We have laws specifically enacted in order to protect society. However, if and when people engage in behaviors that primarily only harm themselves, is it right for the criminal justice system to intervene? To what extent should one be able to enjoy personal freedoms including the freedom of consensual participation? Euphemistically speaking, are there such things as crimes without victims? Consider this transcript from the latest pool of television advertising spots from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy:''This is Dan. This is the joint that Dan bought. This is the dealer who sold the joint that Dan bought. This is the smuggler that smuggled the pot to the dealer who sold the joint that Dan bought. This is the cartel that uses the smuggler that smuggled the pot to the dealer who sold the joint that Dan bought. And this is the family that was tied up by Dan’s cartel and shot for getting in the way. Drug money supports terrible things. If you buy drugs, you might too"
This advertisement clearly exploded the notion of private, consensual, adult drug use as a victimles. For example, as the debate concerning the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana continues to gain momentum, proponents of legalization and decriminalization are quick to observe and suggest, ''marijuana is overall becoming a more acceptable substance in our society.'' This is just one example that highlights the notion that morality and criminality are relatively volatile and not invincible to the forces of change, and acts that were defined as illegal ten or twenty years ago are not necessarily illegal today nor will acts that are considered illegal today necessarily be considered illegal ten or twenty years from now and vice versa. History has clearly demonstrated that the utilization of criminal law as a means to enforce morality is certainly not unprecedented, to say the least, and often takes a cyclical form. Nonetheless, as new aspects of the various behaviors categorized as crimes without victims continue to arouse considerable public controversy, it is likely that society’s views concerning morality and criminality as it relates to these particular offenses will also continue to deviate relative to today’s normative standards.
however, this line of reasoning is only one-side of a relatively recent, highly contentious and divisive, sociopolitical debate. The articles selected for review for the purposes at present serve to illustrate: the controversy surrounding the debate of victimless crime in general and illicit drug use specifically: the most basic, practically inescapable ideological biases from which the basis of the debate is centered; and, the relativity of law as it relates to social order crimes.
Definitional issues and the relative moral dissonance among the debaters, then, surround the primary controversy of this debate. Advocates who believe that victimless crimes ought to be reduced or eliminated argue, firstly, that victimless crime is not only an adequate social construct but also a reality, and, secondly, that the cornerstone of a free democratic society is that it extends freedom to all citizens as long as that freedom does not impinge on the equivalent freedom of others. Criminologists often make reference to the works of renowned labeling theorist, Howard Becker, who combined criminological conflict and symbolic interactionist theories and maintained that moral entrepreneurship, rooted in the Protestant ethic, was the most significant force behind the law. This is to say, Becker believed that it was the people that held the decision-making power that made rules in their interest and redefined what is and what is not deviant or criminal.The opposition of this debate asserts that victimless crime is a fallacious concept. That is, in actuality, there exists no criminal action that does not produce some sort of a victim.
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