Criminal Legislation: A Change for the Better Essay

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Introduction

Law directly or indirectly should help people live and work together in a peaceful and orderly manner and in addition help to protect individual freedoms and rights. Just as the needs, challenges, and problems of people change, so do laws need to be changed accordingly if they are to efficiently serve the ever-changing society.

This article will draft two laws that are not under the model penal code or in all states including their elements and explain why the laws need to be enacted in all states. The article will in addition explore two laws that should be repealed and two crimes that should be modified so they can serve society better.

Draft of two laws

One way of slowing down and eventually stopping the deteriorating moral standards that characterize society today is to enforce legislation that is targeted at improving them. The media in the present times are filled with stories of individuals engaging in terrifying acts of violence at a very tender age.

There have also been numerous cases of undesirable teenage pregnancies which, in most cases interfere with the education of affected teenagers. Some experts state that some of these and many more other shocking behaviors come from what teens see and learn from the media (Berkowitz, 1979), and hence the need for legislation that would help educate and discourage young people from engaging in such incidences.

The first law that should be enacted states that it would be illegal for an operator or proprietor of an open-air movie theatre to knowingly exhibit or permit the showing of any film that contains scenes that are likely to harm young minds. Such scenes would be those representing or describing, in any form, nudity, sexual acts, abusive language, extreme violence, or any form of abuse that may be found appealing to the prurient and is blatantly offensive to the society as a whole about what is deemed as being appropriate to minors.

Young minds, according to this law, are individuals aged 17 and below. Under this law, ‘film’ implies series or motion picture films, which may either be short subject or full length. These however do not consist of broadcasts showing the current occurrences or pictorial happenings of the day.

The second law is meant to protect animals, wild and domestic from human exploitation. Human Beings, in some instances, exploit animals in the name of entertainment. Some of these exploitations lead to injury and in worst-case scenarios, the death of the animals. During acts of animal wrestling, animals do not know when to stop fighting and in most cases, these fights lead to major injuries and even death. This second law should be enforced to discourage any acts that are targeted at exploiting animals in any way.

In the second law, an individual would be guilty of animal exploitation should he or she, deliberately perform any of the following deeds: If he or she endorses, is employed in or engages in animal wrestling matches; receives admission payment from another individual to be let into a place reserved for animal wrestling and sells, buys, owns, or trains an animal for the animal for animal wrestling. Should an individual be arrested and convicted in violation of this law, the individual will not be allowed to keep any animal in his or her home.

Two criminal laws that should be repealed

Some parts of the criminal code are filled with useless and obsolete statutes which should be repealed or abolished and replaced with legislation that would serve the society of today in a better way. Two criminal laws that should be repealed are the criminal laws against gambling and those against drugs. The Texas Penal code (Onecle, 2007) and the constitution of California (Humphrey, 2010) are examples of anti-gambling statutes that are still contained in the penal codes of some states.

The last two centuries of US history have seen the tide of public opinion surging back and forth between restrictive and permissive attitudes during gambling. The actions of several legislatures suggest that this tide is now running strongly in favor of lawful betting. State after state, usually after the recommendation of a select study commission, has legalized several forms of gambling including lotteries, bingo, and horse racing, among others. Some proposals on the legalization of other gambling activities are under consideration for implementation.

The objections to gambling on social or moral grounds have in many instances been overcome by local and state governments’ pressing the need for additional revenues and legislatures’ attraction to new, relatively painless sources or revenues. Legal gambling, which is an essential voluntary revenue source controlled by the states, has a powerful appeal that is enhanced by the astronomical estimates of the size of profits to be made from taxation or government operation.

In the face of public ambivalence, or even indifference, the courts tend to be lenient towards accused gamblers, and the police seem to be ineffective in any serious attempt to curb the activity. As a result, illegal gambling operators have succeeded in corrupting the law enforcement system. Even the Knapp Commission recommended the repealing of criminal legislation against gambling and stated that their regulations should be replaced by civil instead of criminal proceedings (Ivkovic, 2005).

The media often broadcasts news about individuals who have been jailed for possession of small amounts of illegal substances and these have resulted in some voices terming the criminal justice system as being clogged, particularly in the state of New York. The anti-drug laws in place today have contributed little to remove drugs from the community and only serve to imprison low-level drug addicts for lengthy periods.

The statutes against drugs should therefore be repealed, either partially or as a whole, and replaced with a system that would provide treatment for all drug-related criminals. The best way of tackling any problem is to tackle it from its root cause. The new stature should address the reasons why people abuse drugs in the first place and come up with preventive measures instead of focusing on curative measures.

Two crimes that must be modified

Foreign and domestic tax evasion, apart from the failure to pay US taxes on the proceeds of a crime, is a crime but it does not qualify as an underlying crime for prosecution within the US as a money laundering offense. While US prosecutors can work around this lacuna and do not regard it as an impediment to an effective US AML regime, the absence of foreign tax evasions as a predicate offense under the US law is often cited as impeding international cooperation against crimes (Meinzer, 2008).

For example, Latin American leaders often complain privately that while the US insists on cooperation on issues it considers important, the US itself often fails to cooperate on issues important to other countries such as evasion of taxes on income from assets held abroad. In this context, the US policy becomes a barrier to leadership. Thus, the US law should be altered to make tax evasion, whether in the US or elsewhere, a predicate offense for money laundering prosecution.

Several crimes in the US are punishable by the death sentence but arson, which is a horrible crime that can result in massive devastation and even death, is not included among these crimes in some states. In the 1820s a robbery was committed in the high seas, and, as of 1804, the burning of a vessel in the high seas were both punishable by death.

So was a forgery or government securities or of currency which were capitally punished. Be that as may, it is difficult to see why a felon who sets on fire a house in which another human dwells, in the middle of the night is spared from capital punishment in some states (Bryant, 2003). By comparing the earlier states’ crimes, it would only be fair if arson was considered as part of the crimes that should attract capital punishment in all the states.

Conclusion

This article has mentioned that laws are made to protect and serve us in a better way. Our society today is faced with numerous challenges some of which are worsening moral values and cruelty to animals. This article has proposed two legislations that if enacted in all states, would go a long way in curbing these vices. Additionally, the article has explored two laws that should be repealed and two crimes that should be changed to meet the changing demands of society. These are but a few of the changes that need to be enacted to enable our laws to serve us better.

References

Berkowitz, L. (1979). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 12. New York: Academic Press.

Bryant, C.D. (2003). Handbook of Death and Dying. California: SAGE.

Humphrey, C.(2010). . Web.

Ivcovic, S.K. (2005). Fallen blue knights: controlling police corruption. New York: OUP.

Meinzer, M. (2008). Unilateral Measures Against Offshore Tax Evasion: The Example of the Argentinean Corporate Supervisory Board (Inspección General de Justicia, IGJ). Munich; GRIN Verlag.

Onecle Court Opinions (2007). Texas Penal Code- Section 47.02. Gambling. Web.

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