In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard conceptualizes “the defense of the rights of person and property” as the foundation of libertarian law. This serves as an ethical benchmark against which to ensure that the law does not stray into becoming an instrument of aggression.

Measured against that benchmark, it is clear that many laws have strayed far away from the ethical foundations of human liberty. Law enforcement agencies now manage interpersonal relations between different groups in society through the framework of equality, anti-discrimination, and civil rights. As Rothbard explains, this gives the state increasing power to control all aspects of citizens’ lives:

...the State does not merely use coercion to acquire its own revenue, to hire propagandists to advance its power, and to arrogate to itself and to enforce a compulsory monopoly of such vital services as police protection, firefighting, transportation, and postal service. For the State does many other things as well… Often it pushes its way into controlling the morality and the very daily lives of its subjects……

In enforcing that duty, the police often turn a blind eye to crimes perpetrated by specific races or religious groups which enjoy “a relevant protected characteristic” under equality law. After all, the police are duty bound to ensure that these protected persons are not harassed or victimized, and to “foster good relations” between them and British people who do not share their “relevant protected characteristic.” In exercise of that duty, police often decide that charging members of protected groups with crimes would not be in the public interest as it would not help to advance the “noble goal” of “fostering good relations.” Writing in The Telegraph, the former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman highlights cases of thousands of young girls whom police failed to protect for fear that arresting the criminals would undermine police efforts to maintain good community relations: