Cattle Rustling

The theft of livestock, most commonly cattle, historically one of the most severely punished forms of theft in agrarian and pastoral societies because livestock represented a household's primary transportable wealth and food source. The offense remains a significant and frequently violent form of organized property crime in parts of the world with substantial pastoral economies, including East Africa and parts of Latin America and the American West, where it is prosecuted as a distinct statutory offense from general theft given the specialized methods used to move and resell stolen animals and the particular harm inflicted on subsistence and commercial herders.