Criminalizing Our Way out of the Crisis

Brian Walsh / March 04, 2009

If you’re a member of Congress, it’s tough to vote or even argue against any bill that has harsher criminal offenses or penalties. No legislator wants to give his reelection opponent the opportunity to label him as being “soft on crime.”

Two bills scheduled to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee today – the Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act (FERA) – have titles that make them sound salutary and even necessary. Such misleading labeling makes it even more difficult for committee members to vote against these bills’ unwarranted criminalization.

That’s why the Heritage Foundation joined with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) to send two letters to both the Democrats and the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee criticizing the new criminalization in both bills.

The letter on the Public Corruption act points out that the bill would expand one of the broadest and most ill-defined federal criminal laws – Congress’s controversial “honest services” branch of the federal mail and wire fraud statutes. This law has already been used, for example, to prosecute and convict Georgia Thompson, (more…)