It’s a specifically delineated crime because that’s what gives the Feds jurisdiction in the first place. The Feds cannot get involved in every crime - and I don’t mean from a capacity perspective, I mean from a jurisdictional and constitutional one. The Feds cannot get involved in a murder, say, unless it involves some kind of federal issue, such as happening on federal land. This is why, for instance, the Feds prosecute some murders as “civil rights violations” - it’s not that a federal murder charge doesn’t exist, it just cannot legally be applied unless there is jurisdiction. One of the potential ways to invoke jurisdiction is through the interstate commerce clause, which gives the Feds jurisdiction in matters related to things being bought/sold/transported across state lines. In those cases, only the Feds have jurisdiction as a matter of law. It’s illegal under state law to molest a child in Pennsylvania, and it’s similarly illegal in New Jersey, but it’s only a federal crime (and a federal crime only) to transport or lure a child across state lines for those purposes. So the name of the crime reflects that legal reasoning.
Strangely enough, the scars on his face makes it look like he may have gotten his ass kicked.
How could have this happened?
Thanks for all your efforts guys, I appreciate it. But this foreigner just isn’t getting the required lightbulb moment.
Last century I used to see the occasional film (movie) where the Mann Act was figured. And I used to think it weird (and still do) that the ‘across state line’ component made so particularly specific an appearance in categorising this act of criminality. “What’s crossing state lines got to do with it?” - was my reaction. And that’s regardless of jurisdiction or more general ideas of federalism. Swiss cantons are presumably similar (but not the same).
You say the Feds can’t get involved in any crime, and I’m fine with that. It’s a laudable idea and what I like about the USA, that the actual ‘big’ government doesn’t concern itself with things that can be handled adequately at state level. But even though my difficulties aren’t with the federalism side of things I must say I’ve a problem here because my most recent way of describing my problem was - essentially - why isn’t there a crime of ‘bank robbery across state lines’ (as opposed to ordinary bank robbery)? Surely one of the main reasons the FBI was set up was for precisely this? It may well be that ‘bank robbery’ itself is already a federal crime, but the ‘across state lines’ isn’t in the name of the crime, iyswim.
Is this all just a problem of inconsistency in nomenclature? That would be a lightbulb job, but a disappointing and boring one.
I don’t think the problem is nomenclature. You asked if ‘across state lines’ made a crime worse. I replied that isn’t always the case, and hopefully I’ll be able to better explain myself.
The reason they may not be “more severe” is because some laws can only ever exist at a federal level. For example: counterfeiting. Our money is controlled by the Federal Reserve (it’s a national thing), and is the same for all states, so counterfeiting our money is always a federal crime. Other forms of counterfeiting are also investigated and tried federally because copyright law is also federal law. There is no correlating state law - so there’s no “lower” (state or local) law to compare it to. There’s no way to make the crime “less bad”.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/775/Counterfeiting.html
In those cases, it’s not a case of “locals can’t cope” - it’s a case of unification. Typically, our federal laws are only in place for unification of enforcement. That’s why when a lawbreaker crosses state lines, the crime typically moves into federal territory.
@waetherman’s example about murder omitted the fact that it too, is a crime that becomes federal if it involves multiple states: “If the victim is a federal official, an ambassador, consul or other foreign official under the protection of the United States, or if the crime took place on federal property or involved crossing state lines, or in a manner that substantially affects interstate commerce or national security, then the federal government also has jurisdiction.” (my bolds) All of those would be covered by the feds. In part, that’s because our states have different punishments for murder - including some allowing, and some not allowing - the death penalty. So when a person murders in several states, we need one law to cover it all. Also, it’s because a federal crime is always handled federally. Some murders have federal components.
You asked about ‘bank robbery across state lines’. Robbing any bank insured by the FDIC is a federal crime because the deposits there are insured by the Fed. You don’t even have to cross state lines or rob more than one.
Deleted by the author for redundancy.
Still no ‘Aha!’ I’m afraid. All these examples explain why a crime is, or is not, handled at State (as opposed to United States) level (in the UK we are blessed with the simplicity of the single word State having only one fairly unambiguous use). Which I’ve never had any difficulty with. And I know this may be beginning to seem to be deliberate obtuseness on my part but it really isn’t.
I still don’t get the specificity of the state-line-crossing terminology in crimes covered by things like the Mann Act. The nearest I can get to grips with it is with the idea of sex-trafficking, which perforce involves crossing some kind of boundary. But why - so damn specifically - state? Why not city, parish, county? It just seems so arbitrary. Surely the criminality of trafficking is in the movement from familiarity to unfamiliarity. [OK there’s possibly something there to argue about].
I’m going to have to think about this. Maybe it’s a slow-burn dawn thing. Sorry!
I think you’re making the mistake of thinking about this logically instead of historically. The USA wasn’t designed to be the way it is now; it grew out of a thousand decisions about how to reconcile states’ rights with the federal government and expansion to the west of the continent and the introduction of new technology (such as railroads, the telegraph, that kind of thing).
The “crossing the state line” charges mostly solve the problem of jurisdiction. If a creeper transports a child from Alabama to Mississippi to do something horrible, there’s been a crime that spans two states. Prosecuting separately in those two states (or cities/counties in those states) is a pain since you’d need to transport the prisoner, they couldn’t serve prison time in both states at the same time, etc. The Feds can handle it much more effectively.
It doesn’t make the crime any better or worse, some states are much more draconian than the Feds., some less, it just makes it more efficient and effective to prosecute without having two states with possibly differing laws having to sort out a problem. The Feds handle inter-state crimes.
Secondly child predators often travel around, so the FBI has a division to investigate/prosecute and there are Federal child predator laws to more effectively deal with the problem. Since things like child porn, child sex slavery, and other related horrible things travel across state lines a lot the Feds are more effective at fighting it.
Hmm. Maybe. But UK law’s had a lot longer to do the same and generally depart from a beautifully constructed system so you’d think I’d’ve already taken that into account. But maybe my immersion within it blinds me to its idioweirdnesses. I just can’t think of any parallels in UK law which have left me similarly perplexed.
Criminal laws have a tendency to be set at the state level, not city or county. Having different rules for what constitutes murder versus involuntary manslaughter depending on which side of Main Street you were on at the time would be nuts.
The Mann Act was set up in the early part of the 20th century because of a growing concern that white women and girls were being enticed into having sex/prostitution (the two were almost equally feared) when they moved from their pure rural family life to the big city in search of jobs. Literally, it specifics women and girls, not people, and was used almost exclusively to protect white females as opposed to those of other races.
One of the difficulties of having so many different layers of bureaucracy, rules, laws, etc. is that you have to work with what you have. For example, although denouncement of polygamy used to be required for citizenship there is no federal law against it, so the Mann Act has been used as a way to prosecute polygamists who choose underage brides (which is pretty much all of them)…if they cross state lines, boom, there’s something they can be charged with.
It’s still being used because it’s what we have to work with.
That’s kinda exactly my point. Sex-trafficking is sex-trafficking is sex-trafficking. What’s crossing state lines got to do with it? Can’t you sex-traffic within a state?
I think I’m flogging a dead horse here. With all this back and forth, I’m forced to conclude that there’s something in my brain, something personal to me, which isn’t ever going to understand why a crime such as that is so specifically tied in with statehood.
Historical accident seems the best explanation so far.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. US law is just… odd in some ways. Some points that might help you understand:
Transporting a minor across state lines with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity (18 USC section 2423) is, in and of itself, a crime. Technically, the criminal doesn’t have to actually engage in criminal sexual activity, merely transport the minor with the intent to do so. When a criminal transports the minor and then engages in criminal sexual activity with the minor (rape, forcing the child into prostitution, etc) the feds (a) get jurisdiction and (b) can stack the charges so the criminal is charged with BOTH the transport with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and the state laws the criminal violated when engaging in the criminal sexual activity. Or the feds can nail a criminal for transporting the minor to a second criminal who then rapes the child.
Other federal crimes do require crossing state lines, like the transportation of stolen vehicles (18 USC section 2312) or transportation of stolen goods (18 USC section 2314). The transportation of the stolen items is, in and of itself, a crime. The criminal transporting the stolen items doesn’t necessarily have to be the person who stole them in the first place. It would be one of these laws (probably) that bank robbers who are robbing banks in different states would be charged with, rather than a robbery-across-state-lines law.
There are crimes, on a state level, that are similar to the transporting-minor-for-criminal-sexual-activity-law and state laws that would cover that situation. Those laws would be titled things like: soliciting a minor to engage in sexual activity or trafficking of persons (in Texas, that law is Penal Code section 20A.02). Though some of these laws, like the Texas one, require the criminal sexual activity to have happened, instead of the criminal just planning on it.
I hope that helps!
I thought - for a moment there - it finally did and I was ready to shower you with gratitude! But I just got a couple of more gaaahhh! moments instead of lightbulbs. Here’s why (and I’m very aware of how tiresome this must be for a bb thread watcher).
I nearly thought ‘oh that’s what I was missing’ but again. if it’s transport alone (as opposed to transport with, umm, completion [yuck]) why bring state lines into it? In any case it completely changes the game as soon as one introduces intent. If the perp doesn’t him/her self engage in the sexual act or the endgame procurement act - how do you prove intent? That’s one hell of a law right there. One which could be used by a malicious officer against any innocent person moving a kid from one state to another. But that’s a whole other discussion. Please let’s not get into that one 
Then there was:
Again, nearly a lightbulb but - exasperatingly - just back to a gaaahh again. If you want to make transportation of X a federal crime (against the state - as opposed to a state - iyswim) then why not just do it? Make it so. Is it simply unconstitutional and you’ve not allowed yourselves to do that?
Why bring crossing state lines into it? There’s an almost (but not quite) unspoken implication there that transport of stolen goods within a state is not a crime. Which I’m fairly sure you’re not intending to suggest.
I think your confusion stems from one of the weirdest things about US law: the legal basis for making federal laws. I’m sure you know the US is a federation with fairly strong states. What you may not know is the US constitution specifically lists the powers of the federal government. Any power not specifically listed as belonging to the federal government belongs to the states. The US congress can only make a law if the area the law regulates is one of the ones listed. For example, congress can make laws about coining and valuing money because the power to coin money and regulate its value is specifically given to Congress.
One of the powers congress uses a whole lot, and has stretched to some pretty amazing lengths, is the commerce clause. It says congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with the Native American tribes. This is where the whole crossing-state-lines thing comes in. If some activity involves crossing state lines, then that activity is related to interstate commerce and congress can make laws regulating the activity. So while congress cannot constitutionally make a law that says “transportation of X is illegal” it can make a law that says “transportation of X across state lines is illegal.” So many of the federal criminal laws must involve crossing state lines so congress can point at the commerce clause and say “see?! The constitution says we can totally do that.”
Thanks for your clear question. I appreciate the sincerity and persistence of your posts.
Since you say are a “foreigner” (which you’re not – you’re just, apparently, not an American Citizen), I will take the liberty of being didactic. I will group my response in paragraphs. If you already know what I am saying, skip to the next paragraph.
American legal, police, and judicial structures are not setup to be efficient, BY DESIGN. In fact, these are set up to accommodate enormous contradiction and inefficiency.[1] Why?
To understand, one must return to the 18th century roots of the American Polity ( here is where I get didactic).
What became the USA started as independent, isolated 17th century outposts – the “colonies.” These colonies had radically different foundational ethics: English aristocratic slave holders (Virginia), Protestant Religious Fanatics ( Massachusetts), Dutch commercial traders (New York), Catholic Refugees ( Maryland), “Quaker” Utopianists (Pennsylvania), etc. As these colonies grew and became economically integrated across the 18th century, logistics forced them to explore new methods of political co-ordination. After many failed experiments, the solution found was “federalism”. Each colony became a “state” that had wide latitude over it’s internal affairs, especially with regards to policing and the judiciary. The Federal government was in charge of foreign policy, war, tariff policy, disputes between states or between citizens of different states, and not much else.
As the 18th century became the 21st, this delineation of responsibilities between state and federal governments had to be (and continues to be) constantly re-negotiated, occasionally by violence. What you may know as “The American Civil War” was taught to me as “The War Between the States.” Semantics matter.
The Federal system makes for a lot of duplication and in-efficiency. But it also give the system a lot flexibility. The Federal government sees possession of Marijuana as a VERY MAJOR CRIME. But the state of Colorado just said, “to hell with that. We’re putting marijuana on the same legal footing as alcohol”. And, so long as that Colorado pot doesn’t cross a state line, there is precious little the Feds can do about it.[2]
Constitutionally, this is seen most succinctly US Constitutions “Bill of Rights”: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Let’s return to your question “why does crossing a state line matter matter?”
You applied (very good) ethical and moral arguments to argue that state lines shouldn’t mater. But, from the American perspective, your ethical and moral arguments are irrelevant. It’s about governance, not universal ethics. Within your arguments, the best answer I can give is “Because the ethics underlying the laws can (and do) change at state boundaries”
Our governance was setup to be contradictory. US political structures are “Illogical” and “wasteful” by careful, logical design. This is the great strength of the American Political system – it allows a profusion of dis-agreement and deviance within the system without threatening the foundational political compact.
But it does make for confusing criminal indictments.
[1] In my experience, Canadians and Japanese are quite baffled by this, but Germans tend to see the see the benefits of the American system, but think we have a pretty silly way of organizing things.
[2] Actually, as the California experience shows, the Feds have many ways to screw with people in states with Medical Marijuana laws, but the legal back flips the Feds have to go through to bully and bribe local officials into harassing pot dispensaries illustrates rather than refutes my point.
Because criminal laws are either state or federal…someone transporting anything across a state line is often trying to take advantage of a more lenient state law on the other side. That goes for buying cigarettes, fireworks, alcohol, etc…not just children.
Amending the federal Constitution is a very complex and lengthy process that has only been successful 17 times after the Bill of Rights (the first 10) in 1791.
Fun fact: the last one, Amendment 27, took 202 years to be ratified!
Hello again. I just read your comment asking, “Why not city, parish, county?” and for that, I’ll say this. Our U.S. laws fall, most generally, at three basic levels: local, state, and federal. While it isn’t impossible for a person to be sex trafficked in their home town, it is an incredibly risky thing for the people doing the trafficking. Usually at least several cities will be involved, so it is not usually anything less than a state crime.
Absolutely you can sex traffic within a state. That’s why I gave my example showing that Kansas had absolutely no law against doing so specifically to minors until just year. Without such a law in place, what ends up happening is that the victims (now prostitutes) get all the legal weight thrown at them. Meanwhile the traffickers just move on. Kansas is far from alone, so I wasn’t trying to target the state. Rather, I think it’s a good thing that they put a crime-specific law into place. As I explained before, for some laws we have states that may have no law at all.
I think what you’re missing is just how widely varied our state laws are, and how much that matters. On another thread I gave this example (not making any comment about the different laws, just pointing them out): a woman can be living in a state where there is no wait for an abortion if she has already seen a doctor. She can travel one state over and then find there is a 72-hour wait with required reading. (In some cases this makes the procedure take two trips.) She can travel another direction and find out that abortions have become all but illegal - allowed in emergencies only, requiring state-mandated counseling and an ultrasound. This creates confusion and frustration for women already going through a terrifically emotional time, but we allow states to write their own laws, and it doesn’t matter where your home is, but where you are.
Because our states are allowed to write their own laws, it creates certain situations where we need to involve the feds just to ensure a person is getting a fair trial and that everyone can agree on the resolution so that there will be a trial (and safe investigation on the right scale). It isn’t fair to judge a person under different rules. It also isn’t fair to give a person the worst version of the punishment for their crimes any more than it is to give them the lightest. People in the U.S. are supposed to be guaranteed a “swift and speedy trial” that is also “fair”. By using a federal law when a crime goes beyond one state’s border, it ensures that we are doing just that. A person won’t have to be tried separately in separate states, no one state will have to hold them while they are serving time for crimes in both states, etc. (They won’t take on the cost for both parties.) By trying the crimes one time under one law, we can best guarantee that we are following “fair trial” instruction. It’s the fairest thing for all parties.
Here’s one last thing you may be missing, and this may be your problem with nomenclature. It’s something I occasionally explain to people who haven’t ever visited the the U.S. - our physical size. We’re a group of 50 states, each one the size of a country. California is the size of France. So, when you try compare what works other places to the U.S., it doesn’t tend to make much sense. It’s not right to think of us like the UK - we’re more similar, in size and division of law, to the EU. Even when you say that, it doesn’t make sense, because we really do have a basic set of legal tenets that all our state laws must obey - our Constitution.
Thanks everybody. I’ll just pick on a few points.
Whilst I didn’t ‘know’ know that, I’d’ve assumed something like it anyway. It makes sense to stipulate that - upon encountering a situation involving two jurisdictional boundaries, not only may you take the matter to the next higher jurisdiction, you must do so.
To leave it at ‘may’ leaves you subject to the whims of the two (or more) particular lower level agencies involved at that time in that political climate. Clearly you’d deprecate that since you’d wish to minimise ‘moody’ contaminations of process. One would hope that the next level up would be, in some sense, ‘cooler’ and less subject to whim as they are more removed from the party under prosecution and should be even less biased than the lower level agencies ought to be.
[Pragmatically, we know that - mostly - the humans occupying these offices, at whatever level, are in the same wealthy white male club, but - ftsoa - we’re trusting their operational integrity]
So, yes, with an ‘everything not specifically forbidden is permitted’ approach to something organised like that, it makes perfect sense.and is consistent with allowing process of justice at the lowest level possible involving one agency at the level capable of doing it. Now I’ve possibly made that less clear.
Naturally I like this because of the ‘very good’ applied to my argument. But I like it for another reason, which is the concluding sentence, which - in particular - seems to capture the spirit of the Mann Act at the time it was, umm, enacted.
And that it admits to there being no requirement for efficiency of jurisprudential process. (Though you’re drawing attention to it in a manner which suggests I’d be disturbed, or at least surprised, by this, which I’m not. I wouldn’t count myself as a justice perfectionist and do indeed see the value of a certain flexibility in a pragmatic, as opposed to an idealised, justice system).
I guess, in your national critic-model classification, I’m nearest to being a German here.
I’d expect that, for a nation state so relatively recently invented, it would have learned an awful lot from history and would therefore be in a good position to get the legal system almost right first time. Obviously technology affects things, and amendments would be needed anyway, for tweaking, and the inter-tweak-gap would get longer and longer.
EDIT: I forgot to conclude with the observation I meant to make in the first place which was to the effect that this lengthy topic-sidetrack, taking this long to explain, suggests that maybe I wasn’t so totally insane to be perplexed about it in the first place.
I don’t think I’m missing that sort of justification. In the UK - despite or relatively small geographical extent - we’re quite familiar with the idea of what happens to you being dependent upon where you are. We have a well-known phrase-or-saying for it, the postcode lottery. And we also have multi-tiered authorities in all sorts of decision making processes, including legal.
That’s why I think what might be the problem is your interpretation of the word “state” and scale differences. Take a look at this direct size comparison of the U.S. to the UK.
http://www.sarmonster.net/UK.htm
I don’t know where you are in the UK, but for example - England is a country that is a part of the sovereign state of the UK. When talking about the U.S., we aren’t subdivided into countries from our union, but states: each one the size of a country - and many with the financial power of a country (some are major international financial powers).
So, in the UK, you have a sovereign state made up of several countries, and those countries are only subdivided into local areas (cities, parishes, and counties) with no “state” division like we have. Your closest equivalent would be “counties”.
In the U.S., we are a single country, made up of several states, each one with local areas (cities, parishes, and counties - that rest within states) inside it.
