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As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

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Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#51

Post by v21 »

And once you're in jail...

> With just 5 percent of the world’s population, the US currently holds 25 percent of the world's prisoners. In 2008, over 2.3 million Americans were in prison or jail, with one of every 48 working-age men behind bars

> Prior to the 1970s, private corporations were prohibited from using prison labor as a result of the chain gang and convict leasing scandals. But in 1979, Congress began a process of deregulation to restore private sector involvement in prison industries to its former status, provided certain conditions of the labor market were met. Over the last 30 years, at least 37 states have enacted laws permitting the use of convict labor by private enterprise, with an average pay of $0.93 to $4.73 per day.

> Subsequently, the nation's prison industry – prison labor programs producing goods or services sold to other government agencies or to the private sector -- now employs more people than any Fortune 500 company (besides General Motors), and generates about $2.4 billion in revenue annually.

http://www.alternet.org/world/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_...

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#52

Post by kstenerud »

starwed wrote: post #36
RexRollman wrote: post #5

People complain about activist judges but I think a bigger problem is activist prosecuters who look to stretch the law to include targets that were not intended by the law. The biggest example of this that I can think of is the anti-hacking laws that are being made to charge people of simply using a web browser.

I found the article weird in that respect. None of these laws seem particularly odious -- the ones that seem unjust could have been avoided by prosecuters using their discretion. Also, I'm amused by an article about injustices in the criminal system where everyone pictured is a well-off white man.

> Also, I'm amused by an article about injustices in the criminal system where everyone pictured is a well-off white man.

That is by design, since the stereotype for "middle class" is the well-off white man, and this article is attempting to motivate the middle class. Revolutions only happen when a critical mass of the middle class switches sides.

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

sliverstorm wrote: post #45
dredmorbius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True story: I was driving home after a long day out with friends (hiking with some, dinner with another). Started feeling very sleepy, pulled off the freeway to take a nap. Woke with a flashlight in my face and highway patrol knocking on my window. Exited the car, locking it. Identified myself and presented ID. Refused consent to search the vehicle: "I don't consent to any search". Officer implied strongly that he co…

And it is up to each individual to elect when to assert them. That's another one of our rights.

Given the premise of the original article, electing not to assert your rights isn't particularly safe.

Note that when I did assert my rights, I really didn't have any reason for doing so other than that they are my rights. It was literally a couple of years later that I made the association between the stop and the possibility that I may have been carrying what were technically illegal drugs.

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#54

Post by sliverstorm »

vacri wrote: post #48
sliverstorm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could be other interpretations to that, besides "we are less free!" Could one not argue that an increase in prison inmates is the unavoidable consequence of increasing freedoms? It seems counter intuitive, but perhaps the more freedoms one has, the more readily one encroaches on freedoms one does not have?

People aren't all that different, and generally want the same things. Besides, the US isn't that much freer than its first-world contemporaries. For example, although we in Australia don't have constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, the Press Freedom Index puts us as having more freedom of public speech than in the US, and both of us are well below most of the northern European states. http://en.rsf.org/press-…

Another possible explanation that occurs to me today: the punishments in America are greater. The guy who bombed Oslo and killed 80-some kids in Norway is allegedly facing a max of something like 25 years. He'd get multiple life sentences in America.

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#56

Post by dpatru »

mkn wrote: post #28
ctdonath wrote: post #21

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only p…

I don't find that to be the most plausible mechanism for the proliferation of laws at all. More likely, it's an emergent property of the legal system in a democratic context that can probably be explained in terms of game theory. At any legislative junction, there's a cost or benefit associated with enacting or not enacting a law. Take the arrowhead removal example from the article. You're a lawmaker and you're faced…

In a free society, everything is permissible unless it is forbidden. In a non-free society, everything is forbidden unless it is permitted. When the laws are so numerous and complicated that the ordinary person does not know what is forbidden, a free society feels and functions like an un-free society.

A society under law means that people cannot be prosecuted by the whim of the authority, but only according to objective, written law. Yet even a society of written law can be under arbitrary rule if the laws are so numerous and complicated, that citizens do not know when they are breaking them, and if violations are so common that prosecutions and penalties are exacted based on police and prosecutorial "discretion."

Perhaps the legislature that pass the laws and the executive branch that lobbies for them have no idea of their cumulative effect, but I doubt it. They are not rubes. They are experts in the domain in the same way that experienced programmers are expert in theirs. They have to know that they are steadily transforming society from a free one, to one that is not free, from one that is ruled by law, to one that is ruled by men. Yet they don't care. The simplest explanation is that people who are attracted to government are people who want to control other people. If they weren't, if they valued freedom, they would refuse to create laws for the same reason that 37 Signals refuse to add features to their software: because while each individual law or feature may have merit, the cumulative effect is to destroy the more important value of freedom (or, in the case of software, simplicity.)

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#57

Post by dpatru »

mkn wrote: post #44
vonSeckendorff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but I too got tripped up on "cash in on guilt". I read it twice before deciding it doesn't mean cashing in on a person's inner turmoil, but rather exploiting the fact that the person is legally guilty. The quote is much more sensible under that interpretation.

In context, I think it means the former. Not having the context available, your interpretation of the remarks at hand might make more sense. However, a motif of Rand's is to moralize about capitalism and individuality. One of the themes, of which I think the current quote is an example, is that people have been trained to feel bad about their selfish impulses. Rand viewed the laws of her time as an outgrowth of the "…

> I think I disagree with you and find it even more ludicrous that the antagonist actually wants to incarcerate people. To what end?

The point is not to incarcerate people, but rather to gain leverage by being able to credibly threaten incarceration. This is standard operating procedure for prosecutors and police when dealing with confidential informants in drug cases. It's not such a stretch to think it may also happen in other cases.

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#59

Post by temphn »

ctdonath wrote: post #21

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only p…

One thousand upvotes. The criminalization of everyday life (of which licensing/regulation/registration/TSA searches are a key part) goes hand in hand with fewer actions against actual criminals like those involved in the recent spate of "flash mob" attacks.

We've seen this before. In the Soviet Gulag depicted in "The Way Back", one of the leads questions why the guards have given so much authority to the Russian mafia within the prison. The answer is that such criminals are just a misunderstood product of bourgeois society, hence friends of the people. But political prisoners, like those who tried to start businesses, had no such excuse; they were the enemies of the people.

Same thing in today's USA. The mob of teens who broke Emily Guendelsberger's leg could not be arrested because the policemen were afraid of charges of racism.

http://mobile.avclub.com/philadelphia/articles/flash-mob-fal...

  All I remember people asking was if they knew anything     
  about the giant group on Broad Street, and then saying 
  no, and the police saying all they could do was something 
  along the lines of chances are good they’ll attack 
  somebody else, and we’ll get them then, we can’t do 
  anything right now. I remember one of them specifically 
  saying "We can’t just go start arresting or picking up 
  black juvenile males." Then he said, "We can’t do 
  anything right now because you can’t identify anybody." I 
  also remember people saying we understood that they 
  should break up the group at least or do something since 
  it was such a large group. And they said basically that 
  if they scattered it would be worse so they weren’t 
  going to do that.
But those self-same policemen know they will get much less resistance, and more money for the state, if they ticket and fine middle-class citizens.

We're trained in school to recognize every little similarity to the Nazis, but are completely ignorant about patterns that are reminiscent of the Soviets.

Re: As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared

#60

Post by dpatru »

padobson wrote: post #19

'Current law provides a range of options to protect society, he says. "It would be horrible if they started repealing laws and taking those options away."' That's the most disturbing line in the piece to me. Laws used to frustrate, oppress, or even enslave a citizenry are always written under the guise of offering 'options for protection'. Why do we need to wiretap private citizens? To keep private citizens safe of c…

> 'Current law provides a range of options to protect society, he says. "It would be horrible if they started repealing laws and taking those options away."'

This quote also disturbed me, but for a slightly different reason: The prosecutor who is speaking is implying that the large number of laws give him a lot of options, i.e., he is (almost) free to persecute on whim. If there were fewer laws, he would be more constrained, have fewer options.

The whole point of written law is to prevent government from prosecuting on whim. A written law forces government to use objective standards. Yet when there are so many laws that everyone is guilty, the effect is the same as when there are no laws: prosecutions are conducted on whim (aka police and prosecutorial "discretion".)

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