A reporter from the Washington Post has garnered criticism online after she discussed recent shoplifting trends, arguing that the problem has become “moral panic” in the nation’s cities.
The article was written by Post culture reporter Maura Judkis, who titled it “The zombie CVS, a late capitalism horror story.”
In the article, Judkis discusses a D.C. CVS that had been looted by shoplifters so much that it was closed this week. The reporter went on to discuss other stores, noting that merchandise was being kept behind plexiglass.
“Other shelves, stretching entire aisles, are totally empty,” Judkis added.
But the point that Judkis makes in the article is that these crimes are being used by the conservative base to stoke fear about a crime wave she says isn’t happening. Judkis calls the situation a “horror story of Late Capitalism.”
“The empty CVS had somehow become a stand-in for all that is wrong with American cities — and liberals (and liberal democracy?) — in 2024,” she wrote.
She later added that their ancestral guilt about colonization was truly behind the “moral panic.”
“America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land, and its current moral panic is about shoplifting,” Judkis wrote. “It’s not just a worry in Columbia Heights. All over the country, from sea to shining CVS, there are concerns about petty theft.”
The argument that Judkis makes is that crime is getting worse in some places but better in others, and people don’t know because it’s either “underreported or overexaggerated.”
The article goes on to express several different aspects that go into shoplifting, including “joblessness, inflation, [and] a slow recovery from the pandemic” as she maintains the issue is being inflated by a culture war.
“In certain conservative circles, there’s a wild narrative about cities as terrifying hellholes of crime, theft, and lawlessness. The bleakness of the D.C. CVS played right into this belief,” she wrote.
Still, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently released a statement, which Judkis cites, saying that shoplifting can no longer be treated “like kids just shoplifting a thing or two because it’s having a real impact on the ability for people to get the goods and services that they need.”