What are victimless crimes and why are they controversial?

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asked Nov 22, 2020 in Law Enforcement/Police by Jwendises (390 points)
What are victimless crimes and why are they controversial?

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answered Nov 22, 2020 by Gangwhere (1,140 points)
According to the law a victimless crime is an illegal act that typically either directly involves only the perpetrator or occurs between consenting adults; because it is consensual in nature, there is arguably no true victim, i.e. aggrieved party.

Victimless Crimes are controversial because the victimless crime can and does usually cause substantial human suffering, not in the direct way that common law crimes produce clear injury to the victims, but indirectly.

A Victimless Crime is when someone commits a crime against someone and they do not want to press charges.

Basically both people when the crime was committed will consent to the crime being committed.

For example if you and your friend get drunk and get into a fight and you assault your friend during that drunken fight and the friend refuses to press charges then that would be a victimless crime.

However if you got into a fight with someone else and injured them and they didn't consent to being battered then that would be a crime with a victim.

Victimless crimes can also occur when a boyfriend beats up a girlfriend but the girlfriend refuses to press charges.

Even though in that case there would really be a victim if the girlfriend did not actually consent to the beating the girlfriend would be too scared to want to press charges.

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