Thursday, December 12, 2013

"MALCOLM/REIMER: Over-criminalization undermines respect for legal system"

"Despite some of the sharpest political divisions in memory, Congress managed to mount one noteworthy bipartisan effort this year. Since May, the Over-criminalization Task Force, comprising five Republicans and five Democrats from the House Judiciary Committee, has worked diligently to develop recommendations that will address some of the fundamental problems plaguing the federal criminal justice system. The task force has been analyzing worrisome trends such as:"
• the dramatic expansion of the size and scope of the federal criminal code over the past few decades;

• the proclivity of Congress to enact offenses without a mens rea — “guilty mind” — requirement, which leaves people vulnerable to being sent to jail for doing something they had no idea was a crime;

• the tendency to pass laws that are so vaguely worded that the limit of their reach is constrained only by the charging prosecutor’s creativity;

• and the ever-increasing labyrinth of federal regulatory crimes.

At four public hearings convened earlier this year, task force members heard testimony from people representing a wide array of professions and ideologies — from professors and lawyers to everyday citizens who have been unfairly prosecuted. The witnesses all agreed on one thing: Legislation is needed to ensure that criminal laws and regulations are interpreted to adequately protect against unjust convictions for engaging in activities that no reasonable person would assume is against the law.
John G. Malcolm and Norman L. Reimer via Instapundit

9 comments:

Aridog said...

They need to add this task:

Review and eliminate agency regulations enforced as law, without jurisprudence, when not specifically cited in precise text in the enabling Act of Congress.

There are altogether way too many "regulations" that have the force of law, via fees, fines and confiscations, that are enforced unilaterally by agencies. These force defendants in to a "guilty until they can prove their innocence" position without passing before a judge, if ever passing before a judge.

Aridog said...

Said another way...."ignorance of the law" is not ignorance of the law if the "violation" is not specified by law, just dreamed up in an Agency cavern somewhere. No one is capable of full knowledge of the entire body of CFR's (Codes of Federal Regulations) from A to Z.

Just to illustrate on a very small sample...click on CFR 46 and try to read it all and comprehend it all. Or just for fun, try to determine all the regulations relating to stern tubes and rudder posts in those 9 volumes.

bagoh20 said...

If you try to run a business, sooner or later you will run into a regulator who's job is described by some paragraph or two of the CFR. You will invariably wonder how that paragraph ever got drafted and passed by an intelligent and fair-minded person, but it won't matter, because that regulator person's job is in there, so they are going to enforce it.

Then you look at the size and growth rate of the CFR, and it fills you with despair for your country. It's becoming an oppressive police state where everyone is guilty of something at all times and ready to be arrested, charged, fined or jailed. It's an old story about nations and people, and no happy endings.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Not only is almost everything somehow someway an illegal act, whether you know it or not.....there are two systems of justice. One for the little people and another for the connected, powerful and for the 'favored' groups d'jour. People and groups can be singled out for retribution for purely political purposes or for sheer vindictiveness.

If the laws are not administered equally, fairly and without discrimination, why should anyone obey the laws if they can get away with it. Laws for me but not for thee. It is a recipe for anarchy.

Molon Labe

bagoh20 said...

Speaking of over-criminalization, I noticed that Althouse considers the 6 year old boy who kissed a girl on the hand to be a junior splooge stooge deserving of whatever punishment the feminized everything-is-rape culture thinks is fair. Personally I think both the boy and the girl are clearly pedophiles.

edutcher said...

Ah, but if people think they're free, they won't listen when their betters tell them how to live.

Aridog said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Not only is almost everything somehow someway an illegal act...

My point is that a large percentage of these so called "infractions" are not against any law passed by Congress. Congress mumble flucks its illiteracy on composition and agencies make "law" that is fact is not law, but penalty not prohibited....so what the fuck?

test said...

Congress managed to mount one noteworthy bipartisan effort this year

We'll see. Including regulatory law will kill the bipartisan nature of the project.

Aridog said...

Marshal said ...

... regulatory law ...

An oxymoron is it not? That is what I object to and I was part of the system for a couple decades...never liked it then either.