Shoplifting, or, the Little Joys of Teaching Teens are Almost Without Number

“I heard the manager say he’s going to catch him tomorrow and have him arrested.”

One of our more Norman-Rockwell-looking students, I’ll call him Joe, had been shoplifting on his lunch hour from one of the Norman-Rockwell-looking shops in town, a small pharmacy that sold snack food, close to our school building. Another student overheard the manager after Joe left, and reported what she’d heard.

Now what? Stand back and let things take their course? We—the other teachers and I—talked about the pros and cons of this inaction and decided that wouldn’t be right.

We announced to the school that that shop was off-limits to our students until further notice. Eyebrows around the room made it clear that several students knew why. Was Joe alone? Probably not, but he was the one who got caught.

We met with Joe and his mom after school.

“The manager of the pharmacy knows you’ve been shoplifting. When you went in there tomorrow he was going to have you arrested. What should we do?”

I wasn’t going to pretend not to know what had happened. I’ve learned over the years not to compound trouble by asking someone, say, a thief, to become a liar. This wasn’t an inquisition. It wasn’t a court of law. It was an attempt to help a young man grow up. And, if somehow he was innocent and wrongly accused, his reaction would make that clear.

Joe, to his credit, didn’t try to lie. “I still have some of the stuff I stole. I could return it and pay for the rest.” His mom sat silent.

“And what about an apology?”

“I’ll write an apology,” he said.

“And deliver it to the manager by hand tomorrow,” we said.

He agreed, and walked into the shop alone the next afternoon with a fist full of gum and candy, some money, and his letter. We learned later that the manager was pretty gruff with him, as he had every right to be, and let Joe know he’d be keeping an eye on him if he came into the store again.

Incident concluded, we let the other students return to shopping there, but asked Joe not to—probably to his relief—for the rest of the year. We also put him on behavioral probation for the rest of the year, and, as far as we can tell, he lived up to our requirements.

You hear, sometimes, the kids are “asking” to be caught. I’m not cynical enough to doubt it. But, after our first meeting as we were leaving, before Joe wrote or delivered the apology, we shook hands. He looked each of us in the eye and what he said startled me. He said, “Thank you.”