Too many laws

We live in a country that has more laws prohibiting more behaviors than any other country in the world and, because of that, we incarcerate more people per capita than any other country in the world too. In a country based on individual liberty and personal freedom, that doesn't make sense.

In my Criminal Justice classes, we study a category of crimes called "victimless crimes" and that doesn't make any sense either. A crime, to most people, means that someone has done something egregious to someone else without their consent and against their will. When someone burglarizes our house, steals our car, mugs us on the street, or holds up our place of business, they're acting against our will and without our consent and the law should protect us from those kinds of predators.

But a victimless crime is just the opposite. Several behaviors are criminalized in which none of the participants consider themselves to be either a perpetrator or a victim of crime. They participate in the activity of their own free will and yet if law enforcement discovers the behavior, you will be arrested, prosecuted and possibly sent to jail for your "offense."

I read in the paper this week that a person was sentenced to two to four years in prison for selling an ounce of marijuana to a State Patrol informant, yet you can back your vehicle up to a liquor store and buy as much booze as you want and you're violating no law at all. Makes no sense.

We have this strange category of crimes because throughout the history of this country, a certain segment of the population has attempted and, for the most part, succeeded in imposing their norms, values and morals on the rest of the population, whether the rest agrees with those norms, values and morals or not and herein lies the problem. We've all heard the phrase, "you can't legislate morality" and yet we have always made the attempt to do that and continue to do so.

We could free up a lot of law enforcement time, allowing them to concentrate all their efforts on catching the "bad guys" and eliminate prison overcrowding at the same time by simply decriminalizing these behaviors. I've believed for a long time that whatever consenting adults choose to do in private should not be under the purview of the state and continue to believe that.

If an adult chooses to smoke a joint, engage in an "unusual" sexual behavior, or place a bet, he or she should be able to do that. It's not as if we don't do it now just because there are laws against it because we all know we do. All the law does is to make a criminal out of the person who does it.

We know that some people do things to excess because of a lack of self-control. So some people get hooked on drugs, or become psychologically dependent on sex or gambling but all of the research indicates most people who participate in those activities don't. And there are perfectly legal activities that people become dysfunctional in as well. I know people who have lost their shirts and, in the process, ruined their lives by playing the stock market or the commodities market. I know people who are so obese that their lives are significantly shortened, impacting not only them but their family and friends as well. I know people who make bad career choices, bad relationship choices, and bad educational choices and their lives are negatively impacted too.

We can overdo anything. We can become physically addicted or psychologically dependent on anything. But it makes no sense to make criminals out of some because of consensual choices they make that go bad. The consequences of their choices are punishment enough.

We can do things in moderation or we can do them to excess and which one we choose lies within the heart and the soul of the person and no law prohibiting it is going to stop it.

So I agree with a segment of the population I usually disagree with and that's those people who think that less government is better government. When it comes to personal, consensual behavior among adults, there is far too much governmental oversight and intrusion into our lives.

Leave us alone to make our own choices, good or bad, because if there are consequences to face for the choices we make, we will face them sooner or later anyway, without the patriarchal tentacles of the state intruding into every corner of our lives.