[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> committed a crime and left evidence somewhere

A Harvard professor wrote a book titled Three Felonies A Day which argues that there are so many laws to break that an average working professional in America will commit an average of three felonies every day. I do not know the accuracy of the claim but this idea of over-criminalization is an interesting one to think about.

Specifically, how likely is it for a person to have unknowingly committed a crime and left evidence? (Of course, it’s not a violent crime assuming a regular sane individual.) Are you certain you’ve never left evidence for any sort of “white collar” crime which you unwittingly committed?

[vjk800]

There are (at least) two ways to think about the law. One (which technical people tend to subscribe to) is that the law is analogous to a computer code for the society and the ideal is that it is followed at all times. The second is that the law is there as a backup when someone is clearly causing trouble and other, more informal means to stop them have failed.

In the second interpretation, it is desirable to have some sort of law always ready to apply when a problematic situation arises, and everyone committing technical felonies every now and then is just a (mostly) harmless side effect of the system working as intended.

The second interpretation is, I believe, also often applied when new laws are written. Usually the logic is: there is some kind of a problem that the politicians need to address, and the problem itself is too complex to directly address so some kind of proxy law is made that gives an excuse to throw problematic people in jail. See e.g. loitering laws.

[checkyoursudo]

I am skeptical of the claim but not the conclusion. I take the claim anyway to be a bit of hyperbole to sell more books.

One of the biggest problems in law is what IT/CS people might call technical debt. New laws get added all the time while old, often-outdated or useless laws rarely get removed. The problem is that those old, even outdated and useless laws can sometimes be leveraged against you in new or novel ways, sometimes that the drafters of the laws never would have expected. Legislative intent is not always clear and not always decisive.