Overcriminalization

Overcriminalization is a dangerous trend that NACDL battles daily. With over 4,450 crimes scattered throughout the federal criminal code, and untold numbers of federal regulatory criminal provisions, our nation's addiction to criminalization backlogs our judiciary, overflows our prisons, and forces innocent individuals to plead guilty not because they actually are, but because exercising their constitutional right to a trial is prohibitively expensive and too much of a risk. This inefficient and ineffective system is, of course, a tremendous taxpayer burden.