SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE CEC
Reforming Generations through Education Worldwide Dilemma By Jeff Powers
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Strengthening Community Partnerships
hoplifting is a worldwide dilemma. National retail theft in the United States is at an all-time high of $44 billion. At the local level, communities are affected in numerous ways, from the rising cost of retail prices to offset shrinkage, to the rising tax rates to cope with increased thefts. At the retail level, a loss prevention associate loses valuable time on the floor responding to low-risk, first-time offender situations that could easily be resolved with the CEC Restorative Education™ program.
“CEC has sown together ideas from societal sciences with practical wisdom to develop and implement a program with the potential to not only reduce recidivism, but also improve lives. I think students who put time and effort into this program will enjoy it, learn from it, and see the benefits from applying it,” says BYU Professor of Psychology Sam Hardy. CEC’s Restorative Education Program gives all participants the chance to make a bigger, broader impact on society by altering the path of as many as 250,000 annual first-time offenders in the US alone. This volume of offenders crowds legal dockets, distracts police from more serious crime prevention, and creates a cycle of crime that is avoidable with an alternative solution. In addition to the societal impact, the average cost to process a shoplifter through the criminal justice system is in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. “Positively identified, low-risk offenders may opt into the diversion program at the store locations, freeing store-level loss prevention officers, police officers, and criminal intake prosecuting attorneys for other duties,” states a participating chief of police where the CEC platform is being utilized by the local retailers of that jurisdiction. The CEC Restorative Education Program is the right application to offer a second chance.
How It Works for Retailers
Based on rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), CEC’s Restorative Education proprietary course utilizes a highly successful approach of providing low-risk offenders second chances to right their wrongs. The CEC program holds the offender accountable throughout the duration of the course, while allowing the retailer to offer an alternative to the criminal justice system. CEC provides the loss prevention professional with a software-enabled iPad to use in the retail setting. This allows for quick reporting, tracking, and processing of detainees at the retail location in approximately twelve minutes per offender. If the detainee is a low-risk or first-time offender, they will likely qualify for the CEC curriculum. To further expedite the process, the CEC software determines offender qualification with a simple image capture of a state ID or driver’s license using the iPad camera and CEC software. This feature helps the retailer mitigate any subjectivity from the detainee process.
About the Author
Jeff Powers is chief customer acquisition officer for CEC. Leading an incredible team of professionals dedicated to promoting restorative justice, Powers focuses on building partnerships with corporations, law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors. He has over thirty years of experience in sales and sales leadership serving the retail loss prevention industry, including relationship development, hiring, and training of highly successful sales executives. He has extensive experience in To learn more about CEC’s solution and solution selling hardware, the impact it can have, watch his latest loss prevention video. https://www.youtube.com/watc software, and services. h?v=8dVkImGwe8I&feature=youtu.be.
D.A.R.E. America Partners with CEC
D.A.R.E. has created a partnership with CEC to strengthen their shared beliefs in recognizing that impulsiveness of youth can lead to bad choices, and behavior modification will lead young people toward positive lives. Many first-time offenders are juveniles, according to the Global Youth Justice Organization—“The number one crime committed by juveniles is shoplifting.” This understanding of the first-time offender profile allows D.A.R.E. and CEC to offer juveniles a second chance for offenses “often regarded as an entry crime, from which juveniles graduate to more serious crimes,” according to the US Department of Justice. The new and improved juvenile-based curriculum is known as D.A.R.E. to Make the Right Choices™.
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