Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.
Lurking in the background of the unrest gripping parts of the country this week is an old story that needs to be brought back to the forefront: America has too many laws.
The technical term for this is “overcriminalization,” the idea that we’ve made so many things illegal, it’s possible for the average person to violate major federal laws just about every day without even trying.
The rapid expansion of the federal criminal code is a big part of the problem. But state and local governments are no slouches when it comes to overcriminalization:
Thousands of statutes, regulations, and local ordinances carry criminal penalties in each state. Arizona has over 4,000 statutory offenses that can result in a criminal conviction. North Carolina has added five sections to its criminal code each year since World War II, and its legislature has added 318 new crimes since 2009 alone. These numbers are compounded by the fact that our state legal systems are a patchwork of laws, where even crimes with the same name require a variety of different statutory elements across state borders.
What happens when so much is made illegal?
The story of fisherman John Yates presents a second concern commonly raised about overcriminalization: arbitrary or abusive prosecution. Prosecutors brought charges against Yates and secured a felony conviction for a violation of the “anti-document-shredding” provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. What did Mr. Yates do to deserve time in a federal prison? He threw three of the approximately 3,000 fish he caught that day back into the ocean because he knew they were undersized according to federal regulations, in effect destroying evidence. While the Supreme Court overturned his conviction eight years later, not everyone facing a similar situation has the chance to have the Supreme Court hear their case.
The simple solution to reducing overcriminalization is for governments to reform their criminal codes, removing laws that are either outdated, arbitrary, or fail to define criminal intent.
That’s surprisingly hard to do, though some states have succeeded in cleaning up some portions of their codes…with much more left to do.
Tackling overcriminalization won’t prevent the scenes unfolding on the streets today. But it will work in the background, curbing the incentive – and the legal basis — to make a criminal out of just about anyone.
wpDiscuz
This is just more BULL FECES.
BULL FECES? I don’t think so. Entrapping honest citizens into crimes that nobody ever heard of until someone is arrested is not justice by any stretch of the imagination. It happens at all levels of government. It’s about turning us into a dictatorship where the law is whatever Big Bro says it is. Sort of Russia’s Czar Peter the Great who ruled that the law was whatever he said it was. We certainly have too many officials here in our own country who fit that description.
Now contrary to this article there are not to many laws it is the application of the law that is where the problem is. Now in the instance that his article listed, if the person threw the fish over as soon as they caught them there would not have been multiple fish to throw overboard, it probably was a fact that the man got caught with small fish he was saving and then threw thm overboard so there would be no evidnece. Sometimes the police seem to forget common sense, especially if they think you are not bowing down to them or youare smart mouthed. We need the laws or they would never have gottn on the books in the first place.
I disagree.
The problem is too many immigrants bringing their CULTURE here.instead of them MELTING INTO OURS.
And the obungler for supporting them
There’s a fairly simple solution to this conundrum, which means it will never be enacted.
Cap the word length of the entire Civil and Criminal Code using a formula that is determined based on the number of Citizens subject to the code. Add in the additional provision that a specified percentage of the code must be abolished every year, say 1% for the sake of discussion and the problem becomes not just manageable but has the added benefit of requiring so much time of the legislative authorities to deal with the administration of the already existing code their time to get up to the additional mischief of enacting additional laws to the detriment of the citizenry is greatly diminished.
Why are we over-criminalized? The answer is simple to understand but more difficult to change. It revolves around politics. Too many judges who answer to no one or face no term limits. All judges should be limited to how long they can serve. Next, all elected officials should be term limited just like the President. All laws should be uniform from state to state, either federal or state no duplicate laws. Elected politicians vote in laws that they want to help themselves not you and me, this has to change. Citizens can get together in groups in each state, county by county and discuss different needs for laws to govern themselves. They can then be taken to the public and voted on for final approval. Certain rules will be needed to select the members of the groups and certain rules will be needed to determine voter eligibility. These are only afew ideas and may nor be perfect but in the end we need to remove the crooked politicians, judges and lawyers who muck things up for all of us….
Your case would be far more compelling by using actual current events–violent protests–in connection with actual prosecution of innocent persons. Unless you’re about to tell me that you consider possible counterfeiting, resisting arrest, and rioting to now be acceptable, you don’t appear to have much of a case. You’re mostly being petty and argumentative. Nobody gains from this.
Incredible how a bunch of small bureaucrats in every city, state and even on the federal level have destroyed this country with so many stupid rules when common sense is all you need. Should we get rid of the people who did this or just the rules they created? I would say, how about both!