What is a Victimless Crime? (with pictures) – wiseGEEK

alibay19 Post 10

If bigamy, gambling, ticket scalping, riding bike without a helmet and if possible having sexual intercourse without marrying each other is a victimless crime, how can all this be explained?

Although it is believed that religion is the opium of the masses, I still believe that sentencing prostitutes and drug users is a very good idea.

What I don't understand is how the prosecutor has standing in victimless crimes regarding the doctrine of Corpus delicti.

If the doctrine of Corpus delecti requires (rightly IMO) that "1) The occurrence of the specific injury; and 2) some intentional, knowing act as the source of the injury.", then how does the prosecutor establish standing without a plausible victim.

Regarding Donald Bales assertions, that reasoning could be used to establish an all-pervasive totalitarian state that dictates the diets of all citizens, i.e., if the government can tell citizens what drugs they can use on the grounds that some drugs are injurious to public health, then they should also be able to tell everyone how much salt, fat, sugar etc each person is permitted to eat. Eating too much ice cream should carry an equal or greater sentence than smoking pot, because ice cream is quite demonstrably worse for one's health.

How does a court acquire jurisdiction without an injury? There is case after case stating that an injury is a requirement for standing or corpus delicti.

Great article/definition Michael!

While I don't smoke marijuana/hemp, I just don't see (Constitutionally) how government can outlaw a plant.

It's not manufactured like other drugs; it's grown then dried (as far as I know). If the government just decriminalized this one "drug", not only would it significantly reduce prison population and take pressure off of the judicial system, but it could again be manufactured for rope, clothes, fuel, paper, etc. (an estimated 50,000 products!) Of course the one manufactured is slightly different from the one smoked (lower THC?) but law enforcement can't readily tell the difference so it's all outlawed.

@mani65ng and Diwiyana: A victim is a person who is directly injured, destroyed, sacrificed, harmed, duped, mistreated, or oppressed by

@anon32602: Again you aren't directly harmed by the people who use the ER; you are directly harmed by an agent (the government). It is the government that makes you a victim via unconstitutional agencies, laws, and statutes. Health care was better before the government got involved and it's possible for it to be again, but not probable because of all the sheeple who don't understand the Constitution, government's role, economics, etc.

Now that emergency care in ER's and admission to hospital is also mandated, behaviors that would seem to impact only the individual have to be viewed in a somewhat different way. Granted that alcohol or drug use or smoking do not harm me directly, still I will be forced to pay for the consequences of these personal acts but my tax dollars and by the increase in my health insurance premiums. So, in a sense, I become the victim (am harmed) by the acts of other individuals. A government that undertakes to provide cradle to grave care will inevitably be led to regulate the behavior of individuals who cause increased costs.

If the government doesn't ask for it, citizens who

Some think that there should never be any bad consequences for bad behavior. That conflicts with the laws of nature-and nature will win every time.

Donald W. Bales

Prostitution unless spread by a criminal syndicate should not be criminalized but is in most all US states because we are a theocracy, not a democracy and have been controlled by religious tenets in blatant violation of our constitution (and it matters *not* that the silly word "God" appears in our bill of rights) as the already established theocracy demanded it: we are no different in *this* respect from Islamic regimes as in all theocracies, the last word is always the domain of a religious tyrant( priest rabbi. Imam, pastor-you name the miscreant- it matters little because these monsters are the criminals who enslave us insidiously and then abuse us one way or another. Our schools zero tolerance policy

criminalize an 81 Mgs aspirin exactly like a reefer. In reality neither is but academic stupidity certainly is and the school boards that dictate that sort of policy should be channeled to a maximum security prison as a temporary holding facility until we reopen Alcatraz where all prisoners will be put to hard labor for life, not less: control freaks are dictators who should not be allowed the freedom of criminalizing medicines. Control freaks are criminals who manage to pass a rule that paralyzes others.

Good definition! Of course, in arguments over whether or not a particular law should be removed from the books, people disagree about which crimes really are victimless. Some feminists, for example, argue that the prostitute actually is the victim of prostitution, even though she seems to be agreeing to the sex-for-money contract of her own free will. She presumably wouldn't do it if she had other options. I don't know how many actual prostitutes have been surveyed for their opinions on the topic, though. Lots of convicted criminals also like to argue that their victims really wanted to be victims and so weren't truly victims anyway.

How are there no victims in victimless crimes?

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What is a Victimless Crime? (with pictures) - wiseGEEK