmatic shift in perspective. We must stop seeing addiction purely as a criminal justice problem and recognise it as a health crisis with criminal consequences. Treatment isn't being soft on offenders -it's being effective for victims. Every person stabilised on LAIB represents not just a life reclaimed but dozens of thefts prevented and countless euros saved.

The infrastructure for success is already emerging in Dublin. We have innovative collaborative frameworks, we have proven treatments, and we have mounting evidence from international trials. What we need now is the leadership and vision to connect these elements through strategic investment from those who stand to benefit most: the retail sector itself.

The current approach isn't working. Shoplifting arrests seldom lead to meaningful consequences, and even when they do, individuals return to the same desperate cycle within days. We can continue this expensive, ineffective merry-go-round, or we can invest in solutions that actually work.

Dublin has an opportunity to lead internationally in demonstrating how health-led, evidence-based approaches can transform retail crime. The evidence is clear, the tools are available, and the innovative partnerships are forming. All that's missing is the collective will to invest in what works rather than continue funding what doesn't.

It's time to get smarter about crime reduction. That means empowering drug treatment, supporting proven innovations like LAIB, and recognising that sometimes the most effective crime prevention tool isn't a security camera or a longer sentence - it's a monthly injection that gives someone their life back while protecting our communities. The question isn't whether we can afford to try this approach. It's whether we can afford not to.

The evidence is there. The tools are in our hands. What we need now is the will to act.