Congressman Josh Harder, D-Tracy, has introduced new legislation to crack down on mail theft in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

Harder’s Mail Theft and Postal Key Crime Prevention Act would strengthen penalties on criminals convicted of mail theft, postal key crimes, and fraud, as well as expand the mail theft investigations personnel in judicial districts across the country.

San Joaquin County is on the front lines of a nationwide mail theft crisis:

*Nationwide, mail theft has risen dramatically since 2023, with nearly a million mail theft complaints reported since then.

*The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) San Francisco division, which includes Valley communities like Stockton, had some of the highest rates of mail theft complaints anywhere in the country over the last three years.

*Harder’s office has received many individual reports this year of stolen packages and checks, ransacked or entirely-destroyed cluster mailboxes, and ongoing identity fraud stemming from mail theft.

“Mail theft is a serious crime that can devastate families, robbing people of their hard-earned money, exposing them to identity theft, and violating the basic sense of security we should all have in our own homes,” Harder said.

Harder’s bill responds to surging mail theft by directing the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase penalties for mail theft crimes while creating a new Mail Theft Coordinator position in every federal judicial district.

The bill also improves coordination between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, and it mandates annual reporting of the latest mail theft trends and law enforcement response.

Harder is also pushing for USPIS’ anti-theft initiative, Project Safe Delivery, to be expanded to Stockton to bring high-tech prevention equipment to local hotspots, and for Congress to create a new joint-agency task force led by the Department of Justice focused solely on stopping mail theft.