Mobsters. Drug Lords. Public school teachers.
One of these is not like the others. But you wouldn’t know that based on a verdict recently delivered in an Atlanta courtroom. Eleven former Atlanta Public Schools employees falsified tests in a dishonest and corrupt attempt to retain federal funding that kept their jobs and schools secure. Some also reaped personal benefits, such as bonuses.
Similar scandals have been unearthed in 39 states and the District of Columbia. The perpetrators should be held responsible, and the state of Georgia should be commended for seeking to address this problem. But prosecutors went too far. Instead of charging educators with fraud or theft, the state argued that they engaged in criminal racketeering. Prosecutors charged them under Georgia’s 1980 “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,” or RICO. RICO laws were created to target crime syndicates like the mafia, in which leaders were often able to get away with murder and other violent crimes that they ordered subordinates to commit.
These 11 Atlanta educators were charged and convicted under a law intended to bring mob bosses to justice. They now face decades in prison.
This punishment certainly does not fit the crime. The school district could have suspended them for a number of years or even banned them from ever teaching again. The state could have charged them with fraud or theft, for which the punishment would most likely have been 1 to 5 years at most.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, prosecutors charged them under a law that seemingly has nothing to do with the crimes committed.
This problem isn’t confined to Atlanta. When over-regulation and over-criminalization meet, Americans inevitably get harmed. There are an estimated 4,500 federal criminal laws and counting, not to mention state laws and regulations with criminal penalties. Too many are so vague that they can be interpreted to apply to a host of actions not intended by the legislators and regulators who passed them. Many also include “mandatory minimums” that force judges to issue wholly inappropriate prison sentences.
This is not a legal system that we as Americans can be proud of.
When rampant over-criminalization is taken into account, is it any surprise that America is the world’s largest jailer? No wonder one out of every five U.S. citizens has a criminal record. Americans are clearly suffering from the burden of over-criminalization, which does not enhance public safety, and contributes to social problems from increased poverty to decreased social mobility.
It’s time for federal and state legislators to do something. They can start by simplifying, eliminating, or clarifying the parts of the criminal code that are subject to frequent abuse. They can also end the regulatory bonanza that encourages the abuse that we saw in Atlanta and around the country. And they can end mandatory minimums, make criminal sentences much more proportionate to the crime, limit prosecutorial discretion, and ensure that criminal statutes have strong intent requirements that protect unsuspecting Americans from over-criminalization.
What the 11 Atlanta educators did was inexcusable, but here and elsewhere, the punishment should fit the crime.
