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Guest Blogger Fuzzy-Sozo, hamster-at-law, comments on legal stuff... or whatever
Some things I would expect from the Fox Noise Channel but never from the supposedly-liberal hosts at MSNBC. You know what I mean - the old cheer-leading for harsh sentencing, longer prison terms, and criminalizing what's not already a crime. One, two, three, four! People in prison, we want more!
The trend is scary, and if nobody else will do it, I guess I'll just have to squeak up and make my opinion known.
The latest "let's pass a law" news story comes from State College, Pennsylvania. And it couldn't be worse. In some ways it's more sickening than murder. The rape of young boys. Anybody with a half a heart or a barely-alive soul would step in and stop it, even if that meant taking a sledge hammer and caving in the chest of the pervert.
Requiring people to go to the police when such things are happening might make sense if you don't think too hard. But if you examine what it really means means, well ... not so much.
We're talking about mandatory reporting here. And that's been a problem, not a solution, for years. Take psychologists and psychiatrists, for instance. They have long objected to the breach of confidentiality involved when they are required to report potential - that's potential - abuse.
Let's say you have a pedophile, a person who had an attraction to pre-pubescent children, who is worried that these unnatural desires may get out of hand. So before actually molesting a kid, the pedophile goes to a psychiatrist to seek help so that it won't happen.
Keep this in mind: Pedophilia is a sickness. Molesting children is a crime. But if the pedophile seeks help to keep from offending, mandatory reporting kicks in. The authorities are notified. No, the patients won't be charged with crimes. But they'll sure enough lose their liberties. They'll be in the state's cross-hairs from then on.
So the law is counterproductive. In fact, this is a classic text-book example of a law at odds with reality. Simply stated, it's so risky to get help that many people who know they need it are afraid to seek it. And a percentage of them go on to abuse kids as a result. They may get away with their dastardly deeds for a long, long time. But they won't get past the first psychiatric visit. Count on it.
So the law, in this case, clearly leads to more crimes against children, not fewer. More lives ruined. None predictably saved.
But what about mandatory reporting by a person who knows when "something bad" is happening. By this I mean criminal laws meant to punish anyone who knows about a crime and fails to report it to police. That's a different can of worms, but every bit as wormy.
What constitutes "knowing," anyway? Does this apply only if you catch somebody in the act? Or does a faint but persistent suspicion count? Will the law require citizens to report things that just don't look right? Will the paranoid old woman who lives in the upstairs apartment play it safe and call 911 every time she sees a grown man wearing a raincoat when it's not raining? Probably so. The switchboards will stay lit up with reports that simply defy common sense.
And what constitutes a crime that qualifies for legally-mandated reporting? Maybe you know one of those sexually-voracious 15-year-old girls who has been around the block a whole bunch of times. You know the type. Tons of makeup. Flashy clothes. Already had two abortions, whatever. There are a lot of those out there. And if she seduces some inexperienced and reluctant 18-year-old nerd, you probably won't think it's a crime (nor do I). But if the law says it is, then it is. So do you have to take a day off work to go provide the local constable with a detailed account of what you know and how you know it? Please!
Will it extend to other crimes - like shoplifting? Littering? Pot smoking? Seriously, where are they going to draw the lines?
I found it astounding that Ed Shultz, Chris Matthews, and so many of the other talking heads on MSNBC seem so willing to assume that adding another crime to the statute books is a great idea. Like the stupid three-strikes laws that already exist, this will only provide an incentive for an abuser to kill somebody who is potentially a witness to illegal activity.
There are good reasons why we don't need laws like this. Citizens are required to obey the law. When we start requiring that they enforce it as well, we're looking for trouble. Enforcement should be left to the professional enforcers, not the general public. People should be allowed to use common sense to decide whether something ought to be reported or not. The jails are crowded enough already. And laws that can only be enforced in ways that are random and arbitrary always cause problems. It never fails.
So think about that, Chris! How will you feel when they come out and handcuff you for failing to inform them of something the police think you knew about or that you should have known about? Think you can convince them you really didn't know? Lots of luck.
This is the first in a series of Fuzzy Lectures on Fuzzy Law by Fuzzy-Sozo, hamster-at-law.
