Israeli Retail Theft Data: What Official Sources Do and Do Not Measure
Short answer. We did not identify a current official national estimate of total retail shrink in Israel that combines external theft, employee theft, process errors and other inventory-loss categories. Separately, the Israeli police offence classification contains no shoplifting category, so shoplifting cannot be counted from it. Shrink is measured in Israel — listed retailers compute audited inventory-shrink percentages from stock-count variances — but the values are not disclosed publicly. Below: what each official source actually measures, why none of it converts into a shrink percentage, and how a retailer can establish its own baseline instead.
What is established, and what is not
Supported by a primary source
- Israeli police publish offence records quarterly, by district and locality, with no financial-loss field.
- The offence classification has a dedicated internal-theft type (710) and no shoplifting type.
- The CBS victimisation survey covers persons aged 20+ and households only.
- Victory's FY2025 auditors describe an audited inventory-shrink percentage derived from count-vs-system variance.
Partial indicator only
- Type 710 employee-theft records — real, but all-industry and a floor, since most internal theft never becomes a police file.
- Type 715 "other thefts" — contains shoplifting mixed with all ordinary theft; not separable.
No national measure identified
- Total retail shrink as a percentage of turnover.
- A shekel value for national retail theft losses.
- Retail-specific victimisation — no Israeli business-victimisation survey was identified.
Not comparable
- Police figures across 2022→2023: the publisher documents a database structural change, so the step is record-keeping, not crime.
- International shrink benchmarks (e.g. UK/US surveys) — different populations, methods and definitions.
- Police incident counts vs financial shrink — different units entirely.
Would require new research
A defensible Israeli benchmark needs a multi-retailer panel reporting inventory variance on a common definition, with a stated sample, suppression of small cohorts, and a disclosed conflict of interest. See the limitations note at the end.
Scope: theft and inventory loss affecting retailers in Israel. Research date 2026-07-25; last reviewed 2026-07-25. Repositories searched: cbs.gov.il, data.gov.il (CKAN API), the Knesset Research and Information Center, gov.il (Ministry of National Security), police.gov.il, and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange filings via Maya.
Definitions used on this page
- Shrink — the gap between recorded inventory and actual inventory, whatever the cause: external theft, internal theft, administrative error, supplier discrepancy, damage and spoilage.
- External theft — theft by customers, including shoplifting and organised retail crime.
- Internal theft — theft by employees, including till fraud, refund fraud and sweethearting.
- Recorded offence — an offence inside a criminal investigation file opened by the police. It is a lower bound on real events, of unknown ratio.
A Hebrew terminology trap. In Israeli financial statements פחת normally means depreciation of fixed assets, and הפחתת מלאי means writing inventory down to net realisable value. Neither is shrinkage. Reading a depreciation line as a shrink figure is the most common error on this topic.
What each source actually measures
| Metric | What it counts | Isolates retail? | Employee theft separable? | Unit | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police-recorded offences Israel Police, via data.gov.il | Offences inside opened criminal investigation files. A record is an offence within a file, not a file — files are counted by grouping on FictiveIDNumber. | No | Yes | Incidents | No financial-loss field exists anywhere in the dataset, and there is no shoplifting category. Excludes every theft that was never reported. |
| Criminal investigation files opened (national total) Central Bureau of Statistics | 287.4 thousand files opened in 2024 (302.3 thousand in 2023), of which property offences accounted for 42.5%. | No | No | Incidents | Category shares sum to more than 100% because one file can carry several offences. No retail breakdown. |
| Victimisation survey Central Bureau of Statistics (commissioned by the Ministry of National Security) | Self-reported victimisation among persons aged 20+ living in households (sample ≈7,119). Theft is defined as theft without force or the threat of force, excluding dwelling and vehicle break-ins. | No | No | Incidents | Businesses, stores and workplaces are never a unit of analysis — Israel has no business-victimisation survey. The 2020 wave is also Covid-affected, which the CBS states directly. |
| Company inventory shrink percentage Victory, filed to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Maya) | Variance between cycle counts and the inventory system. Victory's auditors describe exactly this as the basis for calculating the company's inventory shrink percentage. | Partly | No | Financial loss | Computed and audited per company — and never published. No listed Israeli retailer discloses the value. |
Why police data cannot give you a shoplifting number
Israel's police offence classification contains 5,286 named offences. Searching all of them for store, shop, business or retail terms returns only burglary offences (type 706) and Covid-era business-opening regulations. There is no shoplifting offence. Shoplifting is recorded inside type 715, גניבות אחרות ("other thefts"), together with every other ordinary theft.
| Type | Official name | English | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 706 | התפרצות לבתי עסק ומוסדות | Burglary into businesses and institutions | Breaking in — a different crime from shoplifting. |
| 709 | גניבה ע"י עובד ציבור | Theft by a public employee | Public sector only. |
| 710 | גניבה ע"י עובדים וסוכנים | Theft by employees and agents | The only internal-theft category. All industries, not retail-specific. |
| 714 | כייסות | Pickpocketing | |
| 715 | גניבות אחרות | Other thefts | Where shoplifting ends up. Offence names are generic: גנבה, גניבה ביום, גניבה בלילה, גניבה ממקום נעול. |
| 719 | גרימת נזק לרכוש בזדון | Malicious damage to property | |
| 722 | חטיפת ארנקים | Bag/purse snatching |
Source: Israel Police, via data.gov.il — offence classification. Retrieved 2026-07-25.
The one internal-theft series that does exist
Type 710, גניבה ע"י עובדים וסוכנים ("theft by employees and agents"), is the only category that isolates internal theft. It covers all industries, not retail specifically, and the counts are small because most internal theft ends in dismissal or a civil settlement rather than a police file. Treat it as a floor, never as an estimate of employee theft.
| Year | Type 710 — theft by employees and agents | Type 715 — other thefts |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 226 | 21,165 |
| 2022 | 262 | 20,169 |
| 2023 | 512 | 42,722 |
| 2024 | 717 | 39,428 |
| 2025 | 344 | 39,631 |
Do not read a trend across 2022–2023. The dataset documentation states that the structure of the database changed up to the first quarter of 2023. The 2021–2022 figures therefore sit at roughly half the 2023–2025 level for reasons of record-keeping, not crime. Do not read a trend across that boundary.
Offence records, national, from the Israel Police, via data.gov.il dataset (quarterly, 2021–2025). Source. Retrieved 2026-07-25. Unit: offence records, not investigation files.
Shrink is measured in Israel — it is simply not published
This is the part most discussions miss. Reviewing the FY2025 filings of Israel's listed retailers shows that shrink is a managed, audited quantity:
- Victory — the auditors' Key Audit Matter states that differences between cycle counts and the inventory system are examined and form the basis for calculating the company's inventory shrink percentage (אחוז הפחת של המלאי). FY2025 report.
- Rami Levy — reports that management monitors compliance with company targets for shrink and inventory losses, with oversight by the security and inventory-control departments. FY2025 report.
- Shufersal — its cost-of-sales accounting policy names loss and goods shrink as a cost component, but the note discloses only an aggregate "other" line. FY2025 report.
In other words: audited shrink percentages exist for individual Israeli retailers, and none of them is public. That is why no national figure can be assembled from filings either.
How to establish your own shrink baseline
Because there is no benchmark to compare against, the only meaningful reference point is your own trend. A workable method:
- Fix the unit: shrink at cost as a percentage of sales at cost, for a defined period and store set.
- Count consistently — the same cycle-count cadence and the same categories each period. A changed method produces a fake trend, exactly like the police data's structural break.
- Separate the causes you can evidence: till exceptions (voids, refunds, discounts), goods-out-without-sale, supplier discrepancies, damage and expiry, and administrative error.
- Do not treat detected suspicious events as confirmed theft. Track them as a separate series: events detected, events reviewed, events confirmed.
- Compare only like with like: same stores, same season, same counting method. Israeli retail is highly seasonal around the festivals.
Claims this page rejects
Each of these circulates in Israeli retail-security material and is not supported by any source we could verify:
- Any national Israeli retail shrink rate ("Israeli retail loses X% of turnover"). No body publishes one.
- Any shekel total for national Israeli retail theft. Police data has no financial-loss field; the CBS does not measure businesses.
- Applying global shrink benchmarks (1.45% / 1.8% / 2.7%) to Israel as if they were measured here.
- The widely-circulated "$119 billion" figure as an Israeli number — it is a global 43-country consultancy estimate and contains no Israel figure.
- The "≈1% of turnover" Co-op Israel figure as national or current — it is one executive's 2008 estimate for a single chain that no longer exists.
- Any claim that Israeli police data shows shoplifting rising or falling. There is no shoplifting category to trend.
- Reading פחת in an Israeli financial statement as shrinkage — in Hebrew accounting it means depreciation of fixed assets.
Methodology
Search date: 2026-07-25. Last reviewed: 2026-07-25.
Repositories searched:
- Central Bureau of Statistics (cbs.gov.il) — publications library, media releases, survey and subject pages
- data.gov.il — CKAN API (
package_search,datastore_search), Israel Police crime datasets and the offence dictionary - Knesset Research and Information Center (fs.knesset.gov.il / knesset.gov.il/mmm)
- gov.il — Ministry of National Security and the National Authority for Community Security
- police.gov.il
- Tel Aviv Stock Exchange filings via Maya (maya.tase.co.il, mayafiles.tase.co.il) for listed retailers
- Academic aggregators, and Hebrew/English news and vendor material for figure tracing
Inclusion criteria. A source is cited only if it is published by a statistical office, a government body, a parliamentary research service, or a company's own audited filing; and only if its metric definition and reporting period are stated in the document itself.
Exclusion criteria. We excluded vendor and consultancy estimates presented without a published method, news articles that restate a figure without attribution, and any figure whose original document we could not open and read.
Source hierarchy. Statistical office and government data first; parliamentary research compilations second (used mainly for official definitions); audited company filings third; press only for tracing a circulating figure back to its origin, never as the authority for it.
How claims were classified. Each desired claim was marked supported, partially supported, not published, not comparable, outdated or unverifiable. "Not published" means we searched the repositories above on the stated date and did not identify a publication — it is not a proof of non-existence.
Why unrelated crime figures were rejected. Police property-crime totals cover burglary, vehicle crime, malicious damage and general theft. Deriving a retail-shrink percentage from them would require assumptions the data does not support: no retail flag, no financial-loss field, no coverage of unreported events, and no measurement of process error or spoilage — which are part of shrink but are not crimes at all.
Sources
| Publisher | Document | Period | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Israel Police, via data.gov.il | נתוני פשיעה (Crime Data) — open dataset crime_records_data | quarterly, 2021–2025 | 2026-07-25 |
| Israel Police, via data.gov.il | רשימת העבירות עם קבוצת העבירה, סוג העבירה ורגישות — offence classification | classification in force for the 2021–2025 files | 2026-07-25 |
| Central Bureau of Statistics (commissioned by the Ministry of National Security) | Israel's Crime Victimization Survey 2020 (סקר נפגעי עבירה), Publication No. 1834 | the 12 months preceding interview, 2020 | 2026-07-25 |
| Central Bureau of Statistics | ישראל במספרים ערב ראש השנה תשפ"ו — selected annual data, chapter 8 (crime and justice), release 304/2025 | data year 2024 | 2026-07-25 |
| Knesset Research and Information Center | לקט נתונים על פשיעה בישראל — data compilation on crime in Israel | 2017–2021 | 2026-07-25 |
| Victory, filed to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Maya) | Victory Supermarket Chain — periodic report FY2025 (auditor Key Audit Matter on inventory) | FY2025 | 2026-07-25 |
| Rami Levy, filed to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Maya) | Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing — periodic report FY2025 | FY2025 | 2026-07-25 |
| Shufersal, filed to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Maya) | Shufersal — periodic report FY2025 | FY2025 | 2026-07-25 |
How to cite this analysis
- Produced by:
- De Flow AI (organisation; no individual author is claimed)
- Research date:
- 2026-07-25
- Last reviewed:
- 2026-07-25
- Source periods covered:
- police offence records 2021–2025; CBS victimisation survey 2020; CBS annual crime data 2024; Knesset compilation 2017–2021; listed-retailer filings FY2023 and FY2025
- Suggested citation:
- De Flow AI, "Israeli Retail Theft Data: What Official Sources Do and Do Not Measure", reviewed 2026-07-25, https://de-flow.com/israel-retail-theft-data
What this analysis does not claim. It states no national Israeli retail shrink rate, no shekel total for national retail theft, and no shoplifting count — none of these is published by any source we identified. It does not assert that such data does not exist anywhere, only that we did not identify it in the repositories listed under Methodology on the stated date. Figures quoted are counts of police offence records, not financial losses, and not confirmed thefts.
Findings are free to cite with attribution. If you know an Israeli source we missed, tell us and we will add it — the value of this page is its provenance, not its length.
Update history
- 2026-07-25 — first publication. Primary-source review of CBS, data.gov.il (Israel Police), the Knesset Research and Information Center, gov.il and TASE filings.
Planned review cadence: annually, or whenever the CBS personal-security survey or the police open dataset publishes a new wave.
De Flow AI detects scan-avoidance, sweethearting and refund fraud on the cameras a store already has, pairing each flagged event with its till exception so a reviewer sees both. It does not use facial recognition.