The Economist highlights a problem with the US criminal justice system.
There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times that number of regulations that carry criminal penalties. When analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offences on the books, they were forced to give up, exhausted. Rules concerning corporate governance or the environment are often impossible to understand, yet breaking them can land you in prison. In many criminal cases, the common-law requirement that a defendant must have a mens rea (ie, he must or should know that he is doing wrong) has been weakened or erased.
In another article it gives a good example of the ensuing madness
IN 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.
This phenomenon is not unique to either the US, or an ideological position. Although we are by no means as bad, Tony Blair created almost as many criminal offences as he had days in office. Similarly, in the first article I mentioned, The Economist blames this trend on ‘an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives’. Even FOX News thinks things have gone too far.
The criminal law is meant to be a system of last resort for conduct that society finds either sufficiently abhorrent, or for which there is no other effective response. It is increasingly being viewed as a panacea for all manner of social and political problems: pull the criminal justice lever, and the problem will vanish: women wearing veils, “anti-social behaviour”, offensive posters. I have personally seen the criminal law used out of pure economic protectionism, and the potentially devastating impact it has on lives and families. It has no basis in any notion of justice, but is pure coercion.
It has to stop.