One of the new laws coming out of the 2025 Arkansas Legislative Session, Act 322, allows for enhanced prison sentences of up to 10 years for convictions of cargo theft. During an interview with KARK Channel 4’s Capital View Shannon Newton, President of the Arkansas Trucking Association, said lawmakers also addressed cargo theft by providing more resources for law enforcement to deal with the issue. As Little Rock Public Radio reports, Newton explained that with the rise in new technology, lawmakers needed to address the costly crime. “So that issue is something that’s kind of crept up in our industry and evolved really, really quickly and almost sort of kind of along the same timeline as working from home, as everyone switched to computers and everyone switched to doing things digitally, the criminals did that as well. And so, they got really sophisticated and not just doing like a smash and grab from a trailer load of, you know, tennis shoes. We’re talking about orchestrated to delivering an entire load of merchandise to the wrong warehouse.”
According to data from the Homeland Security Investigations agency, all forms of cargo theft cost supply chains up to $35 billion each year.
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, and a graduate of the University of Washington, Jeff began his on-air broadcasting career 33 years ago in the Black Hills of South Dakota as a general assignment reporter.
