[4] For example, an Islamic feminist might seek consistency of treatment for women as victims and, therefore, demand the decriminalization of abortion, adultery, and seduction (Zina is a Hudud offense in sharia law), and the criminalization of domestic violence and sexual harassment.
In formal academically published theory, the real ruling class of a society reaches a temporary view on whether certain acts or behavior are harmful or criminal.
Historically this one theory will be modified by scientific, medical evidence, by political change, and the criminal justice system may or may not treat those matters as crimes.
But the law and order debate between right and left politicians is often superficial and unscientific, formulating policies based on their appeal to an uninformed electorate rather than properly conducted research.
Having criminal remedies in place is seen as a "last resort" since such actions often infringe personal liberties – incarceration, for example, prevents the freedom of movement.
Most crimes of direct actions (murder, rape, assault, for example) are generally not affected by such a stance, but it does require greater justification in less clear cases.
[6] In general, worldwide policy makers have created a myriad of smaller offences, in contradiction to the minimization principle and more in keeping with the social defence.
However, the legalization of prostitution would change the way it is regulated, and law enforcement could find a way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted disease, thus eliminating the health issue and the question of the morality of the profession would be weakened.
People experience a range of physical and social injuries in different contexts which will vary according to the level of economic and political development of their country.
[10] However, opponents of this approach typically suggest use of a harm principle only and that immorality is not a reason in itself since outcomes of such activity can be used to come to a conclusion alone.
The European Convention of Human Rights, in the most part supporting individual rights from government interferences, still includes a provision for interference "for the protection of health and morals"[11][12] such as legally requiring seat belts to be worn (in some jurisdictions) are hard to justify if an individualistic approach is taken, since, if public health provision is ignored, little harm is caused to others.
[14] In British law, a distinction between public and private acts was made in the Wolfenden report, which examined sexual activities (particularly homosexuality and prostitution).
Such a line was favoured by Joel Feinberg, who argued that it was a good reason in support of legislation if it effectively prevented "serious offence" to persons other than the actor.
[23] When a state debates whether to respond to a source of injury by criminalising the behaviour that produces it, there are no pre-set criteria to apply in formulating social policy.
The criminal justice system responds to a substantial number of events that do not produce significant hardship to individual citizens.
Such as it is, the process is made up of three components: Put in the most simple terms, ontology deals with or establishes the clear grounds for being.
In some of the traditional schools, such as those of the post-1688 English or Americans (many of the writings of the American Founding Fathers, but especially The Federalist) and their Dutch predecessors (see Kossmann, E. H. Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, 2004) ontology proper is deemed beyond the scope of legal thought, in accord with the modern distinction between society and state (which some consider based in the distinction the Romans made between themselves and their Italian allies, the socii, but not given the theoretical articulation we recognize today until emphasized by Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.
However, some classical theorists, such as Aristotle, in his Politics and Metaphysics, and to a lesser degree in his Topics,[citation needed] suggest that the distinction is at least problematic.
[25] At least in the today dominant American model, deprivation of right amounts to injury (consider especially Justice Stevens dissenting opinion in Castle Rock v. Gonzales), and injury—so goes the prevailing theory—amounts, when coupled with requisite intent, in most cases, to crime, when it does not admit of civil redress.
(For one approach to the question of criminal ontology, see "Understanding Crime and Social Control in Market Economies: Looking Back and Moving Forward" by Robert Bohm in Jeffrey Ian Ross, ed.
Baker argues that the privacy violations that result from being forced to receive unwanted obscene information in public places (exhibitionism) would amount to a sufficient bad consequence for the purposes of invoking the criminal law, but argues that proportionate punishment means that such conduct should only be punished with fines rather than jail terms.