I agree vehemently. In my opinion, laws should be followed, and perfectly enforced. If that makes you feel uneasy, and if the majority of the population feels the same way, the law should be removed.
Perfect enforcement would rapidly reduce the number of stupid and nonsensical laws on the books, that only exist so that the police can jail people after they have done something wrong/after they were targeted by the police or another influential person.
I strongly disagree. I think that laws should be enforced 100%. If we (the society) wouldn't like that, it means that our laws suck, and need to be changed.
A law should either be enforced close to 100% of the time (with exceptions at the discretion of a court), or 0% of the time (ie. the law should not exist).
If jay walking, pot smoking, or anti-sodemy laws are not really enforced, to me that's a sign that they should be taken off the books. In an over-legislated society, we should focus on having strong core legislations that everyone agrees with.
Crimes like murder and rape, on the other hand, should be enforced as close to 100% of the time as possible.
Maybe you should have read OP's comment until the end before posting your angry reply. He said, that if laws were perfectly enforced, it would basically mean that the set of laws would very quickly be trimmed down to the set of useful laws. In the examples you cite, pot would become legal, and we would get better traffic laws (i.e. "contextual" speeding laws, only when children are present on the pavement/only when the visibility is low).
IMO having any law that is rarely enforced is a bad idea. That gives authorities the choice of whom to pursue and whom to let go, which is often used to hound parties (people, groups or countries) for arbitrary reasons citing the law in question as a reason for persecution.
Laws should be clear and non-burdensome for the majority. And violations caught at the high rate. My 2c.
I'm of the belief that if a law exists but isn't being enforced, the only correct course of action is to eliminate the law or start enforcing it. Otherwise, you enforce the law inconsistently, and you reinforce the notion that laws don't need to be followed.
Technology can help with consistent enforcement. Stop light cameras, in my experience, are more impartial and objective than police officers.
Where I live in the U.S., crime is prevalent. Many laws are flouted by criminals and rarely enforced by the police or district attorneys. The system has become a farce. It's better to enforce the laws consistently, or if they're not needed, to eliminate them.
Absolutely - you don't want laws to be enforced too completely, but you also don't want to have lots of laws on the books which nobody obeys and are usually not enforced, but can be enforced selectively.
I think the whole concept that law should be enforced at all times is flawed. People should have more ways to resolve conflicts between themselves on their own, without cops getting involved - even if the law was broken.
Unfortunately, we have decades of laws written overly broad that make huge swaths of behavior into crimes, with the people passing them saying "yeah, but we won't use them that way". At least to me, this is abhorrent and such laws should never be passed, but here we are. If all laws were enforced every time they applied, the vast majority of the population would be in jail.
Yes, actually; enforcing all of the laws all of the time is completely impractical. If you want always-on enforcement of every law, then we're going to have to seriously reform all of the laws. So, WRT your comment, I would tell you that it is my preference that laws be enforced to solve a specific social problem, not merely for the sake of enforcing a law.
Perfect law enforcement is an interesting idea but probably scary (and unworkable) in practice. There are things people can do today that were once illegal (e.g being homosexual) and if we'd had perfect enforcement, they'd have been thrown in prison. Challenging rules by breaking them is what you're suggesting but perfect enforcement would just take away those people's voices.
If they are stupid but shouldn't be enforced, the place to fix is to have the law removed IMHO. Police judgement shouldn't be the solution to bad laws. It's a band-aid that can cause serious long term damage I think.
I advocate total transparency. I believe that privacy contributes to more harm than good. I believe that all laws should be systematically enforced, even though I probably break many on a daily basis (knowingly or not).
Systematically enforcing bad laws is probably the best way to emphasize their damage, and the fastest way to eliminate them.
Imagine putting half the population in jail because they once consumed drugs, did not pay taxes on all income, etc. I'm sure this wouldn't happen, and laws would be changed.
This would help getting rid of obviously bad laws, but this probably wouldn't help minorities (those who break less often broken but still bad laws). Therefore, we should still be critical of all laws, and focus on reducing their number to a minimum.
Personally, I believe that 99% of laws and regulations do more harm than good, and would get rid of them all. I don't really like the idea of a central government, and would prefer not have them enforce any law.
I think the concern is not so much a desire for arbitrary enforcement as it is a fear of perfect enforcement at all times. I think some degree of freedom is a fundamental need of the human being, even from the rules we set for ourselves. We don't actually want all of our laws to be perfectly enforced all of the time, for a lot of reasons. For one thing, the laws themselves are unlikely to ever be perfect, even if perfect enforcement leads to more scrutiny and tweaking.
Perfect enforcement would rapidly reduce the number of stupid and nonsensical laws on the books, that only exist so that the police can jail people after they have done something wrong/after they were targeted by the police or another influential person.
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