The U.S. Postal Service is cracking down on mail theft this holiday season and beyond by installing 12,000 high-security blue collection boxes in high-risk areas around the country.
The iconic blue mail collection boxes are a main target of thieves, comprising a significant portion of the more than 25,000 mail theft incidents that occurred in the first half of the 2023 fiscal year, according to officials with the Postal Service and its law enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service.
“We are hardening targets — both physical and digital — to make them less desirable to thieves and working with our law enforcement partners to bring perpetrators to justice,” the Postal Inspection Service's chief postal inspector, Gary Barksdale, said in a statement.
As of October, 10,000 of the advanced security collection boxes have been installed. The new collection boxes do not look any different on the outside from the old boxes, according to Michael Martel, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service.
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