interpreter hi, i'm lisa fletcher, and you're in "the stream." ever send annoying email, forget to return a library book? you unwittingly committed a crime. government is constantly adding new rules to the book. is it going too far? our digital producer, rajahad ali is here, and as always, bring your feedback. [ audio difficulties ]

a lot of times minor infractions. interpreter that's right, lisa, and things that people don't know, and we asked these questions. he says: say what? and i had to say is like that, he had no idea there were so many laws. interpreter you're an attorney, and are you at all surprised as how easy it is to break the law and not even know it had. interpreter i'm not surprised. politicians have gone to you have to on crime policies, and a lot of people say it's vague and broad. but in law school, we're thought that ignorance of the law a

defense. interpreter would you know if you broke the law? there's a growing list of laws and regulation , and even the government charged with tracking them has a hard time monitoring. interpreter at least an estimate the 4500 criminal statutes today, up from 165 in 1900, but as many as 300,000 criminally invoicable regulations. interpreter officials say that over the last 50 years, there has been a shift in rule making power. 3700 regulations were issued by government agencies, and that's about two new rules an hour. and if you violate one of those rules, you could be held accountable. a congressional research service admits that it's too many to count.

interpreter to know all of that's criminalized. and how then is the citizen to keep from making honest mistakes organuling in conduct that he had no reason to know what's illegal? interpreter congress has aimed at shrinking the criminal code. some say that it's not too many rules, but the ability to enforce too many on the books. so can having too many laws handicap the system and even make ordinary citizens criminals? molly gills works to promote citizenses that fit the crime and offender. congresswoman, karen bass, working on the task force looking into reforms on the criminal justice system. and rosko howard, former attorney for the district of columbia. and molly, are there too many

laws on the books? interpreter the judicial committee passed forward a bill that included a requirement that the department of justice and federal agencies compile all of the crimes on books and in the regulation and put them in one place, publicly available on their website interpreter so they're not in one place right now. interpreter no, they're not. they're spread throughout our very multivolume criminal code. so you'll find some of the crimes but not all of the crimes. and you have to two to many places to find everything that's a crime today. interpreter does that mean that there's probably overlap. interpreter definitely, overlap, sure. i think that everybody kind of wants to get in on the beings. they see a problem, and they think hey, the solution is let's make it a crime and slap a punishment on it, and that's the problem, we have multiple people doing that. interpreter rosko, is there a problem of having too many on

the books? interpreter 45, 600 laws, something that nobody can track. what you try to do, you get used to the laws that you want to lose, and all of the laws that exist. they're outdated. and what we don't do is go back to the criminal code and get rid of the ones that no longer apply or are infrequently enforced. interpreter but i'm thinking that there's a problem in cost. so i'm assuming that there's a lot of crime that goes into this and resources, when it goes to the state and the federal level, creating the laws, a lot of which are redundant and people call silly and useless, and is there a cost associated with this, representative bass, that you can put your finger on?

interpreter let me say that there are too many laws and regulations, but i am concerned that we don't go off in the direction that i believe is the most important issue. and that's the fact that there are many more people incarcerated in the united states than any country in the and laws that people pass to run for election. very minute white collar crimes that people are not incarcerated for, and though i think they're terrible, and we need to clean it all up, we need to set some priorities here. interpreter we'll get to that later in the program. but right now, we need to focus on whether there are too many laws and what the repercussions are on that, and molly, talk about the difficulty of enforcing all of the laws that are on the books. is that even possible? interpreter i think that the bigger problem is that you have

different enforcers. there's a lot of concern now that you can't just be arrested by the fbi coming to your home. but you could be arrested by the epa coming to your business site and saying that you have done something wrong. and you can be arrested by any number of government agencies. and that does create a law enforcement question. interpreter mark says: interpretemy name is jesse weis. the problems of crime fighting were generally understood to be an issue with governments. creating 20 crimes. and today there are approximately 4500 crimes with

congress. and the already burdened criminal justice system is making every day actions criminally culpable. >> reporter: what is the role of congress here? you are the ones creating the laws, but you heard molly say, enforcing the laws, and where do lawmakers stand on this issue? interpreter i think with the task force. i think that people realize this needs to be changed. and we have had examples of people fishing in the wrong place, and arrested and now they have hundreds of thousands of problems. and i'm worried about us getting lost in minutia. interpreteminutia.

interpretekeep in mind that we'a country where prosecutors can use a lot of discretion, and there are people that make arrests, but in the federal government, all of those come up through the agencies if they want somebody prosecuted, and in theory, you should have people in place to make decisions. not every law is enforced. prosecutors making which ones are worthwhile. if they talk to each other. there's nobody, or there should be nobody who is prosecuted for the same act by both the state and the federal government. that's usually because two of them talk and they decide which way it is best to go.

so there's some filter there, and there are not all of these laws, not all of them are used. but all of them come in theory to each district through one person. and that person is making decisions, and the vast majority are dismissed. but there's no federal prosecutor who is going to be allowed to spend more resources than they have. so they pick and choose their cases. you may not do what appears to be a large drug case that may get done in boise, idaho because they don't have the volume of cases or the problem. lisa, is it still safe?

given the number of laws and regulations on the book, it's likely that you may have violated some of them. and you may end up with a criminal record. when we come back, the unintended consequences of having so many laws on the books, and as we head to the break, check out the unusual laws.

said that i was a criminal if i wandered into a national wilderness that was off-limits to vehicles. when my friend and i were lost in the blizzard, it didn't matter that we didn't intend to go into the wilderness or that it wasn't marked or that we didn't know there was a wilderness there. i could have been in prison for up to six months for in law. and maybe i should be grateful that i wasn't sent to jail. i guess i am. but someone else in the same situation might have ended up in prison. welcome back, we're talking about the size of the nation's criminal code and the impact that it has on citizens. that was racecar champion, bobby unser, talking about how he went from ordinary citizen to clueless criminal.

he's not the only one. harvey is the author of "three felonies a day, and how feds target the innocent." tell us how people have broken the law. interpreter i've had clients indicted for securities fraud, and emergencying in securities transactions that i, as well as others in the securities, i'm basically a criminal defense of liberties lawyer, but we have shown some of these transactions to securities lawyers, and they scratched their heads and said, what? it's not criminal to me, but the client is expected to have known that other people, experts think that it's okay, can engage in. and it's not just too many laws, but laws that human beings can't be expected to understand. interpreteunderstand. so can someone be going about

their business? it's mainly a federal problem, because by and large, they are much easier to understand, but federal laws, for technical and jurisdictional reasons, fraud and wire fraud, and use they have to decide for themselves. congresswoman bass, so people find themselves snagged by some of these laws, and what's the collateral damage for them when they have done something non-violent, but suddenly they have a crime on their record. interpreter i think that the collateral damage, one, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs, or wind up losing their employment or have businesses compromised.

and we have had people who have gone out of business, the example i gave, fishing in the wrong area, and they wound up losing their business. if you are incarcerated in our society, you believe that you paid your time and you were back in, and we no longer believe this in our country. you serve pretty much a life sentence, some of it misdemeanors and some outside when you can't get public housing or employment. and we need a serious overhaul of our criminal justice system. interpreter who are the gate keepers who are supposed to step back and say, this doesn't make any sense, we wouldn't prosecute for this, though it's not a criminal offense. interpreter the prosecutors, they are going to be uneven, and they will be uneven. take a harder look. i always thought it was a good idea for the prosecutors to have a mix. they should be as diverse as the

society is diverse. women, minorities, and people who can give you a different point of view. that's who should be the gate capers and should be stepping back. harvey makes a point. a lot of them are vague. to keep up with the drug laws, and so congress passes laws with fairly big terms so that they don't get outdated in a hurry. but you would like it to be the prosecutor who sits there and sits across from a police officer, sits across from an fbi agent and sits across from the dea and says, you're kidding, we're not going to do this roscoe, a lot of people don't know it's a crime:

should not the state of minds or the intention also matter when it comes to charging these individuals when they don't even know it was a crime? absolutely, we always consider a person's intent when we decide they're criminally liable. we know that we shouldn't kill each other, and we have lost this distinction between crimes that we know are inherently bad. and crimes that aren't, and they just happen to break a regulation. but the other important point is what is the punishment? sure ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, but do we have to punish every violation by

sending them to jail or criminal court? we can do fines, penalties, or restitution to the community if you break one of these regulations. not every problem in the country should be solved with prison. roscoe, tough on crime, and works at the polls, and what roll does prosecution play in all of this? just look around the country, chris christie was a prosecutor, and arlen specter was, and it's not hard to find these guys. you get to the position where your name is out in the public, if you want to work for something as a senator or u.s. congressperson, the people are going to know who you are. you find very ambitious people going after these jobs, and certainly at the federal level, we're all appointed by the president of the united states. can i just jump in? you just mentioned chris

christie, and that brings up a coppic that i wrote about in the wall street journal recently. he was a u.s. attorney in new jersey, and he was a hard nosed guy, and he went after a lot of people, including people who had no reason to think that they broke the law, and now his administration is under federal criminal investigation by his successor because of the thought that maybe this bridgegate scandal would be stopping the traffic in fort lee with a phoney highway traffic study, maybe that violated some federal law, and now they're being investigated. you live by the sword, you die by the sword, but the fundamental problem is they can't find these laws. are there federal laws, harvey, if there's a prosecutor out there, he or she would be able to find a law to fit? let me give you an assurance, if

somebody were to follow you or me for a full day and saw everything that we saw or did, that person could arguably come up with three felonies, that's how i got the title of my book, three felonies a day. because you pick up the phone and you call somebody, and you don't quite tell the whole truth of everything that you're talking about, and that's very common. you cannot tell somebody everything. arguably there's a felony committed there. and it has gotten so that everybody is in danger. the only question is, are you going to end up in a position where some prosecutor is going to want to get you? if the prosecutor wants to get you, chances are the prosecutor will be able to ca can i just sy something here? this problem is not equal. we know who gets arrested and prosecuted and convicted in

disproportionate numbers, and we need to address some of the things that are be structurally and fundamentally wrong with our criminal justice system. and there's an issue here about overregulation in all of that, but he i really think we have to prioritize, and i think its shameful when people run for office and try to pass lots just so they can campaign on them. there are a lot of people in prison today because of laws like that, that's what happened in california. and that's why we got three strikes. just tweeted in: so is it possible to pull back on any of these existing laws or regulations? tweet us your ideas on tackling the issue. we're back in two minutes.

hi, i'm krishna, and i'm a law student in financial financial, and i'm in "the stream" welcome back, we're discussing the laws and regulations that we're expected to abide by even if we're unaware that they exist. lawmakers tend to agree, and do you think that we could see a moving in congress to address the issue i would hope so he. a bill is making its way through the senate that would change the mandatory minimum and it has been worked on for years, and also, when the crack and powder sentencing was changed a couple of years ago, that needs to be retroactive. there are thousands of people in prison today that should not be

in prison because that law was changed. so i'm looking forward to working on that in the house. interestingly, some of the most conservative members of the house, the tea party and the foundation that believe in smaller government, there's unity there that's bipartisan, because if you believe in smaller government, why would you want to lock everybody up moggy, let's talk about reform, and what can we do moving forward to make this better for all citizens? as congresswoman bass said,

there's a bipartisan bill moving, and yesterday the committee moved forward the smaller sentencing act, and that is the solution to this problem. the crime count, the catalog of everything that's a crime. and it also really gets at this question of who needs to be in prison, and how long do they need to be there? our prisons are incredibly expensive, and they're sucking up one quarter of all law enforcement funding at the federal level. every time we lock up a non-violent drug offender longer than necessary or some guy that's breaking a regulation longer than necessary, that's money we could be putting cops on the street, or prosecutors, and keeping the public safer, and that legislation is moving now, and as congresswoman bass said, it's a unique group of people. when you have raul labrador, and mike lee and dick jergen

agreeing, i'll take it do laws ever come off the books? i don't know if the laws come off the books, but they do, and they should, and certainly the prosecutors make decisions to enforce the laws, and as you look around the country, the easiest is to look at the marijuana laws, the prosecutors are enforcing that, and they essentially made it okay to smoke. harvey, hang on, you said if somebody followed you or me around for a day, we each would have committed three felonies, and which three would you have today? i had a couple of conversations where i couldn't tell them the whole context of what we were talking about, and that's fraud. and one reform is important, it's the unfortunately that would invert the require. intent in every criminal statute that's all the time we have.

and thanks to all of our guests. until next time, raj and i will see you all online. good evening everyone. welcome to al jazeera america. i'm john siegenthaler in new york. the christie scandal. new questions for the new jersey governor after one of his old friends tells a different story about bridge-gate. ukraine, the apparent kidnap and torture of one of the protest leaders. embedding with art. seattle and