I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and was curious about other people's thoughts on the issue. I call it the Criminal Justice Industrial Complex because that's what it's become. The entire thing from the passage of laws and who lobbies for what in exchange for what, the court systems, court appointed attorneys vs expensive private attorneys and plea bargaining, the nickel and diming costs of being on probation or having a vehicular alcohol tester or your phone monitored or ankle monitors, court mandated counseling, all of which the suspect or perpetrator has to pay for. Combine that with some people being entirely let off the hook for serious violent crimes while others get 18 months in prison for something that hurt no one and deprived no one of property. The whole thing is a monstrous house of cards built on graft, shady contracts, money making schemes, votes for bribes, keeping hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats and low tier government employees in a paying job and having to justify budgets, and on and on. We don't have a 'justice' system. We have a leviathan with several million moving parts that all need to get paid, designed to suck people in, grind them up, drain them for everything they're worth, and spit them out......but only if they're not "special" in some way. Be the right race, gender, religion, know the right people, have enough favors or clout and you can side step all of that. Clearly it doesn't work. We have people rotting in gulags for years for standing outside a building while others set buildings with people in them on fire and had their cases dropped entirely. What we have isn't working, and it sure as shit isn't justice.
For me, I would consider three things. And I'm more than willing to be convinced otherwise, I was just musing on it.
-
All crimes must have an injured party. That is not to say a victim per se, just an actual injured party. Shoplifting might not have a victim, but someone is losing because of the theft. They are the injured party. A crime that has no injured party should not be a crime. And that does not include orders of deviation from the victim. No more of this "well if you commit A, that means it becomes more likely that other people might do B, which means that it could also become more likely that C could happen, therefore A is illegal". If you commit an act, and no person was harmed, no property was stolen or damaged, there is no injured party.
-
You must have actually committed the crime, not just thought about it, intended to, wanted to, etc. Buying oregano from someone thinking it's weed shouldn't be a crime because the fact is, you bought oregano, not weed.
-
You must have mens rea. The criminal must be aware, or should reasonably have been aware that what they were doing is a crime. No more having 300,000 statutes on the books and then saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse". If a guy meets a girl who tells him she's 21, they meet at a bar, the doorman checks her ID, the bartender checks her ID and asks if she's really 21, and the guy also unobtrusively checks her ID and all see that it looks real and says she's 21, if it turns out she's 17 the guy should not be guilty of anything. There are a ton of other examples of shit that could fall into this like catching the wrong kind of fish that happens to be 1.5cm shorter than the law 2 days out of season being a federal felony.
I understand that this means a ton of people who are probably bad people would not get locked up for small shit. But the flip side is that I would also increase the penalty for committing the few remaining crimes drastically. I would have life in prison or the death penalty for a lot more things. Much longer prison time for things like assault and battery or robbery. I'm a big proponent of letting people do more or less what they want, but come down like an ocean-going cargo ship full of bricks on the people who really do evil shit on purpose.
This board has, or at least had, a pretty wild mix of viewpoints from hard libertarians to natsocs and in between, so I'm curious what people's thoughts are on a total revamp of law, crime, and punishment in the US.
All your examples are seem to have the same core of libertarianism that naively misses the good reasons why we do that.
Crimes can have victims that are potential, diluted, or too willing to be victims. Do you want to remove all bans on drunk driving or texting while driving, because that harms nobody (until someone is killed)? Nobody thinks they'll make the mistake. Is it okay to spew pollution into the air and water, such that any injured party can barely even be aware if they were injured? If the class of victim includes "everybody on the continent" how is that any different from And should jews be allowed to molest children as long as they convince them that it feels good so it's okay? If not, how is that different from drugs, where a victim is harmed but you think it shouldn't be a crime because it feels good and they are willing? (And before you say that kids can't consent, tbh, underage kids are probably more able to make intelligent decisions on sex than an addict is able to make on the topic of if they should do more meth.)
Failed attempts have to count, or people will be able to attempt doing illegal things until they succeed. Should trying and failing to assassinate someone not be a crime? As long as you don't hit a bystander, you get as many tries until you succeed, since shooting a gun and hitting nothing isn't a crime. What about trying to hire a hitman to kill your spouse? Anytime where a cop catches you, no crime happened so you have to go free. What about scams where 99.9% of your targets don't get scammed, so the only crime you can be charged for is when you succeed, even if you have to call 10,000,000 houses (which is totally legal, since no harm in calling).
If you allow ignorance to be a defense, then people will be incentivized to be ignorant. Is it okay for me to fumigate with lethal chemicals, if I just don't check who is in the building first or I use the wrong chemicals? I didn't know, so it wasn't a crime. What if I start a campfire and don't know how to smother it properly, causing a wildfire that destroys billions in land and kills thousands? It's okay because I'm so retarded, I guess. If I buy a dangerous dog that mauls a todler, is it okay because I saw worldstar videos that say this breed of dog is the best?
These tools in law are needed. It's bad that they've been perverted to bad ends, but the only solution is to replace the corrupt judeocracy with actual good stewards and enforcement of the law.
So tell us why they are needed and the good reasons. Don't just quote me and write two sentences that amount to "you're wrong because I said so".
Yes. However, any crime committed while drunk or high should carry 3x the penalty.
All your objections are fixed by parenting. If your parents are idiots, it shouldn't be on the rest of society to take a hit to their freedom for your dumb bloodline. This is exactly how we got here. As a corollary, no kids for dumb ass people. You should show the ability to raise children before you have kids.
First time failed attempts should not count. The point behind the laws should be to prevent any such attempts at all. Prevention beats cure. Second attempts with intent, can be considered for some form of punishment, but unless there is an actual crime, even 10,000,000 attempts should result in nothing. Maybe a prize if it's one person with that kind of volume.
Goes back to '2' and '1'. The government is a blunt instrument. Individuals with a personal stake should be tasked with utilizing fine instruments.