In my experience retailers are lying in a bed of their own making. They have had more than a decade to implement RFID based UPCs and have steadfastly resisted it at every turn because of the few pennies it adds in the supply chain. While not perfect RFID allows for much better security controls that the status quo. Instead they continue to underinvest in adequate technology skills and will just rely on shady third party, privacy destroying, false positive generating facial recognition.
The issue is that when they do catch someone shoplifting the stores do not want to apprehend them themselves for various legitimate reasons such as safety of their employees and customers, liability if they make mistake, and police that will not come and arrest the caught shoplifter (either they have too much other more serious crime to deal with, or the prosecutor's office won't prosecute).
