Crime, Morality, and Victims

Can't think of a good way to word the title, but let's get started. Last night, just before I went to bed, I got to thinking- can there be a crime when no one feels wronged? Not (only) thinking about the popular choices for "victimless" crimes like using illegal drugs or speeding, but crimes that are accepted to have victims- theft, assault, that sort of thing. Further, started thinking if, even if there is a crime, if such a situation would be "wrong". So, figured 'this could make a decent OTC thread'. Here's a few situations to get discussion started— feel free to answer, add your own, or ignore them in favor of discussing the topic as a whole.

• Alice owns 20 acres of land. Tuesday and Thursday nights, Bob, Carol, Dave, Eva, and Fred meet in a wood shed on her property to play Dungeons And Dragons, without her permission. They make a point to leave everything as it was. Eventually, Alice finds out but doesn't care so long as they continue leaving the place like they found it.
  • Legally speaking, were Bob, Carol, Dave, Eva, and Fred trespassing, if Alice doesn't care they were doing it?
  • Morally, was it right, wrong, or neutral for them to use her shed in the first place?
• Xavier is visiting his friend Yolanda. While looking for a movie to watch sees she's still got her copy of Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven, despite in the recent past having been quite vocal in her hatred for it. Assuming (correctly) that she won't care, he slips it in his bag and takes it home with him, never to return it. A few days later, Yolanda notices it's gone and assumes she just lost it.
  • Did Xavier still steal it if Yolanda doesn't care?
  • Was it right, wrong, or neutral for him to take it without permission?
  • If Xavier didn't know beforehand whether she even wanted the DVD, but took it anyway, would it have been right, wrong, or neutral?
• Harold, Johnny, Leon, and Nick, meet in an abandoned lot Friday nights to fight each other. Everyone involved is cool with it.
  • Are they still committing assault*
    (or is it battery?)
    , despite everyone involved having consented?
  • Is there anything morally right/wrong/neutral about them doing this?

Note: Given recent events in OTC, it would probably be for the best if we leave rape (marital or otherwise) out of this exercise entirely.

edited 19th Jan '12 12:07:17 PM by Wulf

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Cool thread topic.

• Alice owns 20 acres of land. Tuesday and Thursday nights, Bob, Carol, Dave, Eva, and Fred meet in a wood shed on her property to play Dungeons & Dragons, without her permission. They make a point to leave everything as it was. Eventually, Alice finds out but doesn't care so long as they continue leaving the place like they found it.
  • Legally speaking, were Bob, Carol, Dave, Eva, and Fred trespassing, if Alice doesn't care they were doing it?

Yes. Trespass is a legal construct defined as "an unauthorized entry upon land". She didn't authorize their entry onto her land or their use of the shed on her land, therefore they trespassed, whether she knows or cares or not.

• Morally, was it right, wrong, or neutral for them to use her shed in the first place?

I'd say Neutral. They did her no harm, but they did her no good, either.

• Xavier is visiting his friend Yolanda. While looking for a movie to watch sees she's still got her copy of Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven, despite in the recent past having been quite vocal in her hatred for it. Assuming (correctly) that she won't care, he slips it in his bag and takes it home with him, never to return it. A few days later, Yolanda notices it's gone and assumes she just lost it.
  • Did Xavier still steal it if Yolanda doesn't care?

Yes. Like "trespass" "Theft" is a legal construct; "property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent." Whether she knows or not or cares or not doesn't enter into it. It meets the definition of "theft".

• Was it right, wrong, or neutral for him to take it without permission?

In this case, I'd say Wrong. He didn't know that she wouldn't care. He assumed that she wouldn't care.

• If Xavier didn't know beforehand whether she even wanted the DVD, but took it anyway, would it have been right, wrong, or neutral?

Wrong, again.

• Harold, Johnny, Leon, and Nick, meet in an abandoned lot Friday nights to fight each other. Everyone involved is cool with it.
  • Are they still committing assault *
    (or is it battery?)
    , despite everyone involved having consented?

You want battery rather than assault, but in this case, no, it wouldn't be battery. battery is defined as "an intentional unpermitted act causing harmful or offensive contact with the "person" of another. The relevant word there is unpermitted; "consent is a defense." Since the boys meet specifically to wale on each other, consent is implied. They aren't committing battery anymore than two guys in a boxing ring are.

• Is there anything morally right/wrong/neutral about them doing this?

Morally, neutral again. They are doing no harm to anyone but themselves. They're stupid, but not immoral.

edited 19th Jan '12 12:33:42 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Entering private property without having the owner's permission is trespassing. Until Alice found out about it, they technically were doing it, but after that they're allowed to and also retroactively. Up to the point where their "crime" can be dismissed being one it still is.

It would have been best if they had asked. As it turned out it was neutral, because she would have been fine with it anyway and they didn't cause any harm either.

Yes, it's her possession regardless if she genuinely cares about it or not and thus theft if it is taken away.

Once again it would have been best if he had asked as she probably would have given it to him. In the end it as wrong because it is unnecessary theft.

That would have been even more wrong. Although her stance doesn't change, now he would commit theft regardless if she is indifferent or not.

Nope. If they are all cool with it and keep it "fair" it isn't.

Having to meet at the abandoned lot may be questionable but besides that not really.

Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.

Let's see, Maddy and Lock covered how I'd answer, so I'll try to think of a different scenario.

How about an elaboration on one of the more classic ones? A hungry, recently homeless man, Zack passes by a bakery owned by Amy near the end of the day. In half an hour, the staff will throw out the loaves older than two days old, to make room for fresh bread. Furthermore, it's not very busy in the bakery. When the loaves are thrown out, they're put in a special locked bin, specifically so people can't get at them: there are health regulations involved. When Zack enters the bakery, there are 5 loaves left in the 2-day-old bin. He grabs one and runs. While this is legally theft, is it morally wrong, neutral, or good?

edited 19th Jan '12 12:57:26 PM by Katrika

"You fail to grasp the basic principles of mad science. Common sense would be cheating." - Narbonic

My responses to your questions.

@Alice's Woodshed:

I believe not: for a crime to be committed in this case*

, charges have to be pressed by Alice. Since she found out and didn't care, I'd say no crime had been committed. However, it's risky to use someone's property without asking, since all it takes for the "Event" to become a "Crime" is for the owner to say, "I didn't want that person here".

Wrong, and stupid in the bargain; since they were not communicating with Alice as to their use of her shed, they had no idea what she might want with it or whether some risk was associated with them using it. Vastly better just to ask.

@Yolanda's DVD:

Yup. Whether she hated it or not is irrelevant, it still cost her money. It'd be the same, legally speaking, as taking a $20 bill out of her purse without asking.

Wrong, dumb and unnecessary. If she hates it so much, and Xavier knows she does, why not just ask for it?

Wrong, worse than above. We call that "stealing from your friends", and most people don't appreciate that sort of behavior.

@Fight Club:

Depends on the jurisdiction, actually. In some places, the state presses the charge rather than the victim. This is usually in cases of domestic violence but some places don't distinguish domestic violence as a separate form of assault/battery. So, depends where you live.

I'd say morally Right; if they want to fight (and they obviously do), better they should do it with consenting people if that's what they are into. I personally think its dumb, but vastly better than starting a fight with a stranger.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

@ Maddy- I try, I try.

@ All- Interesting responses, although I expected one or two to find the second one neutral, reasoning that "she doesn't care, so no harm, although it's he still probably shouldn't have taken it"

@ Katrika- 'Grats on modhood, by the way. Intriguing. I'd say neutral at worst, right at best, since the bread would be wasted other wise. It's possible five people would come in wanting two-day old loaves of bread, but until the bakery actually loses a sale because they ran out already, Zack's not doing anything that wrong. Even if it were, he probably needs the bread more anyway, so it's difficult to say he could be doing wrong in this case.

---

Retroactive Permission Since the thread is still young, I may add this to the OP, but Lock's response made me think about it.

Legality aside, does obtaining retroactive permission negate any wrong done? Is it on a case by case basis? Or does it never quite balance out, say, the DVD example?

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Just to point out in the above: "I believe not: for a crime to be committed in this case*, charges have to be pressed by Alice. Since she found out and didn't care, I'd say no crime had been committed. However, it's risky to use someone's property without asking, since all it takes for the "Event" to become a "Crime" is for the owner to say, "I didn't want that person here"."

This is legally inaccurate in the United States. Very likely, without Alice to press charges then the perpetrators will not be prosecuted. However, if someone were murdered and no charges were ever pressed, that does not mean a "crime" has not been committed. You commit crimes against the State here. So if I steal a car and the owner does not care enough to press charges, but the State becomes aware and the district attorney DOES care, he can press charges, obtain an indictment, and prosecute me all without the victim's consent, because the State as a whole is considered to have been harmed. Likewise, if the district attorney does NOT choose to file charges, the victim can make a big media fuss about it and try to pressure the district attorney into charging, but in the end it is the decision of the state how to allocate its resources.

Usually trespass of this nature (where nobody is harmed) is something you would sue over. And trespass has occurred, so Alice could legally sue. However, without being able to show damages (she apparently never needed that section of land, and they took care to leave everything as it was), all she could get is the $1 nominal damages.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

I'd say retroactive permission (as in, a "we cool" from the victim) does negate the moral wrong, though not the crime. That, of course, is on the assumption that the victim is not threatened and their ability to judge the situation accurately is not limited. I'll assume this and similar obvious specifications from this point on.

Should it negate the crime? No. Why? Because if it did, it would encourage people who vaguely suspect that the victim's OK with it to go ahead and do their crime, which would backfire immediately if the victim actually did feel offended. It would also encourage criminals to target victims that they know to be forgiving in nature, and if you want something to call an injustice, I've got one right here!

In the bread case, the theft is not immoral if you ask me, except that if I were in that situation and resorted to theft like that, I would expect some form of social compensation of myself to fix some of the damage that society suffered because the clerk at the shop might have felt bad upon seeing the crime and this might've affected his concentration when he was driving home and he might have ran a red light or something.

I wouldn't resort to theft in the first place, though; in Les Miserables, when this situation comes up, Valjean later thinks (or the narrator comments, it's either/or) that the baker probably would've given Valjean the bread anyway if he had only asked. I suspect that even a baker/clerk who's very careful about health regulations would want to donate something that wasn't going to be bought by anyone and was going to be thrown away. Maybe they'd do it in a dark alley somewhere, but they probably would do it anyway. 9/10 people would, or so I think.

Oh, and for the original 3 scenarios, my answers are the same as Maddy's.

edited 19th Jan '12 1:45:53 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

@Veri: I was under the impression that trespassing only became a crime when the property owner pressed charges...since whether or not it is a crime is entirely dependent on whether or not the access was with a property owner's consent.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

@drunk You're right in that trespass in itself is dependent on the owner's consent. And all the owner would have to do is say, "they had my consent." But if they did not have the owner's consent, then they DID trespass. The factual issue would almost never come up (no prosecutor would probably care if the owner didn't), but if it could be proven that they did not have the owner's consent, the owner not pressing charges would be immaterial if the prosecutor decided to.

For example, pretend that the Alice doesn't care at all one way or the other. But these people who are trespassing have trespassed on other sites where the owners do care. Somebody noticed them trespassing on Alice's land. The prosecutor is pressing charges on behalf of all the owners who did care, and learns about the unauthorized entry on Alice's land. He interviews Alice who says, "I didn't care. No they did not have my consent to be on my land." He tacks on the additional charge (making his case stronger) regardless of the fact that she didn't care, didn't press charges, and didn't particularly want them to go to jail.

If Alice then tries to say, "Just kidding, I did give them consent," and the prosecutor really wants this additional charge tacked on he can threaten her with charges of perjury if she says that at the stand.

All of this is ignoring whether or not Alice can retroactively give permission for the encroachment on her land. It is merely in the case where she really is 100% neutral on the idea.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

If the victim doesn't care, a criminal action is morally irrelevant. A victimless crime is morally neutral 'cause nobody's rights have been violated. If a crime has an apathetic victim who doesn't care about the action, it might as well be victimless.

Still, as you can't determine whether the victim will care, it's probably safer to ask for permission. Because the victim might care, and then you could get in trouble: Unless the trespassers knew Alice beforehand, she might assume they were up to no good and defend her property with a shotgun.

As for the guy who steals a DVD his friend doesn't care about, he should've asked: Stealing from your friends ain't cool.

As for the fight club, I think consent defines morality, so their actions were morally right.

edited 19th Jan '12 2:38:09 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

On so called "Victimless Crimes" Some things like speeding, running red lights, etc are illegal for the exact reason it increases your chances of harming others through your own negligence.

Yeah it may be victimless as long as your luck holds out but the second you or someone else is in the wrong place in the wrong time you have created a problem.

Any action taken in public, that when done recklessly can lead to the harm of another, is not a victimless action. You can not rely on luck alone to protect others from your choices. You are a part of society and you have some obligation to do your best to not endanger or harm others outside of extraordinary events.

edited 19th Jan '12 7:22:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Quoted for truth. To build on that...freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. If I wish to exercise a freedom (say, the freedom to drive a car) then I have an implicit responsibility to do so in a manner that is least likely to harm others I come in contact with while exercising said freedom.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

The first situations were wrong, though I'd say the second is more wrong than the first.

The third is morally neutral, as given.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I really do dislike consequentialism. Morality is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong action, not right and wrong result.

The trespassing is simple: the landowner wasn't informed, therefore could not give informed consent and thus there was no consent as informed consent is the only consent that counts. The stealing is equally simple for much the same reason. In both cases, morally wrong, as the right course of action is of course to respect another's rights and ask permission.

The fightclub situation works a little different because of the fact that it is a regular occurrence. (does that constitute a game in the eyes of the law? are there rules?) It is likely that all involved are arrested should the police become involved, but whether or not an actual crime took place is then for the courts to decide. Consent is not necessarily a (complete) defence either, depending on jurisdiction. There might simply be a (local) ordnance against bare knuckle fighting. Is it morally wrong? Hard to tell, but "Friday nights" (plural) indicates no serious intent to harm. So tentatively "no".

Wrong. Zack has no right to that loaf of bread. The staff can't even give him the bread because then the staff would be stealing the loaf (stealing from the boss is still wrong) Again, boo on consequentialism. One can't derive right from wrong action based solely on the result. If Zack asks the staff, and the staff asks Amy on his behalf, for a loaf of bread and Amy says ok, then the results are the same; except nobody had to steal anything to arrive at them. (It is not the most practical solution, but no-one ever said walking the straight and narrow was practical)

edited 19th Jan '12 7:52:17 PM by GreatLich