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Fishermen and scuba divers are, in practice, generally not going to be busted by police for having a normal-size knife in Japan. Of course, this is the problem
by centimeter 6y ago
Fishermen and scuba divers are, in practice, generally not going to be busted by police for having a normal-size knife in Japan. Of course, this is the problem with the legal strategy of “make it illegal but give enforcement discretion to the police” - it adds a lot of uncertainty to what you are actually allowed to do, it allows the government to convict many normal people of a crime if they want to, and it gives the police discretion to get people in trouble for arbitrary reasons.
- mercurialshark 6y agoYes, this. As the old Soviet saying went, "show me the man and I'll show you the crime." When you place the burden on the people and not the state - often through "common sense laws/regulation" - you inherently enable subjective and arbitrary enforcement of the law. This unfortunate trend not only creates and enables petty tyrants, but disproportionally afflicts the most vulnerable in society and politically disfavored minorities.
- Barrin92 6y ago>it gives the police discretion to get people in trouble for arbitrary reasons. it also gives police discretion to avoid getting people into trouble because of too rigid rules. Many countries have a lot of lenience about the enforcement of relatively harmless drugs, for example. Lenience and judgement on part of a police force is a good thing, and a necessary thing because reality is complicated and rules don't always make sense. The way you frame the issue just shows that you have low trust in your respective police force, in which case the issue is quality of policing, not rigidity of the law.