To Expand Criminal Code Or To Ignore It, That Is The Q

The WSJ critiqued “America’s Ever-Expanding Criminal Code” in an over kill attempt to lock up folks who could be locked up under existing laws, but how about the counterbalancing progressives’ new passion for DECRIMINALIZING behavior once thought nasty if not diabolical?

Sure, as the paper’s editorial board noted, “The number of federal crimes has increased 36% since the 1990s.” How many exactly? “How many genes are in the human genome? The answer is in the many thousands, but despite decades of counting, no one knows for sure.” The Heritage Foundation apparently is using computers using sophisticated algorithms to nail down the real number of new criminal laws appearing on the books since 1994 & bingo, that 36% number leaped out at them. BTW, that figure doesn’t “cover the 175K page Code of Federal Regulations, which contains an unknown number of crimes created by executive-branch officials under authority delegated by Congress.”

Even as a young lawyer in the 70s & 80s, I knew just about every new criminal law enacted by Congress … or state legislatures … was often “duplicative” as the WSJ argued, an unnecessary piling on of existing law to please angry voters, i.e., if only the pols, prosecutors & judges would do their jobs right. Meanwhile, today we have the spectacle of the progressive take-over of many state & federal courtrooms in many big cities decriminalizing a wide swath of once criminal behaviors from vagrancy to shoplifting & beyond, while refusing to enforce traditional bail or prosecutorial protocols. See, WSJ, the problem is not only a proliferation of law that can lead to “duplicative” prosecutions, but a gutting of the law that can lead to no prosecutions ... and real mayhem.

Davd Soul