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We're All Felons, Now - Perpetual public fear of crime has turned us all into criminals.
Reason ^ | October 19, 2009 | Radley Balko

Posted on 10/20/2009 11:11:54 AM PDT by neverdem

"There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime
that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

Ayn Rand 

Violent crime is down America, across the board, spanning two decades. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced that the incidence of reported rape had hit a 20-year low. Homicides are down, as are juvenile violence and crimes committed against children. Crime rates have been plummeting since the early 1990s to such an extent that explaining the drop has become something of an obsession among criminologists and sociologists.

Part of the drop can of course be explained by mass incarceration—America leads the world in the percentage of its population behind bars. Putting one in every 100 citizens in jail causes its own problems, and there's plenty of debate over just how much that incarceration has contributed to the fall in violent crime. But there's no question that we've put lots of people in prison over the last 20 years, the crime rate has fallen, and part of the public likely believes (with some justification) that there's a link betweent the two.

But there's something else going on too, picked up in the blogosphere last week by George Washington University political science Professor John Sides. According to Gallup, since 2002 the percentage of the American public who think violent crime is on the rise has been increasing, even as actual violent crime rates continue to fall. Sides notes that from 1989 to 2001, perception and reality somewhat went hand in hand. But 2002 to 2003 saw a 19 percent leap in public perceptions that violent crime was on the uptick, and the figure has been going up in the years since—to 74 percent today. What's going on?

From the time Richard Nixon made crime a national political issue in the 1970s, we've been conditioned by politicians and public officials to live in perpetual fear. Our baseline is that there's too much crime, and that we aren't doing enough about it. Despite that, there was an actually drop in public worry about crime that began in 1992 and continued until 2002. As noted, that drop corresponded with an actual decline in the national crime rate, something that hadn't happened in 30 years. That crime rates going down for the first time in a generation was something new, something worth noticing. The 1990s were also generally an optimistic decade. The economy was humming. We weren't engaged in any major wars. We didn't have many worries, period.

Post-2002, the national mood soured. Terrorism, obviously a form of violent crime, was all over the news. The economy slowed down. Illegal immigration once again became a national issue, along with the false assumption that undocumented immigrants bring violent crime. And so we returned to a state of fear, though the crime rate continued to fall.

These fluctuations in the Gallup poll are interesting, but it's worth noting that the percentage of respondents who believe violent crime is on the rise has dipped below 60 percent only three times since 1991. This, again, despite the fact that violent crime has been in decline over the entire period.

Fear makes for easy politics. It both wins votes and primes us to give government more power at the expense of personal liberty. And that's certainly true when it comes to crime. With the possible exception of an incumbent mayor, politicians only benefit from exaggerating the threat of violent crime. Senators, Congressmen, and even governors are rarely held responsible when the crime rate goes up. But they do win votes by proposing new powers for police and prosecutors to bring it down.

The result has been a one-way ratchet effect on crime policy. We're perpetually expanding police and prosecutorial power, a process only occasionally slowed by the courts. Congress and state legislatures rarely take old criminal statutes off the books, but they're always adding new ones. A 2008 report from the Heritage Foundation estimates that at the federal level alone, Congress has been adding about 55 new crimes to the federal criminal code each year since the 1980s. There are now about 4,500 separate federal crimes. And that doesn't include federal regulations, which are increasingly being enforced with criminal, not administrative, penalties. It also doesn't include the increasing leeway with which prosecutors can enforce broadly written federal conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering laws. And this is before we even get to the states' criminal codes.

In his new book, the Boston-based civil liberties advocate and occasional Reason contributor Harvey Silverglate estimates that in 2009, the average American commits about three federal felonies per day. And yet, we aren't a nation of degenerates. On the contrary, most social indicators have been moving in a positive direction for a generation. Silverglate argues we're committing these crimes unwittingly. The federal criminal code has become so vast and open to interpretation, Silverglate argues, that a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law. In fact, it's nearly impossible for some business owners to comply with one federal regulation without violating another one. We're no longer governed by laws, we're governed by the whims of lawyers.

Whatever one may think of Ayn Rand's political philosophy or ethics, her criminal justice prophecy has proven unsettlingly accurate: In our continuing eagerness to purge American society of crime, we've allowed the government to make us all into criminals.

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:
Illegal immigration once again became a national issue, along with the false assumption that undocumented immigrants bring violent crime.

MS-13 is just a figment of our imagination. That's not the only gang of illegal aliens.

The result has been a one-way ratchet effect on crime policy. We're perpetually expanding police and prosecutorial power, a process only occasionally slowed by the courts. Congress and state legislatures rarely take old criminal statutes off the books, but they're always adding new ones. A 2008 report from the Heritage Foundation estimates that at the federal level alone, Congress has been adding about 55 new crimes to the federal criminal code each year since the 1980s.

Pubbies have been complicit in this. The federal behemoth needs to be diminished somehow.

1 posted on 10/20/2009 11:11:55 AM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem
Illegal immigration once again became a national issue, along with the false assumption that undocumented immigrants bring violent crime.


MS-13 is just a figment of our imagination. That's not the only gang of illegal aliens.

Bingo!

2 posted on 10/20/2009 11:23:01 AM PDT by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: neverdem
in 2009, the average American commits about three federal felonies per day

Really? Like what.

3 posted on 10/20/2009 11:37:19 AM PDT by Malsua
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To: neverdem

They have made tax laws so difficult to understand that almost everyone has broken one at some time.


4 posted on 10/20/2009 11:39:26 AM PDT by Leftism is Mentally Deranged
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To: Malsua

Yeah, I’d like to know too! WTF?!


5 posted on 10/20/2009 11:43:04 AM PDT by KJC1
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To: neverdem
Perpetual public fear of crime has turned us all into criminals

Wrong. Fear never turned anyone into a felon. The government did that.

6 posted on 10/20/2009 11:43:06 AM PDT by Red Boots
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To: Malsua

“Rape, murder, arson and rape.”


7 posted on 10/20/2009 11:43:33 AM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: massgopguy

“You said ‘rape’ twice.”


8 posted on 10/20/2009 11:44:06 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: dfwgator
“You said ‘rape’ twice.”

Was it rape-rape, or just rape twice? < /Whoopi>

9 posted on 10/20/2009 11:46:54 AM PDT by Lazamataz (DEFINITION: rac-ist (rA'sis't) 1. Anyone who disagrees with a liberal about any topic.)
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To: massgopguy

He likes rape


10 posted on 10/20/2009 12:29:56 PM PDT by dmcnash (y)
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To: neverdem

I have to wonder what three Federal crimes I am committing on average a day???

First, I get up...

Second, daily routine...

Third, turn on FauxNews...

Somewhere there has got to be a crime in those things...;-)


11 posted on 10/20/2009 1:10:43 PM PDT by stevie_d_64
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To: Malsua; neverdem; KJC1

The whole premise of the article is that there are so many laws that you cannot possibly know which ones you are breaking and that you cannot obey one without breaking another.

I could think of a couple of illustrations from long ago. One was the old “People are Funny” show when Art Linkletter sent a man out on the street at the start of the hour with the instruction that if he didn’t break any laws during the one hour show he would receive a hundred dollars cash, that was enough in those days to be worth something. They sent someone to follow the man and when they brought him back into the studio he didn’t get the money because he had opened a pack of cigarettes without breaking the tax stamp that used to be on the top of the pack, that was a violation of a law that was printed on the cigarette pack.

Another one involves a newspaper story I read maybe thirty years ago about a man who was stopped and charged with hauling more than 300 pounds of copper wire on the public highway without a permit. This was in South Carolina and I think it involved a state law. Of course there are whole books concerning the laws that are still on the books and ignored at the state and local levels, some of them sound so hilarious it is hard to believe they are not made up.

Try dealing with the locals sometime, I was told that a mobile home that had been abandoned on my property could not be sold because the law forbid moving one that old. The county also told me that I could not use it for storage! They offered to give me a permit to haul it down the highway for disposal but I couldn’t find a mover who would pull it so I tore it down and sold the metals and burned the wood.

The county also told me that I could not run a waterline from my meter to my stepson’s dwelling on the same property, we have to have a county water meter for each dwelling. I asked what if I put in my own well and they said I would have to put in two wells. There really is no freedom left.

Before my father died he made a comment one day about how some class of criminals ought to be punished and I asked him if he realized that if every one of us were to be caught, charged, convicted and sentenced every time we broke a law the last judge would have to close the prison door behind himself and nobody would be left outside. He thought I was exaggerating but I don’t really think so.

I could probably interview almost anyone for thirty minutes and come up with a felony that they don’t know they have committed and I have ZERO legal training other than what I have picked up by reading. A smart prosecutor could have just about anyone locked up anytime he makes up his mind to do so. This of course is the goal, not to punish real criminals but to be able to squash anyone who tries to start a movement in protest of the ever increasing tyranny.
Rather than determine a crime has been committed and search for the perpetrator, in the future anyone who has too high an unwanted profile will be singled out and a search will be on to find out what crimes he has committed, probably without even knowing he has done so.

This is the future that Orwell warned us about with a boot stamping on a human face forever.


12 posted on 10/20/2009 1:12:00 PM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a leftist is like trying to catch sunshine in a fish net at midnight.)
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To: RipSawyer

I fully get all the regulations. He’s talking about felonies though. It’s not a felony to do any of the things you’re describing. Yes, I agree, it’s impossible to not break laws any longer. Ayn Rand’s quote comes to mind here.

Felonies however are serious. I can’t think of anything I’ve done that rises to even the lowest felony.


13 posted on 10/20/2009 1:17:22 PM PDT by Malsua
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To: neverdem

Self ping to read tomorrow.


14 posted on 10/20/2009 1:21:45 PM PDT by CSM (Business is too big too fail... Government is too big to succeed... I am too small to matter...)
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To: Malsua

“Felonies however are serious. I can’t think of anything I’ve done that rises to even the lowest felony.”

Yes. And when an article incorporates such a “hail Mary” shot such as that, it brings into question the entire perspective.

Whatever people think about crime levels is mightily influenced by “if it bleeds, it leads” media attention. I don’t see how one could arrange a study to remove that very strong influence from public opinion without generating a frenzied backlash over missing the latest American Idol episode.

I am no happier than anyone else that so much money is spent keeping prisoners in jail, but I am ABSOLUTELY convinced that it is cheaper to incarcerate them than to let them run wild.


15 posted on 10/20/2009 1:39:52 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (It's better to give a Ford to the Kidney Foundation than a kidney to the Ford Foundation.)
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To: neverdem

He doesn’t live in Memphis, TN, crime especially youth crime is out the roof....and this must be some more of that funny counting....hiearchcial (sp?) it’s called, only counting the most serious crime in say a rape and robbery where the victim is then killed. Only the murder is counted... you lose 2 crimes that way. They’ve been doing it for decades, along with the other great liberal crime reducer....plea bargaining.


16 posted on 10/20/2009 1:46:03 PM PDT by GailA (Quilts for the Alpha Omega House for Veterans....I'm a quilt-aholic!!!)
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To: Malsua

“I can’t think of anything I’ve done that rises to even the lowest felony.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Are you familiar with the “Mann act”, often referred to as the “White Slave act”? They got Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect, under that one. The fact that you can’t think of anything proves nothing, the whole premise is that you cannot possibly know and understand all the laws well enough to avoid committing a felony no matter how hard you try. I am quite certain I could have been imprisoned for five years under the Mann act before it was modified thirty years ago and I am not at all ashamed to say that. At one time all you had to do was cross a state line with a woman for the purpose of seducing her, theoretically you could have been imprisoned for intent even if you failed to succeed. There must be millions of men who lived near state lines who were in violation.

One explanation I read many years ago explained it this way. If you crossed a state line on a date and much to your surprise you got lucky even though it was a first date and you had no thought that such a thing might occur you were not technically in violation but if you told your buddy what happened and he made a date with the same woman with all intentions of crossing the state line and doing the same thing but she didn’t like him for some reason so she turned him down HE would be in violation for intent.

The law was modified later so that it is now supposed to apply only to actual criminal actions, not just consensual sex.

Of course if you are transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises you are out of luck.


17 posted on 10/20/2009 2:39:16 PM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a leftist is like trying to catch sunshine in a fish net at midnight.)
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To: Malsua; stevie_d_64; KJC1; Leftism is Mentally Deranged; Fiddlstix

I just ran across this thread while looking for something else. Many replies were on the order of, “Felonies are serious. I can’t think of any felonies I’ve committed.”

From an earlier FR thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/971509/posts :::

Here are just a few of the “crimes” that can already land you in the federal system:

* Taking one prescription pill out of its drugstore bottle and carrying it around in a different container. (Just think of all those dangerous, blue-haired old lady felons lurking in your neighborhood with pills stashed in daily-dose containers from their local Wal-Mart!)

* Making a mistake on an Environmental Protection Agency reporting form-even if everyone agrees it was just a mistake and that no pollution was involved.

* Driving past a school with an otherwise perfectly legal gun in your car-even driving a block away from a school you didn’t know was there!

* Manufacturing or selling a container that someone might use to store illegal drugs. (Kinda makes you wonder why Wal-Mart doesn’t get busted for selling “drug paraphernalia” to those blue-haired ladies, doesn’t it?)

* Digging dinosaur bones if you’re not a university professor or government employee.

* Putting a picture of a naked lady on a wine bottle label (unless an ATF agent decides it’s “art,” which automatically makes it okay).

* Sitting in the car while an acquaintance goes into a house to do a drug deal.

This last one comes under the heading of “conspiracy.” And conspiracy is one of a raft of ill-defined “crimes” the feds are using as a catch-all for anyone they want to bag. In addition to “conspiring” by doing nothing, you might be accused of “violating someone’s civil rights” by punching him in the nose or “participating in organized criminal activity” just for talking about the wrong subject or being in the wrong place with the wrong people.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is a new law now working its way through Congress that makes it a felony to harass, coerce, threaten, or cause emotional distress to someone by what you write on the internet. I’ll bet everyone here can claim that they have been harassed or been caused emotional distress at some time on FR. Take a quick look at this guy’s book before saying “I’ve never committed a felony.” (By the way, I believe that there is a federal statute where speeding a felony, too.)


18 posted on 11/18/2009 8:43:24 AM PST by AFPhys ((Praying for our troops, our citizens, that the Bible and Freedom become basis of the US law again))
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To: AFPhys

When I was 18, I got arrested, handcuffed, taken to jail, photographed, fingerprinted, and put in a cell for 2 hours until my Mom came to bail me out.

Why? Because my brother and I had decided to see if the aluminum canoe that came with the boat he just bought was leaking or not. We put it in the water at the public boat ramp and paddled about 10 feet out from shore to look at the rivets with some weight in the boat.

A DNR boat showed up immediately after having been called from shore by the DNR truck that had watched us load the canoe into the water. Since I was in the back of the Canoe, I was considered “Captain of the Vessel”, and I was arrested for not having sufficient flotation devices on board.

In knee deep water 10 feet from shore.

Four DNR agents, 2 in the boat and 2 on shore, coordinated the take down, wherein I was arrested, handcuffed, and driven 30 miles to the nearest jail. My explanation of what we were doing didn’t matter. The fact that we were in 3 feet of water 10 feet from shore didn’t matter. I was Captain, and I had broken the law.

Ever since then I have know that the law and law enforcement officers are NOT on your side. Especially with asset forfeiture laws thrown in, your day can be ruined at any time by any LEO that wants to screw with you, reach a quota, or just make up for not getting laid last night.


19 posted on 11/18/2009 9:31:51 AM PST by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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To: spodefly

I reject that this is a “quota” thing.

The more important consideration is a “power” thing.

Whether LEO or a school bus driver or a “District Attorney” or a “child protective worker”, or a tax auditor, or a “boss” at McDonalds’, (or a US President, etc.), so many people simply revel in exercising the “power” they have been given that they don’t really worry that much about whether the person they are “charging” or “inconveniencing” are “in the right”. They simply know that they can not be “faulted” by the “system” due to the stupid laws that our government has enacted.

They can never be faulted for causing someone “pain and suffering” due to their idiocy, or for taking the laws passed by the stupid politicians literally.


20 posted on 11/18/2009 3:11:44 PM PST by AFPhys ((Praying for our troops, our citizens, that the Bible and Freedom become basis of the US law again))
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