Jim Sensenbrenner: “During the last half of the 20th century, Congress has expanded the criminal code almost exponentially. According to a…”

“During the last half of the 20th century, Congress has expanded the criminal code almost exponentially. According to a study conducted by the Task Force on Federalization of Criminal Law of the Criminal Section of the American Bar Association, more than 40 percent of the Federal criminal provisions enacted since the Civil War have been enacted since 1970. In addition to the increased responsibility placed on Federal law enforcement agencies, this explosion of lawmaking has resulted in the enactment of numerous technical mistakes which litter the criminal code. This legislation corrects those mistakes. Specifically, H.R. 2137 makes over 60 separate technical changes to various criminal statutes by correcting missing and incorrect words, margins, punctuation, redundancies, outmoded fine amounts, cross references, and other technical and clerical errors. Correcting mistakes in the criminal code is important to the thousands of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and Federal law enforcement officials throughout the Nation who rely on the accuracy of the criminal code on a daily basis.”