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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonie.../dp/1594035229

Our state and fed criminals code are already ridiculously overbroad. The question is rarely if a person committed a crime as much as if a person is an attractive target upon whom the codes may be inflicted.

We have strict liability crimes. We have crimes that are considered crimes even if no one is actually directly harmed by them. Most of our laws are designed to protect property rights. You can rape someone and do a fraction of the time you will for fraud.

Setting these ludicrous rule books (written by a mix of dimwitted legislators' aides and corporate lobbyists) loose in the political realm is already problematic enough. I don't think we should be encouraging more of it, particularly where this power could be abused by a wanna be autocrat like Trump.

ETA: Aaron Swartz, decades of targeting minorities via the War on Drugs, this sort of shit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov I think we have more than enough lawyers running around throwing rule books at people. Christ, we jail more people per capita than the Chinese! The financial and human losses accrued from our overly litigious civil and criminal justice systems, and their legislative enablers, must be somewhere in the several trillions per decade.

So we shouldn't prosecute anyone?

My own view is that local police and prosecutors are much more likely to abuse the broad discretion that they have, and that over-enforcement of the law against the wealthy and powerful isn't a thing.