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Limitations Of Law Enforcement

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In the United States of America, the work of law enforcement is hit hard with various polices and limitations that can be good for the accused criminal, but bad for the each of the citizens in the surrounding community that was affected by the accused perpetrator. Even though there are lot of limitations on how law enforcement does their work on a daily basis, there are two main limitations in criminal law that stand out amongst the rest. These two concepts of criminal law that affect the day to day operations of the law enforcement profession are known as statute of limitations and ex post facto laws. Each of the factors associated with these two concepts severely impact the work of law enforcement in some way shape or form. The first concept that impacts the work of law enforcement is ex post facto laws. Ex post facto is Latin for “after the fact” and is used to describe regulations that criminalize a certain type of conduct that was legal when the conduct was originally performed (“Ex Post Facto,” 2007). Because of the United States Constitution, these actions are prohibited from being used by the government. The main reason why this protection is in effect in order to avoid having the government spontaneously create laws just because they deem that the action was wrong in their opinion. An example of this can be seen in a situation where a person hugs a friend and the government spontaneously creates a law that hugging a friend is punishable under law, police officers

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