Shoplifting and employee theft are the most common forms of mass criminality. Policy formulations dealing with this phenomenon must ensure that the basic right to protection of private property continue to be upheld. The principal approach to curbing shoplifting and other petty theft should be preventive, particularly through public education encouraging potential victims to use technological preventive aids and to consider efforts to forestall crime on their premises as a serious responsibility. Radical policy changes in the form of decriminalization are dubious solutions to the problem, since they appear to legitimize a phenomenon with wide-ranging negative social consequences. Much shoplifting is done by juveniles and is frequently the start of more serious criminal involvement. Speedy processing procedures must be developed to get offenders through the system quickly while retaining the criminal significance of theft offenses. A 1979 pilot project in Baden-Wuertemberg instituted a pretrial diversion point upon initial processing of adult petty crimes. Police, in coordination with prosecution authorities, screened petty crime cases into two groups depending on offense seriousness one leading to dropped charges or diversion to private dispute settlement, the other to further processing and possible prosecution. Processing time for both groups, however, was reduced by using checklists, standardized forms, and automated criminal history files. Footnotes are provided.