Try to talk to someone about how a court of law has engineered your financial ruin and, in so doing, has utterly ignored statutory and constitutional imperatives, and it is likely that you will be met with a blank, glazed stare.  After all, America has a good legal system, right?  Say what you will about America’s behavior in the Middle East and that nasty little torture racket at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and goodness knows where else—America’s legal system is…well….it is the best system there is.

Right?

We’ve been down this road many times before.

If the government is consistent about anything, it is this: it has a tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of “national security.”  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain favorable to our enemies.  Limited government and constitutional accountability have been thrown aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.

History

In the United States, habitual offender laws, commonly referred to as "three-strikes laws" were first implemented on March 7, 1994, and are part of the Department of Justice Anti-Violence Strategy.  These laws require two previous convictions in order to be applicable and sometimes make life in prison mandatory.  Twenty-eight states have some form of a three-strikes law.  Its purpose is to drastically increase the punishment of those convicted of more than two felonies, but, in some instances, convictions of more than just one criminal offense, not necessarily a felony, will still result in harsher penalties as it does in Washington, D.C.

Warped Incentives

“Prosecutors have more power than anyone, in many respects, over the lives of the average person,” said Daniel Medwed, professor at the Northeastern University School of Law. “But there is almost no accountability, no transparency, and the public isn’t paying attention—that is a very, very combustible concoction.

Senator Rand Paul took a lot of heat from establishment Conservatives and some in the media for his unwavering stand against the Patriot Act.  The party line that emerged said that we are now vulnerable to terrorist attack.  Even Senator Paul, himself, said he was being accused of damaging America’s defenses against such attacks.

The number of Americans with a criminal history has risen sharply over the past three decades.  Today, nearly one-third of the adult working age population has a criminal record.  In fact, so many Americans have a criminal record that counting them all is nearly impossible.

Have you ever made an unreasonable gesture to a passing horse in a national park?  If so, you are already a federal criminal.  For the rest of us, there’s a new work of reference, humor, and legal theory from attorney Mike Chase titled How to Become a Federal Criminal: An Illustrated Handbook for the Aspiring Offender.