Could New Rule Bail Out Our 'Nation of Criminals?'
WASHINGTON We're a nation now where politicians and bureaucrats can pass new laws and regulate virtually everything...then, turn breaking them into some type of criminal offense.
Lawyers like Norman L. Reimer, with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, say that's wrong.
"We rely on criminal laws to regulate all kinds of social, personal, and economic behavior, instead of cabining it to those things which are inherently bad: acts of criminal violence and theft. That's what the criminal law should be for," Reimer said.
It's not surprising the nation is where it is today with many thousands of rules, regulations and laws so many of them that no one has any way of knowing them all.
The problem gets worse because Washington keeps piling criminal penalties on all these thousands of rules, regulations, and laws that can land almost any American in prison.
"Our laws shouldnt make us criminals, Reimer said, pointing out America is incarcerating more people than any other place on earth.
"We have more than 2 million people in jail. We arrest approximately 14 million people every year," he said. "We have over 70 million people with some form of criminal record."
Brian Walsh, with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, understands why the politicians do this.
"Congress has sort of got in a habit of over criminalizing," Walsh said. "It polls well. It's something that looks politically strong, to be tough on crime."
"And so to be tough on crime is always better than being soft on crime, and that's not a very good principle to go by," he added. "There's a lot more nuance that needs to be put in place when we're creating criminalization."
Reimer pointed out there used to hardly be any federal laws.
"We went from a few hundred at the start of the 20th century to close to 5,000 federal criminal provisions now," he said.
And he said that doesnt even begin to count what the huge federal agencies have done: cook up a vast number of regulations that can land you in legal trouble.
"Some have said there may be as many as 300,000," Reimer said of these regulations. "So one of the things we have to do is we have to slow down. We have to stop making new criminal laws."
Walsh worries this nation that was so marked by liberty and freedom may soon resemble totalitarian societies.
"Historically in the United States, we assumed that anything that was not prohibited was allowed, as opposed to totalitarian societies, where anything that's not expressly permitted is prohibited you cant do it," he explained.
His suggestion is that Americans might become like citizens of those dictatorial countries cowed, fearing almost anything they do is probably forbidden.
"When you don't know, when we have so many laws and the laws are so broad, it chills our conduct," he said. "It chills our fundamental rights."
In a Washington divided on almost every issue, a broad consensus is growing from far left to far right that an American should only have to go to prison if they knowingly committed something that's clearly a crime not just because they broke some random rule buried among hundreds of thousands that piled up in recent years.
Reimer supports a change coming on Capitol Hill. The House Judiciary Committee will start reviewing any bill that could create a new federal crime to prevent Congress from coming up with even more laws that could put people in prison.
"Now, with this rule change we think we're going to see a lot more of these things being reviewed by judiciary," he said. "and hopefully that will slow it down."
***Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will appear on The 700 Club, Wednesday, Feb. 11, to talk about how he hopes this new rule change will help slow the speed of criminalization in this country. Check your local listings for show times, or check CBNNews.com Feb. 11 for more.
