Thank You for Shoplifting with Us

In my entire therapy career, I’ve gotten exactly one referral from the criminal justice system. Mallory Kincaid topped out at five foot zero and looked like a refugee from the sixth grade, although I was told she was sixteen. She smoked, she drank and she took whatever drugs she could get her hands on. She also took whatever objects she could get her hands on. They called her a shoplifter because she happened to be in a shop when she lifted whatever she could get her hands on one day.

In the juvenile delinquency movies of my youth, they would have called her a kleptomaniac. I don’t know if they even use that term anymore, but it’s more accurate than shoplifter because Mallory’s proclivity for borrowing anything not nailed down wasn’t confined to commercial establishments. I would know, because in the course of her therapy I caught her liberating a stapler, two pens, a box of paper clips and a small vase from my office. And those are just the ones I was able to spot as they left the premises.

The referral came from a man I’ll call Patrick Kelly, a cop I had treated for alcoholism back in my days as a substance abuse counselor. He was called by security at a major Oakland department store one day when Mallory had been a little too free with her hands. It seems that a delicate bottle of very expensive perfume and two rings had been seen making their way into Mallory