Export packaging should be kept as plain as possible - providing details of the contents, eg brand names, encourages theft.

Other tactics are simpler: make eye contact with arriving customers and keep shelves neat (chaotic displays encourage theft).

The rise in unemployment encouraged such relatively petty theft as the stripping of provincial churches.

But merchants complain that cash transactions encourage theft and that customers often forgo purchases because they simply do not have enough cash in hand.

Mr. Giuliani, a Republican, said that within three months after he took office, the commission would report to him on corrupt individuals and various city "rules and regulations which encourage bribery, theft and other corrupt practices."

"I cannot encourage theft,' Patriarch Ortzel said rigidly, "but under the circumstances -' A faint, almost sly smile touched his thin lips.

It encourages smuggling and theft and there is a risk of items going underground and therefore becoming lost to science.

Brad Williams, senior marketing specialist for Levi Strauss, the San Francisco-based clothing manufacturer, denied that the company intended to encourage theft by putting the khakis in 40 shelters in Manhattan and 30 in San Francisco from the middle of last week through the end of the month.

Lights that are too strong can create dark shadows, which could encourage theft or vandalism on your site.

Some slave masters even encouraged theft from other plantations in an effort to control their own costs and possibly to hurt rival planters.