Too many laws, too many prisoners?

[frigidmagi]

Economist

[quote]THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,â€

[SirNitram]

It's less too many laws and more too many incarcerations. Drugs have alot of mandatory sentencing attached, for example.

[The Cleric]

It's a legal system that is rarely pruned, often built upon. The US is quick to add more laws, but slow to examine them to see if they're appropriate in the current times. And we're too obsessed over the letter of the law rather than the intent.

[Hotfoot]

I think we need to ask if a law is necessary, or just, rather than worry if it's one too many. I've said before many times that the drug prohibition laws are not just and result in making the overall problem worse. There's a very strong mentality in this nation of solving a problem by attacking the symptom, rather than the problem itself. Until we resolve that, we're not going to get any traction on many of the problems we currently face, from our overwhelmed jails, to our failing schools, to our shambling infrastructure, and so on.

Part of the problem is that we don't think enough in the long term, people want solutions now, and that's just not going to happen, and there's very little evidence I've seen that will change that, what with human nature being what it is.

I almost wish that if a study could be done to prove a law was unjust or more harmful to the people of the nation than it did good, that it could force the issue to be brought to the Supreme Court or Congress for review and revision. Not force the law to change in and of itself, mind you, but force people to look long and hard at the realities of it and, if necessary, make revisions as they saw fit.

But I guess that's what lobbyists are for. Or something.

Honestly, it feels like we didn't learn from the mistakes of the 1920's all over again, we brought back prohibition and took the chains off of the free market and we're back to Capone and financial disaster. Talk about history going in for repeats.

[KlavoHunter]

Honestly, it feels like we didn't learn from the mistakes of the 1920's all over again, we brought back prohibition and took the chains off of the free market and we're back to Capone and financial disaster. Talk about history going in for repeats.

History happens twice, first as tragedy, then as farce.