The Research On Decriminalization Of "Victimless Crime"

The concept of "victimless crime" was first proposed by an American scholarnamed Edwin Shure in1965. The criminalization and decriminalization of victimlesscrime aroused widespread concern of scholars from all over the world in thefollowing50years. Victimless crime is distinguished from traditional crimes for theinexistence of victims, because a direct individual whose rights and benefits areinfringed is not involved. It is generally cognized that the victimless crime has thesefollowing characteristics: violation of general social ethics, large number of criminals,concealment and difficult to control, inexistence of direct victims and less severeharm to society. With the rapid development of economy and the emancipation ofideology after the World War II, the western liberal thoughts became prevalent. It wascommonly thought that criminal law should also maintain humility and respect privatelife of citizens, especially in the pure moral category, therefore, behaviors which hadhardly infringed others’ rights and benefits should not be intervened by the criminallaw. With the emerging of legal protection theory, people no longer simply thoughtthat the nature of crime was a violation of the moral, but the ruin of legal interests thatwere protected by the criminal law. The development of the philosophy and theoryabove has a direct impact on the process of decriminalization of victimless crimes.However, due to the large number of criminals and easy to cause theft, robbery, drugtrafficking and other serious crimes, victimless crime goes against to social stability,therefore, some scholars insist to the criminalization of it.Victimless crime is a social phenomenon. It arises in the society and reacts to it.The research on decriminalization of victimless crime should not only emphasize thestandpoints of past scholars such as idea of liberalism, restraining of the criminal law,and legal interests protection theory, but also its actual effects on the society which isindeed of more importance. The theory Economics of Law, rising in the20th century,pointed out that good law should realize the best allocation of costs and benefits toachieve the maximization of social benefits. According to this viewpoint, it is difficultto detect, investigate and collect evidence of victimless crime due to its large numberof criminals, concealment and lack of charge from victims. Huge consumption ofsocial resource, and even worse, tortures for coercing a statement, enticinginvestigation and organized crime will be caused if criminalization of victimlesscrime is implemented. Thus, the principle of social resource optimization is violated.Criminal legislation should be cautious about the criminalization of victimless crimefor the decriminalization is more favorable to crime control. Moreover, the concept ofcrime is relative, depending on the social environment. People`s concept on victimlesscrime evolves with changing social environment, so we should take a combine d consideration of the decriminalization of victimless crime and social environment.Victimless crime decriminalize will be hardly realized if lacking in support of thesocial environment. In conclusion, enlightened political system, free market economyand private rights-oriented legal culture are necessary conditions for victimless crimedecriminalize.