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Dynamics of Overcriminalization

Last weekend I wondered aloud why the first response in this country to every social problem always seems to involve more cops, courts and punishments. So later in the week I was delighted to see some of those themes more ably developed in two top-notch posts by criminal defense attorneys Mark Bennett and Scott Greenfield, both of whom offered useful and important discussions that, taken togther, at least partially explain the overcriminalization dynamic.Greenfield, a criminal defense attorney out of New York, laments the decline of the mens rea requirement in crimnal law, which is the principle that punishment requires personal fault. He rightly argues that:legislative bodies have exhausted every possible permutation of malum in se offenses, the ones everyone knows or should know are wrong without having to be told in explicit detail, they have increasingly crafted malum prohibitum to be used as a regulatory framework to control more behavior that isn't inherently wrong, but that they have decided for whatever reason shouldn't be done...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).