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Victimless Crimes: A Proposal To Free The Courts, Robert C. Boruchowitz

Faculty Articles

Victimless "crimes"—acts that are presently outside the law but which have no readily identifiable victim—account for almost half of the cases handled by United States courts. They include behavior which may reflect illness and which requires medical and therapeutic attention (such as drunkenness), as well as behavior condemned as varying from moral or social standards and leading to harmful behavior (such as vagrancy and curfew violations). If the burden of regulating this type of behavior were removed from the criminal justice system, perhaps one half of the courts' current case load could be eliminated. Furthermore, persons caught in deviant conduct …