Go straight to "RETAIL JAIL!"

I wont lie. I like 5-finger discounts. Anything I can get for free, I'll have it. Pointless or petty.

For no reason at all I'll pocket small things from big corporations, like jacking the occasional sugar sachet or five from Starbucks.

Okay, I'm no criminal! I have enough money to get me by, and I don't see myself having enough courage to swipe something expensive. I'd get in a lot of trouble and get a criminal record and all my future employers would see it and I'd be ashamed of getting caught.

Well now Selfridges have set up cells in their stores on Oxford street to detain any would-be shoplifters. The story even made the front page of The Guardian ('Ground floor perfumery, stationery ... and cells') on Thursday.

The police will be given extended powers to take fingerprints and DNA at the scene while detainees are kept in the cells for up to four hours in a perspex box, so they are visible to the public.

The idea behind it is to hold suspects long enough for their identities to be taken, and to take police out of the office and onto the streets to deal with the crime, not at the stations processing low-level paperwork. Having the suspects on display should act as a deterrent (it certainly works for me)

I was surprised to see this story didn't pick up as much attention as I thought it would, although I admit I'm only checking online versions of newspapers as I didn't read that day's paper until the next morning.
The Sun picked it up, though, as did The Times.

What the bloggers said:
Surprisingly I couldn't find a lot of web comments linking back to the Guardian's story, as most just quoted the entire story in their postings, although I did find:

Londonist in reaction to the headline called their post "Cellfridges"
There's a nice quote there playing on Selfridges' old slogan 'Why not spend the day at Selfridges?'
Funny people!