Regulatory crimes emerged to solve diffuse-harm enforcement problems no private litigant would pursue.

Evidence

The state enforces regulatory and economic laws at public expense and initiative, but perhaps for a rather different reason. If a man sells ten baskets of rotten strawberries to a hundred different people, in violation of some law, no one buyer has an incentive to sue this seller. Any lawsuit would eat up far more money than the plaintiff could possibly recover. … Criminal process, then, can act as a kind of crude, undifferentiated administrative agency. This (largely implicit) conception is one reason for the flowering of regulatory crimes. Economic crimes of this sort were never important for the police, the prosecutors, or the courts. They rarely capture the imagination of the public. A criminal provision, stuck inside the text of a regulatory law, was perhaps not even meant to be rigorously enforced. They were meant more as a last resort, as a club held over the head of some persistent, flagrant violator. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1736

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s polyad work on law/institutions and environmental law: diffuse-harm logic is exactly the justification structure behind environmental regulation like the Noise Control Act.
• XREF: The ‘criminal provision as club held over the head’ idea resonates with how environmental statutes get enforced sparingly but as leverage. — connects to: Private civil enforcement with treble damages was proposed as an alternative to criminal penalties — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 917; Widespread small fraud escapes private enforcement when no single victim suffers enough harm — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1077; Regulatory crimes served as cheap administrative enforcement for business regulation — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3319 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Regulatory laws took criminal form because private suits were impractical #corroborates (0.95) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2639
• Regulatory crimes served as cheap administrative enforcement for business regulation #qualifies (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3319