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It is my considered opinion that a crime is an act which is morally
wrong, when a specific individual or group wrongfully suffers a tangible loss
as a result of an unjust action by another individual or group: i.e., when an
identifiable victim is injured by a conscious act
undertaken by the crime's perpetrator against the victim: If there's no
victim, then there's no crime - although the act in question may
be illegal. During 1982, Libertarians in Rochester, NY introduced me
to the idea that a crime occurs when someone initiates the use of force
against another person. At the time, and ever since, I have spent a lot of
mental effort trying to identify situations where an act should be
called a crime that does not involve the initiation of the use of
force - and have been unable to find any. Thus, the definition of what a
crime is that I have come to accept is as follows:
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An entity is a natural, artificial, real, corporate, or
otherwise self-aware individual. A crime occurs when an
entity (the perpetrator) initiates the use of
force against another entity (the victim) and
causes the victim to suffer a specific, tangible and
identifiable injury as a result of that initiation of the use
of force.
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Without much effort, anyone can easily think of many laws prohibiting things
that do not fit the criteria identified above. (I'll discuss some of them
below.) What, then, are these laws that allegedly turn innocent acts into ones
that are called criminal? The laws themselves are crimes perpetrated by
the government that imposes them against the populace they are imposed
on. Where the only legitimate purpose of a government is to
protect the rights of the citizens it governs, such laws are the seeds of
the ultimate downfall of the government that makes them: People will not long
respect a government that seeks to punish them for things they know to be
acceptable activities, and when crime is the way of a government, its subjects
will soon follow its example.
A law student tried to tell me that laws which prohibit things where there is
no victim, where there is no initiation of the use of force, are ones that
create statutory crimes. According to this person's
opinion, the illegal acts are a "crime" because the statute says they
are. (I am appalled at how willing this person is to blindly let anyone in
power decide what is right or wrong!) However, if there is no victim, the
only reason an act would be illegal is because the opinion of
the government in power at the time the act is outlawed is that
the act is "wrong." What gives one group (government) the right to impose
their opinion on other people, against their will?
NOTHING, if the truth be known and recognized: By
imposing their opinion against the will of their subjects, the
government has initiated the use of force against the populace, and
have become criminals by doing so. Anyone incarcerated as a result of
violating a law where nothing more than opinion is used as its justification
(i.e., there was no victim as a result of the action undertaken by the
person who is incarcerated) is a political prisoner of the government:
Their only "crime" is that of having a different opinion from those in
power.
In all cases where a person is held as a political prisoner, the
prisoner is the victim, and the government that holds
them is the criminal.
Another class of wrongful laws are those which define "victimless crimes:" By
using an oxymoron to classify these acts, the government itself is admitting
the error in their ways: If there's no victim, there is no
crime.
Who is injured by prostitution or recreational drug use, for example?
In the case of prostitution, where two adults enter into a business
relationship for the gratification of one's desires by the other in exchange
for money or other compensation, there is no victim and punishing
either party for the transaction is unjust. (If the prostitute is a child, or
otherwise incapable of voluntarily entering into the transaction, the "buyer"
has initiated the use of force, which is a crime - but in that case, the crime
is not prostitution, but instead sexual misconduct, which is a
completely different matter.)
In the case of recreational drug use, the only person who may be
injured by the drug use itself is the user - and people
cannot commit a crime against themselves, only against another
individual. The biggest direct problem with recreational drugs is the users
tend to lose their ability to discern right and wrong, and end up committing
crimes during their state of temporary insanity. If a person knowingly elects
to use a recreational drug, and knows the effects it has on their inhibitions,
they assume all responsibility for their actions while under the influence
of the drug at the time they take it - and must be held accountable for
any crimes they commit while under its influence.
On the other hand, if someone drugs another person
against their knowledge, not only have they committed a crime against the
person drugged, but they have, in effect, committed any and all crimes that
the drugged person may commit while under the influence of the drug.
Likewise, if someone gives another person a drug and knowingly misrepresents
its effects, or fails to inform the user of its effects when they know the
user is ignorant of its effects, they are guilty of misrepresentation
and any wrongful subsequent actions taken by their victim as a result of that
misrepresentation.
In the cases of both prostitution and recreational drug use, the acts
themselves are not rightfully called crimes. However, in both cases, truly
criminal acts - robbery, assault, vandalism, and even murder - often accompany
what would otherwise be a peaceful event. This happens partly because of the
laws that prohibit acts which are not fundamentally wrong - either
because the lawbreaker cannot report the crime because they will be
charged with a "crime" themselves (in the case of prostitution), or because
the lawbreaker cannot legitimately get enough money to pay for their activity
(often the case with drug use) because prices are so high to cover the risks
taken by dealers who would otherwise be legitimate businesspersons. The laws
prohibiting "victimless crimes" thus cause real crimes to occur, either
in support of, or as a result of, the prohibited activities.
In general, "victimless crimes" are activities that are prohibited because
those in power consider (in their opinion) the act to be something
wrong. Since, by definition, "victimless crimes" have no victim, the only
reason they are considered to be a crime is because of the opinion of
the person or group that prohibits them. Once again, a person who is
punished for a "victimless crime" is being punished for having a different
opinion from those in power.
In all cases where a person is punished for a "victimless crime," the
person being punished is the victim, and the government
that imposes the punishment is the criminal.
"Voluntary" negligence - willfully choosing to ignore conditions or
consequences that will have adverse effects on other members of the community -
is just as much of a crime as if a person had undertaken to commit the crimes
through direct action: The outcome is the same, and results from the same
source - a conscious decision to follow a path of action (or inaction).
Involuntary negligence, however, is not a crime and
cannot rightfully be called a crime: If a person truly has no
advance knowledge, or reason to suspect, their actions will have an adverse
effect on others, their ignorance is just that - a lack of
knowledge, which is not, and cannot be a criminal act: There
is no way any person can know everything, and to try to hold someone
accountable for something they don't know is truly an abrogation of justice.
The biggest problem in most cases involving negligence is determining whether
or the negligence was voluntary or involuntary. In probably the
majority of the incidents, the offender should have known their
actions would result in injury to the affected parties. The determination of
whether a perpetrator actually would, should or could have known
what the result of their action or inaction would be is where much litigation
arises from.
Only if it is determined that the person causing injury through negligence
did so by willfully ignoring relevant information does a crime
occur. If the consequences were the result of legitimate ignorance of the
outcome of an action or inaction, then no crime has occurred.
competition - "stealing" customers is not a crime as long as the customers
voluntarily change their minds about who to do business with; business losses
are not injuries, but are instead failures to achieve expected profit levels
due to customer choices; voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit must be the
coin of business and trade
unions have been used to protect workers from exploitation and as a tool to
exploit management; the former is protection from crime, the latter is
execution of crime
courts of justice vs. courts of law; the former looks at issues of what is
right vs. what is wrong, the latter merely at what is legal vs. what is
illegal; the two groups of decisions are not a coincident set
restitution is the only proper form of punishment for a crime
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