Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said his office seeks to divert, rather than prosecute, certain low-level shoplifting offenders but bristled when asked whether he still operates under his disgraced predecessor Rachael Rollins’ do-not-prosecute list.
During a Thursday press conference on an initiative his office spearheaded that aims to deter shoplifting, Hayden outlined how the DA’s office aims to prosecute repeat retail theft offenders while giving a pass to first-time non-violent offenders — provided the newbie bandits take part in a voluntary diversion program.
Shoplifting, according to Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox, whose department partnered with the DA’s office on the “Safe Shopping Initiative” rolled out in March 2024, is up 15% this year, compared to the same period last year. The Retailers Association of Massachusetts estimates that shoplifting cost the state’s retailers $2 billion in 2023.
“Our focus is on repeat and violent offenders that are impacting retail theft,” Hayden said at the BPD headquarters in Roxbury. “Those who engage in retail theft repeatedly and with impunity, those who commit related acts of violence that threaten workers and members of the community, and those that help drive criminal enterprises for profit in their shoplifting enterprises will be held accountable.
“Low-level offenders driven by unfortunate circumstances that require an alternative will be handled with diversionary measures,” he added, highlighting his office’s Services Over Sentences program and the state’s veterans courts as alternative treatment options. “We will provide those help and resources because if we don’t, they will reoffend. If we don’t, they will become repeat offenders.”
Hayden bristled at suggestions, however, that the DA’s office was still operating under his disgraced predecessor and former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins’ controversial do-not-prosecute list that included shoplifting and 14 other so-called low-level crimes that she pledged not to prosecute as Suffolk district attorney.
“The do-not-prosecute list is a complete misnomer,” Hayden told the Herald after the day’s press conference. “We have been diverting cases for low-level offenses before, during and after the Rollins administration. So, it’s almost frustrating to get to the point of still answering that question.”
Of the list, and shoplifting being a do-not-prosecute crime for the DA’s office, Hayden said, “A list of cases that we never, ever prosecuted has never existed.”
A spokesman from Hayden’s office later called the Herald to clarify that while there was in fact a do-not-prosecute list compiled by Rollins, it ceased to exist when Hayden took office in January 2022.
Rollins resigned from her post as the state’s top prosecutor in May 2023, upon the issuance of two federal reports that found she abused her position, in part, by leaking false information to the media in an effort to influence the outcome of the Suffolk DA’s race in favor of her preferred candidate, ex-Boston city councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who lost to Hayden.
The federal investigation was sparked by her appearance at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, in potential violation of the Hatch Act, after it was first reported by the Herald.
The Suffolk DA spokesman also clarified that Hayden’s office prosecutes first-time shoplifting offenders who opt not to take part in a voluntary diversion program.
Cox said roughly 20% of people arrested for shoplifting over the past five years were repeat offenders.
Unclear is how many of that pool of offenders were diverted to treatment programs and how many were arrested for related violent crime. Cox and Hayden, when asked, were unable to produce those statistics.
While shoplifting is up by 15% this year, per BPD data, and spiked 55% between the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2019, according to data from the Council for Criminal Justice, speakers at the day’s press conference largely struck an upbeat tone about progress they say has been seen since the initiative rolled out last year.
Mayor Michelle Wu and Cox both emphasized how BPD has sought to apply the same approach to reducing homicides — which, per Wu, were at the lowest level last year in at least the past 70 years — to deter shoplifting. Such an approach, they explained, focuses on identifying and targeting groups driving the crime.
“I’m really grateful to see such spillover effects in a positive way,” Wu, who is up for reelection and often touts Boston as the safest major city in the country, said. “Certainly this is a national issue that many retailers, many large chain stores and many cities are grappling with.”
Wu, a progressive Democrat who supported Rollins’ do-not-prosecute list when running for mayor in 2021, was asked about whether her party was wrong on the issue, at a time when Democrats are facing criticism for their so-called soft-on-crime policies that critics say have contributed to national shoplifting spikes.
“I think every time a customer has to ask the CVS clerk to unlock the shampoo, Democrats get less popular,” U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Newton Democrat, wrote in a blog post last month.
Josh Kraft, Wu’s principal mayoral opponent, told reporters at an unrelated campaign event that he doesn’t think what he characterized as the mayor’s safe shopping plan is working.
“Shoplifting has been a quality of life issue for more than three years for all the residents of the city,” Kraft said, “and like a lot of issues — bike lanes, Mass and Cass — it seems the mayor and the current administration are focusing hard on them now because they have an upcoming election, instead of listening to people who have been talking about shoplifting and shampoo being locked up for three years.”
Wu, said, however, that the city’s approach is largely the same.
Echoing Hayden, Wu said, “Historically, there’s always been some differentiation between repeat offenders and low-level theft. I think then and now there has been diversion and prosecutorial discretion exercised.”
Wu’s police commissioner took a harder line.
“Now, the mayor has made Boston a welcoming home in the city for everyone,” Cox said. “But I just want to add this one caveat: It is not a welcoming place if you want to come here for violent crime, and more importantly, just any crime in general, and that includes shoplifting.”
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