Overcriminalization is destructive to the Criminal Justice System, tying up courts, judges, police and other law enforcement personnel and draining state and federal budgets. Many laws still exist on the books that are no longer relevant, and many are used so infrequently and only as a means to an end that they should be stricken from the books (Beale, 2005, 747-780). In particular, crimes relating to morality such as homosexuality, sodomy, and even fornication, which are against the law in many states, are moral issues between individuals and have no place in the Criminal Justice system since as long as they hurt no one. This paper will explore how overcriminalization affects state and federal systems and give examples which demonstrate the widespread extent of the problem.
Although there are times when moral issues come up in criminal law, such as in cases of rape, murder and other violent crimes, on the whole, strictly moral crimes should not fall within the jurisdiction of criminal justice (Beale, 2005, 748). These acts should be strictly between consenting individuals, and when they are, should be beyond the purvey of the law. The French Constitution, after which the American Constitution was modeled, placed constraints on criminal law such that people were to have, "the power of doing whatever does not injure another," free of criminal penalties: unfortunately this was not included in the United States Constitution (Richards, 1982). In the United States Constitution, public morality was enforced by criminal law according to the moral values of the Calvinistic church.
It has been suggested that white collar crimes be removed from the criminal justice system also and placed in separate categories of law, depending on the nature of the crime (Beale, 2005, 748). Many morality laws have been on the books for countless years, usually in state legislation and not in the federal system, which is normally reserved for m...