How the Government Creates Criminals

Congress just turned millions of young, mostly poor, Americans into lawbreakers

There are criminals and there are criminals. Philosophers and theologians and social workers theorize about their origins; what makes a criminal? Are they all the same? Are some people just born larcenous and violent? Are they products of a hard world, reacting to circumstances beyond their control in the only way they can assert control? Nature or nurture; it’s an old argument and society has tried various ways to address it, with often ugly consequences for public policy and the citizens who have to live under it. There is one broad swath of criminals, however, that are definitely created. By the government.

The government does this frequently. It is, after all, the literal job description of Congress to makes laws. Conservatives have long made the case that regulations breed a unique species of innocent criminals, harshly punished for crimes as innocuous as misplacing three fish. It is an oft-repeated statistic that the average American commits up to three felonies every day. But most Americans are not, and will never be, subject to these invasive and punitive laws (how many Americans will ever be in a position to misplace any fish?). However, Congress is about to turn millions of Americans into criminals, not some rare…