Is the alternative to then let goods be stolen, have shops lock products away and consume police resources trying to track people down that they have average footage of?

We can think worst case scenario for everything and not doing anything, or be realistic.

If you are not a hardcore prison abolitionist you are comfortable with the idea of a government provided list of undesirables to exclude from society. If you are a hardcore prison abolitionist, and you're not insane, then you probably have some other libertarian/anarchist idea for how to create a list of undesirables to exclude from society that, in practice, amounts to recreating a government in a roundabout way.

I, for one, don’t care if thieves are excluded from stores. They can buy and get curbside delivery in the parking lot, and if that is a little more expensive than shopping for yourself, well, you’ve made everyone else’s groceries just that little bit more expensive for years while getting them for yourself for free.

Right now shoplifters have the advantage. That has many negative effects (stores closing, merchandise being locked up). It's not the Torment Nexus to make life more difficult for them.