Andrew McCarthy on Washington’s current fetish, sentencing reform:
…, the United States does not have an incarceration problem; the vast majority of the people in prison deserve to be there — Heather Mac Donald compellingly demonstrates this here. But we do have an over-criminalization problem: too much inherently innocent behavior — or at least behavior that, however shady, is not bad enough to be regarded as crime — is regulated by penal laws whose violation can send ordinary, law-abiding people to the slammer.
This happens because Congress and the agencies to which it delegates power write statutes and regulations too broadly, implicating activity far afield from the narrow misconduct they purport to target. Prosecuting offices and regulatory agencies, frequently run by ambitious lawyers who want to make cases, or progressive ideologues who want to dictate how we live, inevitably push these elastic provisions to maximum enforcement.
Here is a short list of books for anyone wishing to explore further the Federal Government’s over-criminalization of what would probably look like innocent conduct to all but Justice Department lawyers:
Three Felonies a Day — How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silverglate
Licensed to Lie — Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice by Sidney Powell
Go Directly to Jail — the Criminalization of Almost Everything by Gene Healy
One Nation Under Arrest — How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty by Paul Rosenzwieg and Brian Walsh
It Is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong — The Case For Personal Freedom by Judge Andrew Napolitano
Not Guilty: The Unlawful Prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens by Rob Cary
The Tyranny of Good Intentions — How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Paul Craig Roberts
Don’t miss Heather MacDonald’s excellent article at City Journal: The Decriminalization Delusion which looks at this from a different angle, i.e., the current bipartisan movement in Congress to release dangerous criminals back into society. Crime decreased across America because these very bad people were put in prison and it will surely rebound when they are released. Of course, the first thing you should do is read Andy McCarthy’s article from which comes the quote at the top of this post.
Last thought: Isn’t it just like the Federal government to put too many people in prison for “crimes” that look a lot like innocent conduct, and not put enough real bad guys in prison.
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