Victimless Crime - Open for everyone

[FromTheSouth]

This thread is for the debaters only. The thread is now open and will close Friday evening at 6:00 PM CST. The sides of the debate can be switched if both debaters agree and PM me their agreement.

XFear will be affirming the topic, The Sign Guy will be negating it.


Resolved: it is undesirable to expend societal resources on the enforcement of laws against victimless crimes.

 

[HBK-aholic]

This could have been a really good debate, I'm surprised the two debaters left this one. Well done on the topic, FTS.

How do we define a victimless crime? That alone would be my stance here. It's very difficult to say a crime hasn't affected anyone, directly or otherwise. It's difficult to argue without having specific examples of what you'd think was 'victimless' and for the most part I think it could be surprising when we look at how many people could have been affected. Not always, but even if there's a possibility, isn't it better to not ignore the crime?

Obviously, crimes such as rape and murder should have more resources put to use. But people who do 'victimless crimes' clearly aren't afraid of breaking the law - what else would they do?

 

[FromTheSouth]

This topic begs for a debate on drug laws. We just had a thread in here about the war on drugs, and to the letter of the topic, the failed war on drugs fits right in.

We spend billions of dollars every year to keep drugs out of this country. The scarcity of intoxicants is what causes the crimes. Selling drugs, taking drugs, importing drugs - these are victimless crimes. If we lift drug laws, we can allocate those billions of dollars to education, to violence prevention, or tax cuts. This is real money that we can save. Once someone does something stupid on drugs, we punish them the same way we do an alcohol. If the person under the influence kills someone, we prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

That being said, I disagree with the topic. While we can scream about unfair drug laws are, it would be stupid to not prosecute victimless crimes. This would mean there would be no speed limit, no drunk driving charges, etc. Speed limits and drunk driving laws are public safety issues. Sure, we can prosecute someone after the fuck up, but why wait for a life to be taken to take action, when we could give speeding tickets? Obviously, the deterrent effect is there. Some people may ignore the speed limit, but I know I watch my speed when I am driving.

Are we to say that allowing someone to carry a gun into a liquor store should be legal? It is a victimless crime, but there is the potential to be a victim. I think we should weight the restriction of the right vs. the potential for harm. In situations were it feasible that there could be significant harms, the restriction of minor liberties should be restricted. It is a victimless crime to have a fully automatic weapon, but the potential number of victims that could arise from possessing this weapon outweight the right to fire 100 shots per second. We would be arming the most violent men in the world by removing the restrictions of the weapons they already have. They could simply walk into Walmart and buy an M-16 with a drum clip and we would be pwoerless to stop them, because the crime is victimless.