15 Years Prison For Cable Theft, ICE Proposes
The theft of electrical cable has become a serious problem not only for the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), who incurs costs to repair the damage, but also for users who are left in the dark and for police facing added costs to investigate.

To that end, ICE said it is proposing a law that would punish with up to 15 years in jail for theft of electrical cables. The law has to be presented to the Legislative Assembly and would change cable theft from a simple robbery to a major robbery and the higher punishment.

The current penalty for cable theft is from six months to one year in prison.

Geovanni Bonilla, a spokesperson for ICE said that the penalty would be not only for those who steal the cables but for also those who knowingly buy the stolen material.

ICE believes that the stolen cables are shipped to places like Guatemala and then China and has cost the institution some ¢1.2 billion colones (us$2.3 million dollars) during the last three years. The loss, according to Bonilla, will be reflected in an increase in utility bills.

During the past several months a media campaign has been instituted to shake the consciousness of the citizens who are being urged to report cable theft. Bonilla said that before the media campaign they received some 40 reports a month and since there have been about 400 reports monthly.

However, the problem the institution and police are facing is that people make the report after the theft has occurred, sometimes up to days after, which is too late for the authorities to act.

Bonilla added that it is not enough that citizens report the thefts, but it needs the support of judges and prosecutors to get tough on this typ of crime.