Does a store suffering increased theft generally cause higher prices? If a store suffers an increase in theft, will it generally lead to higher prices at that store?
My answer is that prices should have already been set to maximize the trade off between profit-per-sale and volume sold, so that if the store experiences increased costs of business, they cannot recover the loss by passing it onto consumers.  They HAVE to eat the loss, unless prices were set irrationally to begin with (in which case the theft only prompted the store to fix their mistake).
However, the majority of people and articles seem to take it for granted that a store will pass increased costs, such as theft, onto customers.
prices should have already been set to maximize the trade off between profit-per-sale and volume sold

But profit-per-sale depends on costs, which depends on the theft numbers, so if theft increases, the equation changes.