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A bit on the nose, eh? I can't tell if this was meant as a verb (i.e. the single line in this proposal propping up the rest of the bloviation), or as a noun (theater object to facilitate a more realistic performance). What a masterstroke.
Others have already mentioned that prosecution in the US is conditioned on local politics, that retail employees basically have their hands tied in responding to theft, and that there is a cultural factor encouraging and normalizing shoplifting and theft in subsets of big-city populations from a young age. This is probably the bulk of it. I'll add an unverifiable but anecdotally-reinforced personal theory that might have some effect on low-repetition shoplifting adding to overall increases from 2020 to end of 2022: I suspect wearing masks during the pandemic years (and indeed long after them for some people) tipped the scales on the risk-reward calculus for a lot of people, because a lot of people (wrongly) think they might get caught by facial recognition.
The local Walmart has large, conspicuous cameras set up at the doorways, ostensibly for recording crimes to be used in subsequent investigation or prosecution. That such subsequent investigation is rarely conducted is beside the point - to the average person, it sounds risky to get their face caught on camera while they're doing crimes. The marginal shoplifter could always wear a mask, but when they're the only one hiding their face, wearing their hoodie over their head indoors, or generally acting weird around cameras, they tend to stick out - it's not a stretch to imagine that the marginal shoplifter who's concerned about getting caught by cameras might also be concerned about looking obviously super suspicious. But when everyone's wearing a mask, hiding your face from the cameras is a free side-effect of a different normalized behavior. This might have emboldened a lot of marginal shoplifters.
This sounds convoluted, and probably doesn't have a huge impact relative to the other mentioned explanations... but a couple of low-income friends have insinuated to me that the masking requirements made them a lot less worried about getting caught by facial recognition in their own personal escapades, so I don't think I can discard it outright.
I'm not American, but a lot of shoplifters seem to wear masks, based on this possibly biased sample:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QL4QOnl1uDw
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