Lucas Gibbons
Nancy Miller
English 101
10 April 2014
Criminalizing the Victimless Crime
A criminal is someone who breaks the law and is punished according to the law they
broke. Some laws that have to do with things like gambling, drug usage and possession,
prostitution and underage drinking are all crimes that can have extensive criminal
punishment and even jail time. More often than not spending time in prison can burden
someone for a lifetime. I would like to argue that these are victimless crimes and do not
deserve a criminal punishment. A victimless crime is a crime that has no clear effects on
other people besides the person or people doing the “crime”. There are some things that are
not meant to be regulated by the government. When it comes to our personal lives and the
law I ask myself what my rights should be and how should the government control them.
Is a crime still a crime if there is no victim? I would like to think not. Personal choices
shouldn’t be crimes.
The word criminal is an example of Francis Bacon’s idols of the marketplace from his
Four Idols, where the word has such a broad powerful definition it can make someone
seem worse than they actually are. Bacon says:
Now words, being commonly framed and applied according to the capacity of the vulgar,
follow those lines of division which are most obvious to the vulgar understanding. And
whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or a more diligent observation would alter
those lines to suit the true divisions of nature, words stand in the way and resist the change.
(889)
Bacon is saying that a word might be used according to its definition, but because the
definition isn’t particular to the way it’s being used, the true meaning of a statement is lost.
If someone calls you a criminal because you committed a petty crime they aren’t wrong.
But if they tell someone else that you’re a criminal without giving your specific
circumstantial definition, then they are applying the entirety of the definition to you which
is broad and can be very destructive.
Recreational drug users are considered criminal by the law but are undeserving of its
negative connotations. This is why using drugs is a victimless crime and drugs should be
decriminalized. Some would argue that this would increase the other criminal activities
that come along with drugs, like gangs and other illegal activities. I would argue that most
