Overcriminalization: Victimizing the Innocent
George Norris’s house was ransacked by police while he was held prisoner in his own kitchen. Officers informed him he was not under arrest and no charges were pressed against him at that time. He asked to see a warrant, which was revealed to him reluctantly; but when he asked to fetch his reading glasses from another room, police denied his request, confining him to his chair with a warrant he couldn’t read.
One year later, crippled by legal fees and a government dead set to make an example of him, George Norris pleaded guilty to a crime he did not commit. His misdeed? Importing perfectly legal orchids.
George Norris is just one victim of overcriminalization in America today. Others include a college-bound high-schooler suspended for accidentally leaving flatware in her car, a teenager handcuffed and arrested for eating fries on a subway, and an inventor thrown in prison for putting the wrong label on a package.
In the latest Heritage in Focus podcast, Brian Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the roots of the problem of overcriminalization and the explosion of new laws in the last century. Then, Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, describes how overcriminalization is being fought in court and with grassroots activism. Listen to “Heritage in Focus: Overcriminalization” here.
For more information on this issue, visit Overcriminalized.com.
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