North Carolina is taking stock of its burdensome criminal code. The federal code needs revision, too. //

In the case of the federal government, experts estimate that there are more than 300,000 regulatory offenses carrying potential criminal penalties. Americans have been sent to prison for breaking laws they didn’t even know existed and which did not involve inherently blameworthy conduct.

Taking note of this problem, North Carolina passed a law in 2018 that required state and local agencies to report to the legislature all of their rules that carried criminal penalties. Many agencies failed to comply, and so, last month, the state enacted SB 584.

Section 3 of the law sets a new compliance deadline, and Section 5 adds a penalty for noncompliance: Any agency that fails to report to the legislature in a timely manner loses its power to enforce new criminal rules for two years.

Additionally, Section 6 automatically refers all new criminal regulations proposed by state agencies to the legislature’s General Statutes Commission, which will then review them and make recommendations to the general session whether any of the regulations should have their criminal penalties removed.