JLF Legal Fellow writes in the Coastland Times about North Carolina’s outdated and messy criminal code. Some in the General Assembly want to clean it up and make it more clear and more fair.

Thanks to the 2018 Recodification Working Group bill, we have much of the information we need to begin the Herculean task of revising the criminal code. But rapid changes in the criminal code make that data obsolete, requiring legislators and criminal law experts to hit a swiftly moving target. SB 584 keeps that information relevant by tapping the brakes on the creation of new crimes. In this way, SB 584 is another major step toward creating a criminal justice system that is more effective, more efficient, and fairer.

Time to get together and work on ideas to bring North Carolina’s criminal code up to date.