For such a short book review I feel like they could have listed out one or two example felonies that people likely commit each day. Feels like a weird tease.
That's a charitable reading of the title and the author's intentions. I don't know that their underlying point is even possible to quantify, but in my opinion that doesn't detract from its basic assertion that no one should feel out-of-reach from the kind of motivated prosecution they describe in the one highlighted example.
I also ran across another comment under one of the more critical reviews of the book, and I found it relevant (as did the author of the critical review, in their reply)[4]:
> Also, I think the book also makes an important point implicitly on ‘rule of law’ arguments as they relate to public policy. It’s common for people to argue, for example, that regardless of the merits of illegal immigration or economic regulations, their violators deserve to be punished simply because, “it’s the law.” We can’t just let the law go unenforced. Except the law (often very trivial laws) goes selectively unenforced – and selectively enforced – all the time, as illustrated in Silverglate’s book. It’s already a foregone conclusion that we pick in choose how many resources (if any at all) to devote to enforcing a particular crime, usually depending on how severe it’s considered by most people.
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1. https://www.simplypsychology.org/broken-windows-theory.html
2. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/fal...
3. https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/
4. https://www.econlib.org/three-felonies-a-day/
Edit: formatting
Here's the blub from amazon.com:
>The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day.
I don't know how you can read that and think "three felonies a day was a metaphor!"
>I don't know that their underlying point is even possible to quantify, but in my opinion that doesn't detract from its basic assertion that no one should feel out-of-reach from the kind of motivated prosecution they describe in the one highlighted example.
Sorry, but "they're were still directionally correct" is not an excuse for sloppy writing and outlandish claims. The author didn't have to incorporate the "three felonies a day" into his book. He could have named it literally anything else.