Victimless Crimes Liberal Democrats

The LDP does not generally support the criminalisation of victimless crimes and seeks to reduce the intrusion of government into these areas.

Victimless crime is a term used to refer to behaviour that is illegal but does not violate or threaten the rights of anyone else. It can include situations where an individual acts alone as well as consensual acts in which two or more persons agree to commit a criminal offence in which no other person is involved.

The issue in situations of victimless crime is the same. Society has created a formal framework of laws to prohibit types of conduct thought to be against the public interest. Laws proscribing homicide, assaults and rape are common to most cultures. Thus, when the supposed victim freely consents to be the victim in one of these crimes, the question is whether the state should make an exception from the law for this situation.

Take assisted suicide as an example. If one person intentionally takes the life of another, this is usually murder. If the motive for this is to collect the inheritance, society has no difficulty in ignoring the motive and convicting the killer. But if the motive is to relieve the suffering of the victim by providing a clean death that would otherwise be denied, can society so quickly reject the motive?

It is a case of balancing the harms. On the one hand, society could impose pain and suffering on the victim by forcing him or her to endure a long decline into death. Or society could permit a system for terminating life under controlled circumstances so that the victims wishes could be respected without exposing others to the criminal system for assisting in realising those wishes.

But victimless crimes are not always so weighty. Some examples of low level victimless activities that may be criminalised include:

Victimless crimes usually regarded more seriously include:

This includes the elderly and seriously ill as well as less obvious scenarios. For example, helping someone such as a celebrity facing exposure for socially unacceptable behaviour who seeks a gun or other means to end life; a driver trapped in a burning tanker full of gasoline who begs a passing armed police officer toshoot him rather than let him burn to death; a person who suffers traumatic injury in a road accident and wishes to avoid the humiliation and pain of a lingering slow death.

These situations are distinguishable from soliciting the cessation of life-sustaining treatment so that an injured or illperson may die a natural death, or leaving instructions not to resuscitate in the event of death.

Consideration of victimless crime involving more than one participant needs to take account of whether all the participants are capable of giving genuine consent. This may not be the case if one or more of the participants are:

Libertarianism focuses on the autonomy of the individual, asserting each persons right to live their lives with the least possible interference from the law. Libertarians do not necessarily approve, sanction or endorse the victimless action that is criminalised. Indeed, they may strongly disapprove.

Where they differ from non-libertarians is their belief that the government should be exceedingly reluctant to intervene. People are entitled to live their lives and make their own choices whether or not those choices are wise or the same as others would make, provided they do so voluntarily and without infringing the rights of others.

Without necessarily supporting, advocating or approving of them, the LDP does not generally support the criminalisation of victimless crimes. Wherever possible it will seek to reduce the intrusion of government into these areas.

It nonetheless recognises that not all victimless crimes are capable of being entirely de-regulated. It acknowledges there may be unintended coercive consequences from re-legalisation and that some regulation may be warranted in specific instances.

The LDP also favours strong sanctions against crimes that infringe the rights of others, whether deliberately or through negligence.

Further information

Mandatory bicycle helmets not only are such laws offensive to liberty, but they do not achieve their aim.

See the original post here:

Victimless Crimes Liberal Democrats