According to the National Retail Security Survey, retailers lose about $20 billion yearly to shoplifting by customers, vendors, and employees. Shoplifting affects all consumers in at least three ways: higher consumer prices, overburdened criminal justice system, and lost tax revenues. Preventing retail theft involves the implementation of various countermeasures. The use of people to control losses is perhaps the most important theft prevention method but can be the most expensive approach. Other countermeasures include store environmental design, merchandising techniques, employee and public awareness, shoplifting detection programs, security systems, electronic article surveillance, and merchandise alarms. The handling of shoplifters is broken down into seven steps: detect possible shoplifters, evaluate and prioritize the situation and subjects, monitor subjects, highlight subject actions, decide to act, take action, and process the incident. 7 references and 12 figures