Crime, crime everywhere

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”‒ James Madison, The Federalist, No. 62

Governor Rick Snyder gives the annual State of the State address tonight, where he’ll set out his Administration’s policy priorities. That will be followed by a budget message on February 11. Both will be complicated, since last week’s consensus revenue estimating conference concluded the general fund budget will be something like $325 million in the red, largely because of old business tax credits being unexpectedly cashed in by businesses.

After great tugging and hauling last December, the legislature and governor agreed to submit to a statewide vote in May a complex proposal mainly intended to raise the state sales tax from six to to seven percent to produce the $1.2 billion a year needed to fix the roads. The ballot proposal also provides more money for schools and the earned income tax credit that helps poor people.

Many say there’s a lot to like about the proposal, while admitting that it’s complex and will require a whole lot of explanation (and money) to pass. Critics say it’s little more than a late Christmas tree.

Regardless, the impending vote on road funding, coupled with the pressures of a deficit budget, will likely produce argumentative paralysis in Lansing until mid-May.

So while that’s going on, attentive readers might want to look carefully at the cumbrous machinery of state policy, law and regulation slowly, inexorably clanking into action.

That’s one reason I had another look at a report by the Mackinac Center and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, “Overcriminalizing the Wolverine State: A Primer and Possible Reforms for Michigan.” Issued last October, the report concludes that “With thousands of laws on the books, many people are at risk of being charged with a crime for something most people wouldn’t consider inherently wrong,” according to Mike Reitz, executive vice president of the Mackinac Center.

A game of gotcha

Michigan’s “vast and disorganized” 918-section criminal code is more than twice the size of Ohio and Wisconsin’s. The Michigan penal code consists of 266,300 words and 500 pages of 10 point Times Roman type, according to those who have read every word.

Michigan spends more on prisons than on colleges and universities, with one out of every five general fund dollars going to warehouse folks convicted of a crime.

One possible reason for such a highly-resourced sector of state government: Many Michigan residents face punishment for unknowingly committing various crimes. Two examples cited in the Mackinac Center-Manhattan Institute study:

• Kenneth Schumacher, who got rid of his old car tires at a facility that appeared to be legal. But he was sentenced to 270 days in prison and fined $10,000 for unlawfully disposing of tires because the facility didn’t have a state license.
• Lisa Snyder, who regularly and without compensation helped her neighbor’s kids get on board the school bus every morning. She was charged with operating an illegal day care center.

Between 2008 and 2013, the legislature added an average of 45 new criminal offenses to the books per year; as of 2014, we had more than 3,000 crimes enumerated in our state’s laws and regulatory requirements. According to the Mackinac Center-Manhattan Institute study, many of these crimes do not require the state to demonstrate criminal intent by those charged, which makes is possible for a person who unknowingly violates a law to be charged with a criminal offense. “More than 26 percent of felonies and more than 59 percent of misdemeanors on the Michigan books to not explicitly require the state to make a showing of intent on the part of the accused.”

The study calls for a series of commonsense reforms:

• Create a bipartisan legislative task force to hold hearings and set overall principles for the legislature when creating new criminal offenses.
• Create a commission or charge the Michigan Law Revision Commission to review the state’s criminal code and consolidate and clarify the statutes.
• Enact a statute that requires that for a person to be convicted of a crime the authorities have to show specific intent.

So while big time activity in Lansing is paralyzed by the big coming vote and arguments about how to resolve the budget shortfall, lawmakers might want to have a careful look at this study and begin trying to cut through the mounds of crimes – some serious, some petty beyond common sense – that infest the state’s statute books.