About the catch-all legal concept of "disorderly conduct", we have often had mixed feelings about it. But over time, I have come to realize that it does serve as a necessary and proper, albeit nuanced, tool as crowd control as well as a substitute that allows us to ultimately jettison from the books all "status offenses" and all of what the late, great Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes" aka victimless crimes. (Sorry not sorry, James Q. Wilson.)
One tool to replace them all, basically. And additionally, we need to get tough on REAL crime, of course. Common sense, basically.
Loitering, curfew, "underage" drinking or smoking, drunk but NOT disorderly, simple drug possession, vagrancy, and so many other things could easily be made redundant and removed from the law books. Of course, once these things become littering, trespassing, vandalism, DUI, harassment, assault, or disturbing the peace, etc. THEN they would become and remain illegal.
When dealing with large and unruly crowds, of course, it's not always so simple or cut and dried, and in the moment, the concept of "disorderly conduct" sometimes needs to be invoked to restore order. And all states have some flavor of this.
We believe that disorderly conduct should be 1) defined broadly enough to be fit for purpose, but not too broad, 2) be a mere violation/infraction for at least the first or even the first two offenses, albeit briefly arrestable for practical purposes, and 3) applied in a non-discriminatory manner, whether by race, gender, class, ability, orientation, etc., and especially age.
There are of course whole towns on the Jersey Shore right now who have youth curfews in part because New Jersey's juvenile injustice reform went too far in that regard, with the police having to follow such restrictive protocols in practice.
The gist of this whole issue being, collective punishment (to youth or anyone else) is inherently and irredeemably evil and needs to end yesterday. And if the admittedly imperfect concept of "disorderly conduct" needs to remain on the books to prevent resorting to collective punishment, so be it.
For example, New Jersey in fact already has a fairly decent law on the books right now. (Just apply it to all ages, basically.) So there should be no excuse to resort to youth curfews or anything else.
UPDATE: To clarify, when I say a "violation or infraction", that means an offense that carries a civil or administrative penalty, thus no criminal penalties and no criminal record. Some states currently do this for disorderly conduct, while others have it as a misdemeanor or the equivalent (which is a criminal offense, with criminal penalties and often a criminal record that can haunt you for the rest of your life). We believe a modest civil penalty with no criminal record is appropriate for something like this. Ditto for any other "consensual crimes" or "status offenses", and that is IF there must even be any such thing at all (a VERY big "if").
Hello Ajax,
ReplyDeleteIt's been a long time.
One issue has been on my mind recently. I've been thinking about it.
I have long taken an interest in America and American issues.
In a nutshell, the main area I think America has gone wrong over the past few decades has been overcentralisation.
What I'm suggesting is that much more autonomy be returned to individual states, like is generally the case with EU member states.
Basically, the United States worked much better in the past when it operated like a collection of small countries as opposed to one big country.
Currently, you're trying to administer policies for a population of 348 million spread over 3,531,905 square miles.
Healthcare is one example. I'm under the impression (tell me if I'm wrong) that it was better provided (although still not perfectly I gather) when it was handled entirely by individual states. Today however, because so much responsibility has been outsourced to the Federal Government, few states will go it alone in trying to improve healthcare. So you have a broken system everyone is looking to the Federal Government to fix, which clearly it can't due to the problems of trying to administer policies for such a large population over such a large land area.
I'm not saying services such as healthcare, welfare, social security etc., shouldn't be provided. Rather I'm saying they should be provided by individual states. Things like the Drinking Age would also naturally become a state issue under this model. There could be more variety and experimentation by states. Things of Federal importance such as the military and FBI would sill be managed by Washington. You would also still have the single currency and free movement between states, as is the case with the EU.
So I'm not suggesting America should be more like the UK or France or Sweden or whatever. Rather, I'm suggesting it should be more like the EU. You may need to merge the very small states in the Northeast into larger ones to make this work better. And state citizenship would count for a lot more under this model.
What do you think?
Regards,
Wayland
I think that, at this juncture of history, more "balkanization" of our already fractured Republic would likely make things worse on balance. But as the late, great Buckminster Fuller had noted in the twilight of his life, America may not have a choice.
DeleteIt also depends on what exactly would be devolved to the states. Currently, only the federal government can print its own money, not the states. So the federal government cannot run short of money or go bankrupt unless they choose to, unlike state and local governments. So unless we let states have their own currencies (or public banking as a clever workaround, since banks create dollars out of thin air), we will still need the federal government to do the bulk of the funding for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and social welfare programs (and hopefully a UBI as well). And of course defense as well.
Some things really do need to be FEDERAL. And yes, that includes the privately-owned FERAL Reserve, which really should be nationalized. In fact, let's nationalize ALL of the big banks, all but the smallest community banks and credit unions, and state and local public banks.
I know you would probably disagree with my MMT-adjacent perspective. But I am sure we can both agree that America should at the very least go back to being a Republic and not an Empire.
And unfortunately, healthcare was not objectively better when it was handled by the patchwork quilt of the individual states. There were pros and cons, but on balance it was NOT better. (And even currently, Medicaid is run as a federal-state hybrid model.)
DeleteWhat you say about the banking and monetary system actually makes a lot of sense. I remember now there were problems with the "Eurozone" because member states still had fiscal sovereignty but not monetary sovereignty.
ReplyDeleteVery true indeed, Wayland. Thank you 😊
DeleteOne of my favorite authors, Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, has long been making this case. He is MMT-adjacent, but has some differences with MMT proper, and quite frankly, he is better. Now over 90 years young, I hope he lives forever!
https://mythfighter.com/
Did you know that the troll who used to troll us had died?
DeleteYes I saw your post about that.
Delete