Regulatory crimes served as cheap administrative enforcement for business regulation

Evidence

In every state, each extension of governmental power, each new form of regulation, brought in a new batch of criminal law. Any important statute—​on railroads, banks, and corporations; or the marketing of milk, cheese, fruit, or coal; or concerning taxation, elections and voting, or licensing an occupation—​ included at the end a sentence or two imposing criminal sanctions on violators. No doubt no one enforced the criminal parts of these laws. These statutes are really part of the history of regulation of business, rather than the history of criminal justice. But it would be wrong to write these regulatory crimes off completely. Not that these laws reflected deep social norms, or outlawed behav­ ior that outraged the people’s sense of morality. Rather, these were decisions to socialize responsibility for enforcing certain aspects of law. … Criminal law was a kind of low-​level, low-​paid administrative aid. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3319

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on the earlier chapter-43 claim that regulatory crimes emerged to solve diffuse-harm problems no private litigant would pursue — this is the fuller mechanism account. — connects to: Regulatory crimes emerged to solve diffuse-harm enforcement problems no private litigant would pursue. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1736; Regulatory laws took criminal form because private suits were impractical — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2639