[btilly]

The reason that selective enforcement exists is that it is very hard to avoid having rules selectively enforced.

But the history of selective enforcement strongly suggests that it does not usually lead to just results. It is often instead something that unaccountable officials find themselves easily able to exploit for questionable purposes.

For a notable example, witness how selective enforcement during the War on Drugs was used to justify mass incarceration of blacks, even though actual rates of drug usage were similar in black and white communities.

[nandomrumber]

You’re arguing that the mass incarceration of more people would have been better?

[ponow]

Yes, I would argue that it would be better for more to have been incarcerated, for that would bring greater focus to injustice and the law would be changed. Selective enforcement interferes with the feedback mechanism that would otherwise make the law work better.

[wongarsu]

If a law were to mass incarcerate people from affluent white neighborhoods it would be quickly repealed

[btilly]

Actually it would have never been passed. Nixon started it as a way to put blacks in their place.