this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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This is not uncommon, that laws are written not considering all nuances, so a generally innocent thing is made illegal.
The primary protection for this is prosecutorial discretion which is to say the DA can choose not to take such cases. Also the police have to be willing to enforce and book instances (they're usually happy to) and gubernatorial positions like the mayor or governor can command law enforcement not to enforce a specific law (which sometimes they'll obey).
This often comes up in undocumented immigrant cases in which there are communities with a lot of overstayed visas, or while cannibis was in a grey zone of being locally accepted while nationally scheduled.
It's also why tweens weren't gathered up for making a Facebook account while under thirteen years, even though that violated the CFAA, a federal crime punishable by up to 25 years. We don't really want to put little girls in federal prison.
This is a problem when some official would like you to disappear into the penal system, say because he covets your land or your livestock or your spouse. Then your chastity cage may become a liability.
Prosecutorial discretion is a big problem really. It's what allows laws to be applied unequally, why black people are prosecuted way more than white people, and, as you mention, provides justification to jail anyone at any time because you ARE violating some law every day, almost certainly.
If prosecutorial discretion did not exist, if agents of the law were required to prosecute all crimes to the fullest extent of the law, it would require the entire legal system to be restructured in a more precise way, and would have far less room for racial, sexual, and class discrimination as well as far less capacity to be weaponized against enemies of those in power.
"required to prosecute all crimes to the fullest extent of the law", taken literally, requires prosecutors to prosecute everyone for every crime all the time. After all, you don't know what might turn up in discovery, anything could potentially have happened! Obviously, there has to be some judgement call made, where there's just not enough evidence to prosecute me for drunk driving even though I stopped an inch past the stop sign. Ultimately, that's just prosecutorial discretion again, and while it could be reformed and limited somewhat, it will always exist and be abused.