Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (May 7, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance hearing on the overcriminalization of federal statutory and regulatory offenses.

Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.

WATCH  Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance
Hearing on “Criminalizing America: The Growth of Federal Offenses and Regulatory Overreach”
May 7, 2025

Thank you, Chairman Biggs, and thank you to the witnesses for being with us here today.

Criminal defense attorney and author, Mike Chase, has documented some of the most preposterous crimes in the federal code. For example, it’s a federal crime to sell Swiss cheese without holes in it. It’s also a federal crime to receive through interstate commerce a small toy ball that doesn’t contain a warning that says, “this toy is a small ball.” And apparently it is still a crime to sell canned green beans and call them stringless unless you’re sure they are in fact stringless.

Although prosecutors are unlikely to charge these ridiculous crimes on their own, overcriminalization is a serious problem in this country—because it’s an invitation to arbitrary prosecution and selective political prosecution.

At a base level, we can see and quantify who the overcriminalization problem affects disproportionately and most directly—people who are at a social or economic disadvantage, minority communities, immigrants, and people with disabilities. Between federal, state, local and tribal criminal justice systems, nearly 2 million people in the United States are incarcerated, which costs taxpayers at least $182 billion a year.

Congress often crafts new criminal offenses and expands existing crimes without considering whether the federal government should even be involved in the underlying conduct. Recent studies estimate that there are nearly 5,000 statutory federal crimes and between 300,000 to 400,000 crimes in the regulatory code. According to one study, Congress created 56 new crimes every year from 2000 to 2008, despite the fact that crime rates were uncommonly low during this time period. While federal criminal law plays a vital role in protecting the public, it should complement state law, rather than duplicate it. 

Some individuals have seemingly been able to escape the trend of overcriminalization. Criminal prosecutions of white-collar crimes, from public corruption to tax evasion, have been declining for decades. Under the current Administration, those statistics are likely to plummet given Trump’s Department of Justice gutted the Department’s top anti-corruption unit and removed its power to charge politicians and public officials for bribery and extortion, disbanded anticorruption task forces, and purged veteran prosecutors and agents who are dedicated to public safety and have superior performance evaluations but have run afoul of the new deranged right-wing political correctness standards of the Administration. These changes have taken a bad situation and made it worse.  

Instead of playing politics and trying to prove who is toughest on crime, Congress should work in a bipartisan manner to craft evidence-based policy that keeps all of us safe. We could do more to fight crime by addressing underlying issues that give rise to crime, and thoroughly studying the criminal code.

During the House Judiciary Committee’s consideration of Republican’s reconciliation bill last week, I attempted to restore funding to critical grant programs cut by DOGE. Unfortunately my Republican colleagues refused to even discuss these grants and voted against our amendment to restore funding to these programs, addressing the needs of crime victims, victims of rape and sexual assault.

I think we can all agree we need to make sure that our federal criminal laws are crystal clear and fairly enforced. We cannot have a criminal justice system that holds the President’s allies above the law—gutting enforcement of fraud and corruption offenses and pardoning cop beaters, drug dealers, and fraudsters who happen to be allies of the President while threatening criminal prosecution against journalists, politicians, and peaceful protesters who speak out against him. 

I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that the federal criminal code and its enforcement serves the public safety of all the people. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.