You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.

Good evening. Well, chaps, I hope you've done your archery practice this week. We don't want criminals listening to this programme.

Apparently there's still a law on the statute book, dating back to the Middle Ages, that all males over 14 should do a minimum of two hours a week with a long bow in front of a vicar, too.

The police seem a bit slack on following up on this, which is hardly surprising,

but then they seem increasingly reluctant to enforce a whole raft of more modern laws,

which raises more serious questions.

Many forces, it seems, have effectively stopped taking shoplifters to court.

Most are largely turning a blind eye to people using cannabis. Prosecutions for

using a mobile while driving have halved in five years, and they've already signalled they haven't

the time or the manpower to enforce the new law against smoking with a child in the car. What's the

point of laws you can ignore without consequence? Is it enough to say they fill a useful moral purpose as signposts to what society regards as normative behaviour?

There's an interesting paradox here though, while the police are less and less inclined to enforce the law, or all the law, that responsibility is increasingly shifting to us.

Landlords are to be legally required to ensure their tenants are not illegal immigrants.

Teachers already have to report suspected extremist behaviour amongst their pupils.

Professionals working with children may soon be committing a crime

if they don't officially notify all suspicions of child abuse.

Is all this common sense and a long overdue widening of the responsibility

to keep society and its most vulnerable members safe?

Or are we seeing an epidemic of unenforceable laws

and the criminalisation of those who should never be criminals,

including professionals who don't act as informers?

That's our moral most tonight.

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