Criminal Impunity in America

To embolden future crimes, don’t hold certain crimes accountable

Imagine that the law had severe penalties for many different kinds of crime — assault, rape, murder, and so on — but no effective penalty whatsoever for certain other crimes, like, let’s say, arson. Your boss pisses you off so much that you fantasize about punching him in the face, but an assault charge could incarcerate you for years. If you set his house on fire, though, then the worst you might face could be a slap on the wrist; a day of community service, maybe, or a $20 fine. It’s not hard to imagine the foreseeable real world impact of such a policy. Gasoline and match sales would go up by a fraction of a percent, and the public cost of operating fire departments would skyrocket exponentially. For any angry citizen with a grudge, fire would suddenly become the getting even tool of choice. If this scenario seems absurd, it’s because it is. We wouldn’t be so foolish as a civilization to do that kind of thing, would we? Except that we clearly do.

America: “Some theft is okay”

One way we do so is through uneven distribution of attributed criminality. Most people…