Decriminalisation
Definition
The formal removal of conduct from the category of offence, here applied to the movement away from treating status conduct as court business at all.
Related terms
- Curfew Violation
- Presence in a public place by a minor after a locally fixed evening hour, enforced through municipal or local ordinances rather than...
- 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...
- Moral Regulation
- The use of law to enforce a shared standard of conduct or virtue, independent of any measurable harm to a third party.
- Runaway
- A child who leaves home or a lawful placement without permission; treated in most modern systems as a welfare concern rather than...
- Status Offence
- An act that is only unlawful because the person committing it is a minor, such as truancy or running away from home,...
- Truancy
- Habitual unexcused absence from compulsory schooling, historically handled as a court matter and increasingly diverted to school-based or administrative responses.
- Vagrancy
- Being without a fixed home, visible means of subsistence or, for a child, a responsible adult guardian; in many codes this was...
- 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...
- Consensual Crime
- An offence built on an exchange between willing participants, such as commercial sex, where the label victimless is most contested.
- Diversion
- Handling a child's case outside formal judicial proceedings, for example through caution, mediation or community-based measures, so that the criminal process itself...
- 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...
Explained in these topics
- Status Offences: Truancy, Vagrancy and Youth-Specific Prohibitions
- Status Offences: Truancy and Vagrancy (Unit IX)The formal removal of conduct from the category of offence, applied here to the movement away from treating status conduct as court business at all.
- Victimless Crime: Alcoholism, Drugs, Begging, Sex Work, Suicide (Unit I)Removing criminal liability for conduct while it may still be regulated civilly or administratively, as with Portugal's approach to drug possession.
- Victimless Crime and the Limits of Moral RegulationRemoving criminal penalties for an act while it may still carry civil penalties, regulation or no legal consequence at all.