Which laws to enforce?

Years ago, I worked alongside some deputies in a smallish Georgia city. One morning, two of 'em were bitching about a coworker, "that moronic MP," or something to that effect. I overheard, and interrupted: Didn't you guys used to be in the military? Yeah, the sheriff's sergeant had been an engineer in Vietnam and the sheriff's corporal hadn't changed his haircut since he left the infantry.

At issue was the actions of a third deputy, who was the former military policeman. He'd seen a guy stumbling along the street -- Georgia calls it "pedestrian under the influence" -- and arrested him, bringing him to jail to sober up and presumably have his family bail him out.

The other two guys were irked. The guy was stumbling home because he'd had too much to drink in a bar, decided not to hop in his car and risk killing someone else, and tried walking home. The one deputy investigated and arrested the guy, giving him a ride to jail. The other two guys would have investigated and offered him a ride home, because he'd been trying to do the right thing. The two guys predicted the next time the guy would just risk the drive, breaking more serious laws and threatening more lives and property.

Something in the Washington Post this morning made me recall this. At issue is of which laws to enforce, for which ends. The story is on immigration law enforcement:

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

This is, of course, the same subject addressed by the president, who was trying to walk a fine line between two widely separated groups: "We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We're also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals."

Enforcement of some laws brings unintended consequences. Fark.com linked to a story on Georgia's near-ban on registered sex offenders, who will be prohibited, across the state, from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. To many people this will immediately sound like a good idea. Think, though, just how many bus stops there are, and what a 1,000-foot distance would mean. Very few places would thus allow sex offenders, and they have to go somewhere, right? In an ideal world, there wouldn't be child rapists, but, well, there are. And they have to live somewhere.

One Iowa city tried strict sex-offender laws, and they backfired, according to the New York Times.

Authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September. ... "The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

The statute has set off a law-making race in the cities and towns of Iowa, with each trying to be more restrictive than the next by adding parks, swimming pools, libraries and bus stops to the list of off-limits places. Fearful that Iowa's sex offenders might seek refuge across state lines, six neighboring states have joined the frenzy.

Sometimes, laws are passed, praised for their effectiveness, and only half-assedly enforced. MeTheSheeple can't seem to find authoritative, comprehensive statistics through the end, but notes that tens of thousands of convicted felons may have been prevented from buying guns under the Brady Bill. A felon's attempt to buy a gun is illegal. However, such laws were almost never prosecuted. Isn't that great?

Seems to me that in an ideal world we'd train officers in appropriate discretion (e.g., driving the drunk home instead of pushing him to become a drunk driver). We'd be careful not to enforce laws with any bias. And we'd pass laws with the intent of enforcing them a large part of the time. Then, if there are political pressures, legislators would be encouraged to revise, revoke or amend those laws.

Instead, we've got biased interpretation, broad lack of enforcement, and political pressures coming in the wrong ways. Yech.