Ask Lemmy

I’ve wanted to write a story about lawyers and prosecutorial discretion - I think a lot of it can be explored through fiction, to say nothing of the real world’s crazy case history.

Much as literalists may like the idea that “The law is the law”, and that it will always be enforced, it’s made up of humans who carry it out, and it’s by design that they each have their emotional flaws. The law as a machine would lose sight of its purpose as a means to improve society.

There’s another side to prosecutorial discretion where exclusion of consequences can provide favoritism to bad people, though, and that’s what gives me pause - but I don’t know how easy it would be for the law alone to remedy that, even by ending discretion.

I think there has to be a bit of judgment on the enforcement side. Like say you are underage drinking next to your house and you accidentally break your skateboard so you start yelling and you don’t see the cops on the corner. They come to make sure everyone/your roommates are and generally feel safe but don’t give you any tickets. They don’t care about the obvious intoxication or noise and just want to make sure people are safe. That’s the discretion I want in LE

The law should be revoked. I would not assume that the legislature is more legitimate than the local prosecutor who decides not to enforce. Often this situation happens when the legislature is captured by special interests who are unconcerned with popular will (and the risk of resistance), or by a national government trying to micromanage local and personal affairs.

Law enforcement doesn’t make the laws. They enforce the laws the legislature creates.

There is a reason those processes are separated.

One of the reasons immigration is so fucked in the US is because of selective enforcement of the immigration laws that occurred for decades.

Just fix the law or risk a new administration coming in and deciding to start enforcing the laws as you have to watch the chaos and pain.

It shouldn’t be done. The law is the law and giving enforcement the power to choose which laws to enforce and which not to, even if the intentions are good, opens the door for the same attitude to be used in the future with ill intent. Exhibit 1: the US right now.

The voters use it to excuse the abuse of power for their preferred party, which creates an acceleration of the abuse too. For example Obama ordered marihuana not to be prosecuted if I recall correctly, liberals applauded it. Trump if an agency or organization doesn’t enforce the rule he likes withdraws funding, conservatives applaud this. To most observers these are two sides of the same coin: It’s using the power of the executive to legislate, when the executive should be a manager while congress are the bosses. So the executive branches should not have a say in which laws get enforced, they should enforce them and let the judiciary sort it.

I think there should be flexibility in sentencing but not really enforcement. This kind of thing can be used for good or evil but I don't think its beneficial to have esoteric rules to be kept on the books for decades, waiting for the wrong person to abuse them. It's better to levy fines for sodomy (as an example) than to wait for that one dickhead to imprison people for life under the same statute.

The rules of my building are an interesting toy model of this. Technically I'm supposed to have carpets everywhere (I don't and no one else whose unit I've been in does) and even painting a room a different color requires board approval and a bunch of fees. In practice, many rules are not enforced against people who don't make trouble. A neighbor of mine even has a dog - not exactly a subtle violation. I suspect that all those rules are a response to the fact that it is legally really hard to evict someone. You can't just say "He's an asshole and all his neighbors hate him." But if fact if he's breaking a whole lot of rules (just like everyone else) then you can decide to make an issue of it in his case.

We're seeing this happen on a national scale with people like Lisa Cook now. She refuses to leave her job so Trump is threatening to have her criminally charged with mortgage fraud. Pretty much no one is ever criminally charged with mortgage fraud, but if the feds look closely at anyone's life then they will certainly find an error on a mortgage application or one of other countless possible crimes.

In the United States, this has a racial component. If we depend on cops to overlook certain things, then they will be more likely to overlook it for white people than black people. Enlightened Centrists will say "whelp, they technically broke the law" without any further insight.

This kind of thing can be considered a form of “checks and balances”. If one branch of the government passes a law and another branch enforces it, both branches have to agree for the law to function.

The 3rd season of The Wire try to explain that

For the case of Danemark I don’t know I’m not Dane and don’t know their political landscape.

I’ll can talk about Vancouver a little, in the first decade of the 2000 the gov (mayor office ?) gave its ok to stop prosecuting and arresting people who take drug (not selling it). They stop financing « criminalizing tactics » and for a while it work however as the years pass (and as I understand it) they slowly reverse track. Now they’re saying there is an epidemic and people are smoking crack on the streets unbother by the police (who seems to use this new problem to ask for more money from the city).

Don’t get me wrong I think that decriminalizing is the only way and prosecuting a « 1 consenting-ish victim crime » take a lot of time for nothing. What you need is service and specialized help.

The action may or may not conflict with the will of the people. In the usa for example, the majority opinion on many issues is not reflected by our laws, such as marijuana. This leaves open the possibility of defying laws based on something like a moral objection. However, this can be dangerous because the actions of one may not actually align with the masses. So, each occurrence should be based on the merits and facts. I wouldn't assign a specific timeline to limit the actions.

Like sexual abuse of children?

I guess because people in charge are pedophiles themselves.