NACDL

Overcriminalization is a dangerous trend that NACDL battles daily. There are over 4,450 crimes scattered throughout the federal criminal code, as well as untold numbers of federal regulatory criminal provisions. Enforcing this monstrous criminal code has resulted in a backlogged judiciary, overflowing prisons, and the incarceration of innocent individuals who plead guilty not because they actually are, but because exercising their constitutional right to a trial is prohibitively expensive and too much of a risk. This enforcement scheme is inefficient, ineffective and, of course, at tremendous taxpayer expense.

Although the harm caused by overcriminalization is frequently amplified by the executive and judicial branches, it generally originates in the legislative process. It can take many forms, but most frequently occurs through:

• enacting criminal statutes lacking meaningful mens rea requirements,
• imposing vicarious liability with insufficient evidence of personal awareness or neglect,
• expanding criminal law into economic activity and regulatory and civil enforcement areas,
• creating mandatory minimum sentences un-related to the wrongfulness or harm of the underlying crime,
• federalizing crimes traditionally reserves for state jurisdiction, and
• adopting duplicative and overlapping statutes. 

Read NACDL's Board Resolution Calling for Federal Criminal Law Reforms here. Resources on overcriminalization and NACDL's efforts to tackle this problem and foster meaningful reform are available below:    

The Face of Overcriminalization  

Congressional Hearings  

Scholarship  

Select Press Coverage  

Programming 

Pictured above: NACDL White Collar Crime Policy Counsel and Without Intent Co-Author Tiffany M. Joslyn, joined at the Without Intent release press conference on May 5, 2010, by (left to right) NACDL Executive Director Norman L. Reimer,  Hon. Bobby Scott (D-VA), Hon. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Research Fellow and Without Intent Co-Author Brian W. Walsh.