victimless crimes

victimless crimes
Crime where there is no apparent victim and no apparent pain or injury. This class of crime usually involves only consenting adults in activities such as prostitution, sodomy, and gambling where the acts are not public, no one is harmed, and no one complains of the activities.
Some groups advocate legalizing victimless crimes by removing these acts from the law books.
Other critics complain that there is no such thing as a victimless crime; whenever one of these crimes is committed but goes unpunished, individual mores, societal values, and the rule of law are undermined or compromised, rendering society itself the victim.

Dictionary from West's Encyclopedia of American Law. 2005.


victimless crimes
Crime where there is no apparent victim and no apparent pain or injury. This class of crime usually involves only consenting adults in activities such as prostitution, sodomy, and gambling where the acts are not public, no one is harmed, and no one complains of the activities.
 
Some groups advocate legalizing victimless crimes by removing these acts from the law books.
 
Other critics complain that there is no such thing as a victimless crime; whenever one of these crimes is committed but goes unpunished, individual mores, societal values, and the rule of law are undermined or compromised, rendering society itself the victim.

Short Dictionary of (mostly American) Legal Terms and Abbreviations.

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Look at other dictionaries:

  • victimless crimes — Term applied to a crime which generally involves only the criminal, and which has no direct victim, as in the crime of illegal possession of drugs …   Black's law dictionary

  • Victimless crime — A victimless crime is a term used to refer to actions that have been ruled illegal but do not directly violate or threaten the rights of another individual. It often involves consensual acts in which two or more persons agree to commit a criminal …   Wikipedia

  • victimless — adjective Without a victim. He said that prostitution, drug trafficking, and gambling were victimless crimes …   Wiktionary

  • victimless — ˈviktə̇mlə̇s adjective : having no victim victimless crimes …   Useful english dictionary

  • victimless — [[t]vɪ̱ktɪmləs[/t]] ADJ GRADED: usu ADJ n A victimless crime is a crime which is considered to be less serious than other crimes because nobody suffers directly as a result of it. [JOURNALISM] ...the so called victimless crime of prostitution …   English dictionary

  • victimless crime — An activity classified as a crime in the laws of a country, which may therefore be prosecuted by the police or other public authorities, but which appears to have no victim in that there is no individual person who could bring a case for civil… …   Dictionary of sociology

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  • Public order crime — For relevant case law, see Public order crime case law in the United States In criminology public order crime is defined by Siegel (2004) as ...crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to… …   Wikipedia

  • Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do — Infobox Book name = Ain t Nobody s Business If You Do title orig = translator = image caption = author = Peter McWilliams illustrator = cover artist = country = United States language = English series = subject = Victimless crimes genre =… …   Wikipedia

  • Crime — Criminal redirects here. For other uses, see Crime (disambiguation). Justice and Divine Vengeance in pursuit of Crime  1808 oil on canvas …   Wikipedia

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