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Consensual Crime

Definition

An offence built on an exchange between willing participants, such as commercial sex, where the label victimless is most contested.

Related terms

Decriminalisation
The formal removal of conduct from the category of offence, here applied to the movement away from treating status conduct as court...
Harm Principle
The idea, associated with John Stuart Mill, that the only legitimate ground for the state to restrict a person's conduct through law...
Legal Moralism
The position, associated with Patrick Devlin, that the state may criminalise conduct simply because a society's shared moral code condemns it, even...
Moral Regulation
The use of law to enforce a shared standard of conduct or virtue, independent of any measurable harm to a third party.
Public Order Offence
An offence framed around visible conduct in public space, such as begging or soliciting, rather than around harm to a specific person.
Vagrancy Law
Legislation that criminalises being without a fixed residence, visible means of support or, in some versions, the act of begging in public.
Victimless Crime
An offence built around conduct where no identifiable third party is harmed against their will, typically because the participants consent or the...

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