One of the most infamous outlaws in California history carried out the final crime of his career in November of 1883. Charles Bowles, also known as Black Bart, was tracked down following an eight-year career of robbing stagecoaches and leaving poems at the scene of the hold-up.
Almost 133 years later, mail theft holds an increasingly strong appeal for California criminals, most of whom lack the panache of the poet-bandit. “It’s happening all over the place,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R., Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “Apparently, this is a growing phenomenon.”
In the Internet age, identify theft has become closely associated with cybercrime, but mail theft doesn’t require 21st-century cleverness. The most vulnerable mailboxes, so-called cluster boxes outside of apartment complexes or in rural areas, are difficult to protect, and so Calvert has introduced a bankshot of a bill that would increase the maximum jail sentence.
It’s the kind of legislation that has a chance of passing in an election year, when most big-ticket bills flounder, assuming it doesn’t get entangled in the politics of criminal justice reform.
Mail theft is a low-tech way to pull off an identity theft. In some cases, thieves have put sticky substances in public mailboxes, which they then use to “fish” mail out of the boxes.
“I have heard between 40-50 stories from merchants who have had checks ripped off from the mail or had not been receiving mail,” a newspaper editor from the Los Angeles area told local news. Calvert recalled another thief who used a master key stolen “at gunpoint” from a postal worker to steal mail from public boxes.
Mail theft increases “during tax season,” according to law enforcement, yet identity theft is the broader concern. “Out here, it’s opportunists trying to get mail with identification,” Calvert said.
Calvert’s bill could avoid the opposition of some potential critics because he isn’t wading into a fight over mandatory minimum sentencing laws, an issue that has proven controversial enough to split even the immigration hawks who have tried to crack down on illegal immigrants who reenter the country after being deported. Instead, his legislation doubles the maximum possible jail sentence from five years to 10, while leaving the individual cases to the courts.
“We’ve got to send a message out to these criminals that there’s going to be consequences for this, and right now they’re just, it seems like these petty crimes, at least in my state, are skyrocketing,” Calvert said. “And it’s not so petty if it’s your mail being stolen, especially if they get your identity.”
He might face opposition due to the practical issue of overcrowding in California prisons, though. The state has been releasing some prisoners early pursuant to a Supreme Court ruling that housing the inmates in overpopulated jails amounted to cruel and unusual punishment — a policy that Calvert thinks might be contributing to the increase in mail theft. “I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation to that,” he allowed.
If the congressman is right, that would hardly be the first example of a mail thief benefiting from early release: When Bowles was caught, he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, but he served only four.
