The Line Between Law-abiding and Law-breaking is thin and blurry

Everyone, even the most law-abiding among us, has probably broken the law, likely multiple times.  Here is a simple list of 67 common violations.

1.    driving faster than the posted speed limit

2.    driving faster than 20 MPH in a school zone

3.    seriously speeding on a highway

4.    minor shop lifting (including office supplies from work)

5.    cheating on taxes (for those old enough to understand)

6.    parking illegally

7.    consuming an illegal drug

8.    transporting (knowingly or not) someone in possession of an illegal drug

9.    living in a home where someone is growing pot

10. living in a home where someone is selling pot

11. driving after drinking alcohol

12. driving while drunk

13. driving with a child who is not in an approved car seat

14. consuming a prescription drug recreationally

15. taking a prescription drug from someone else

16. taking your parents’ liquor

17. jaywalking

18. getting into a fist fight

19. threatening to hurt someone

20. sex before your age of consent

21. underage drinking

22. failure to report a crime against a minor

23. trespassing

24. doing a donut on someone’s lawn

25. vandalism

26. smuggling cigarettes and wine in from Mexico w/out paying the duty

27. hiring an illegal maid

28. Using mother nature as your restroom

29. ripping the tags off of pillows and mattresses

30. movie hopping...paying for one but watching more than one

31. jumping the turnstiles on the subway

32. littering

33. illegal downloading

34. keeping a library book

35. seeing a crime and failing to report it

36. not stopping at a stop sign

37. bringing your own snacks into the movies

38. public intoxication

39. sex acts in public spaces

40. some sex acts in your own home with your legal spouse

41. loitering

42. pulling over on side of highway/road

43. doing u-turn in a prohibited zone

44. slander

45. too many occupants in car

46. not wearing seat belts

47. providing false identification…using a fake ID

48. inaccurately filling out a form for the government, or school, or a job app

49. workplace theft of time…personal calls, etc all while being paid for that time

50. fireworks (in some states)

51. backyard fires (in urban areas)

52. TPing someone's property

53. texting/talking on cell while driving (some states)

54. parking too far from curb (parallel parking)

55. improper passing

56. driving with a tail light out

57. driving with expired plates

58. driving without a valid license

59. opening someone else's mail

60. smuggling chocolate into the USA

61. violating Fire Code by exceeding maximum number of occupants in a space

62. making moonshine

63. riding a bicycle on the sidewalk

64. not wearing a seatbelt

65. staying after hours in a public park

66. running a red light

67. not cleaning up a pet's droppings when not dropped on your own property

Of course, we can all identify one or two items on this list that we might challenge as not technically illegal or whatever, but that is not the point.  Step back and take in the list as a whole.  The message is not really controversial:  we are all law breakers. 

That does not mean we are not upstanding citizens (some of us anyway!) who contribute to our communities, love our families, and work hard.  It turns out that the meaning of being a law-abiding citizen is something of a paradox in the real world. 

This matters and it doesn’t.

It does not matter, if the take-away message is we need to be humble and cautious about pointing our fingers at other’s law-breaking to demand ever more extreme forms of punishment for minor crimes (the single largest portion of those incarcerated in the past decades have been non-violent drug offenders, many first offenders caught with small amounts of pot).

It matters because the most common response to any discussion of racism in our CJS is that ‘ there are more blacks in prison, so they chose to commit more crimes, and deserve it.’  And if we start from the premise that we all commit crimes, multiple crimes, but only some of us are stopped and arrested and charged and sentenced and then labeled a felon for the rest of your life (unable to get a job or housing or assistance), then the simple insight here matters, because it transforms this most common of responses from ‘common sense’ into a claim in need of examination (at least), if not from ‘prevailing wisdom’ to ‘self-interested and bullshit justification’ for allowing our CJS to operate like a 21^st century Jim Crow system. 

I did not come up with this argument, but I recommend you take a look at Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow.  She is a professor of law at Ohio State (listen to her on the Colbert Report) and she will be speaking in Akron as a part of Rethinking Race on February 7, 2013.