Chapter 12 Offenses against Public Morality

1
Chapter 12Offenses against Public Morality
2
OBJECTIVES

• After reading this chapter, you should be able to
• Describe victimless crimes, and give some
  examples of such crimes.
• Define prostitution, and assess its legal status
  in various jurisdictions within the United
  States.
• Identify the conditions under which marijuana
  might be legalized or decriminalized.
• Summarize the notion of a crisis of
  overcriminalization, and assess whether such a
  crisis exists relative to some of the crimes
  discussed in this chapter.

3
CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC DECENCY AND MORALITY

• While most crimes have specific and identifiable
  individual victims, some crimes do not.
• Such offenses fall into a category of
  social-order offenses called crimes against
  public decency and morality.
• Crimes against public decency and morality are
  sometimes termed victimless crimes by virtue of
  the fact that they generally involve willing
  participants.

4
CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC DECENCY AND MORALITY
5
PROSTITUTION

• North Carolina law defines prostitution as
• the offering or receiving of the body for sexual
  intercourse for hire as well as the offering or
  receiving of the body for indiscriminate sexual
  intercourse without hire.
• Soliciting prostitution is the act of asking,
  enticing, or requesting another to commit the
  crime of prostitution.

6
PROSTITUTION

• Generally speaking, the elements of the crime of
  prostitution are
• Engaging in or offering to perform
• A sexual act
• For hire

7
PROSTITUTION

• Generally, the following acts constitute the
  crime of promoting prostitution
• Owning, controlling, managing, supervising, or
  otherwise keeping a house of prostitution
• Procuring a person for a house of prostitution
• Encouraging, inducing, or otherwise purposely
  causing another to become or remain a prostitute
• Soliciting a person to patronize a prostitute
• Procuring a prostitute for another
• Transporting a person with the purpose of
  promoting that persons involvement in
  prostitution

8
PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, AND LEWDNESS

• Pornography can be defined as
• the depiction of sexual behavior in such a way
  as to excite the viewer sexually.
• Obscenity is a bit more difficult to define.
• Generally speaking, obscenity can be defined as
  that which appeals to the prurient interest
  and lacks serious literary, artistic, political,
  or scientific value.

9
PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, AND LEWDNESS

• In 1973, in the case of Miller v. California, the
  Court held that to be obscene, and thus not
  protected by the free speech clause of the U.S.
  Constitution, objectionable material must meet
  all of the following requirements
• The average person, applying contemporary
  community standards, would find that the work,
  taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient
  interest.
• The work depicts or describes, in a patently
  offensive way, sexual conduct specifically
  defined by the applicable statute.
• The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious
  literary, artistic, political, or scientific
  value.

10
PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, AND LEWDNESS

• Similar to laws against pornography and obscenity
  are strictures against lewdness.
• Whereas pornography refers to some thing that is
  obscene, lewdness refers to behavior that is
  obscene.
• Lewd behavior consists of intimate activity by a
  single individual where such activity is intended
  to be sexually arousing.
• A lewd act might be captured on videotape,
  causing the tape to be classified as pornography.

11
PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, AND LEWDNESS

• Lewd behavior is sometimes also termed
  lasciviousness.
• Lascivious refers to something that is obscene or
  lewd or tends to cause lust.
• Lewd and lascivious conduct is sometimes also
  termed public indecency or indecent exposure.
  Georgia law, for example, states

12
PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, AND LEWDNESS

• A person commits the offense of public indecency
  when he or she performs any of the following acts
  in a public place
• An act of sexual intercourse
• A lewd exposure of the sexual organs
• A lewd appearance in a state of partial or
  complete nudity
• A lewd caress or indecent fondling of the body of
  another person

13
OTHER CONSENSUAL SEX OFFENSES

• Although they may strike anyone with modern
  sensibilities as strange or outdated, laws
  against fornication and adultery continue to
  exist in some states.
• Holdovers from an earlier age, many such laws
  were passed in the late nineteenth or early
  twentieth centuries, when a strong family and
  sexual chastity were highly valued.
• As a result, many consensual sex offenses are
  still termed offenses against the family.

14
OTHER CONSENSUAL SEX OFFENSES

• Homosexuality has been traditionally viewed as
  unnatural sexual behavior and was frequently
  termed a crime against nature.
• Crime against nature, however, is also a general
  term that can include homosexual or heterosexual
  acts of anal intercourse, oral intercourse, and
  bestiality (sexual relations with animals).
• It may even apply to heterosexual intercourse in
  positions other than the conventional
  missionary position.

15
OTHER CONSENSUAL SEX OFFENSES

• States used a variety of terms in describing
  homosexual behavior or deviate sexual
  intercourse. South Carolina, for example,
  criminalized the abominable crime of buggery.
• Although South Carolina provided no further
  statutory definition of the offense, buggery was
  generally understood to mean anal intercourse.
• Another public morality crime is bigamythe crime
  of marrying one person while still legally
  married to another person.

16
OTHER CONSENSUAL SEX OFFENSES

• Polygamy, is the marrying of, or cohabiting with,
  more than one spouse at a time in the purported
  exercise of the right of plural marriage. In most
  jurisdictions, polygamy is a felony.
• Incest, another sexually defined offense,
  consists of unlawful sexual intercourse with a
  relative through blood or marriage, such as ones
  brother, sister, mother, or father.

17
GAMBLING AND GAMING

• Gambling is sometimes categorized under the
  heading organized crime and vice offenses.
• We treat it here as an offense against morality
  because it has all of the characteristics of such
  an offensealthough it may also frequently be
  associated with organized criminal activity.
• Gambling can be defined as the wagering of money,
  or of some other thing of value, on the outcome
  or occurrence of an event.
• It is illegal where made so by law.

18
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES

• The word drug is a generic term applicable to a
  wide variety of substances that have any physical
  or psychotropic effect on the human body.
• Over the years, drugs have been defined by social
  convention.
• While today, for example, most everyone would
  agree that heroin and cocaine are drugs, they
  were not always seen as such.
• Similarly, although alcohol, nicotine, and even
  caffeine probably fall into the drug category
  in the minds of most people today, their
  categorization as drugs is relatively recent,
  having occurred during the past two or three
  decades.

19
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES
20
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES

• The term controlled substance refers to
  specifically defined bioactive or psychoactive
  chemical substances that come under the purview
  of the criminal law.
• It is interesting to recognize that all of
  todays controlled substance laws are the result
  of legislative action.

21
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESAntiDrug Abuse Legislation

• The first major piece of federal antidrug
  legislation came in 1914 with enactment of the
  Harrison Act.
• The Harrison Act required those dealing in opium,
  morphine, heroin, cocaine, and specified
  derivatives of those drugs to register with the
  federal government and to pay a tax of 1 per
  year.
• The only people permitted to register, however,
  were physicians, pharmacists, and members of the
  medical profession.
• With passage of the Boggs Act in 1951, however,
  marijuana, along with a number of other drugs,
  entered the class of federally prohibited
  controlled substances. The

22
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESThe Controlled Substances
Act of 1970

• By 1970, Americas drug problem was clear to
  almost everyone, and legislators assumed a highly
  punitive approach to controlling drug abuse.
• Under President Richard Nixon, legislation
  designed to encompass all aspects of drug abuse
  and to permit federal intervention at all levels
  of use was enacted.
• Termed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention
  and Control Act of 1970,66 the bill still forms
  the basis of federal enforcement efforts today.

23
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESThe Controlled Substances
Act of 1970
24
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESThe Controlled Substances
Act of 1970

• Pharmacologists, chemists, and botanists are
  constantly discovering and creating new drugs.
• Likewise, street-corner chemists in clandestine
  laboratories churn out inexpensive designer
  drugspsychoactive substances with widely varying
  effects and abuse potential.
• Hence the Controlled Substances Act also includes
  provisions for determining what newly developed
  drugs should be controlled and into which
  schedule they should be placed.

25
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESThe Controlled Substances
Act of 1970
26
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESThe AntiDrug Abuse Act of
1988

• In 1988, the federal AntiDrug Abuse Act was
  passed into law.
• Under the law, penalties for recreational drug
  users were substantially increased, and it became
  more difficult for suspected drug dealers to
  purchase weapons.
• The law also denied federal benefits to convicted
  drug offenders, ranging from loans (including
  student loans) to contracts and licenses.

27
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESOther Federal Antidrug
Legislation

• Other significant federal antidrug legislation
  exists in the form of the Crime Control Act of
  1990 and the Violent Crime Control and Law
  Enforcement Act of 1994.
• The 1990 law targeted drug crime through a number
  of initiatives.

28
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESState-Level Antidrug Laws

• Antidrug laws at the state level show a
  surprising degree of uniformity.
• Such uniformity is due to the fact that almost
  all states have adopted some version of the
  Uniform Controlled Substances Act, which was
  proposed in 1972 by the National Conference of
  Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
• The Uniform Controlled Substances Act is similar
  to the federal Drug Abuse and Prevention Control
  Act in that it also groups controlled substances
  into five schedules.
• The schedules are quite similar to those under
  federal law.

29
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESAsset Forfeiture

• Forfeiture is an enforcement strategy that
  federal statutes and some state laws supportand
  one that bears special mention.
• Antidrug forfeiture statutes at both the state
  and federal level provide a special category of
  forfeiture laws.
• Such statutes authorize judges to seize all
  monies, negotiable instruments, securities, or
  other things of value furnished or intended to be
  furnished by any person in exchange for a
  controlled substance.

30
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESAsset Forfeiture
31
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCESMedical Marijuana

• In 1996, voters in California passed Proposition
  215, known as the Compassionate Use Act, which
  allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for
  medicinal purposes.
• About the same time, a similar measure passed in
  Arizona, and in November 1999, Maine voters
  passed a referendum permitting some sick people
  to use small amounts of marijuana.

32
SUMMARY

• Crimes against public decency and morality
  constitute a third type of social-order offense.
  The first two types, crimes against public order
  and crimes against the administration of
  government, were discussed in Chapter 10.
• Crimes against public decency and morality
  typically include not only prostitution,
  gambling, and drug use, but also pornography,
  obscenity, and various other consensual sex
  offensessuch as bestiality, deviate sexual
  relations, lewdness, indecency, seduction,
  fornication, adultery, and bigamy.

33
SUMMARY

• Crimes against public decency and morality are
  sometimes termed victimless crimes by virtue of
  the fact that they generally involve willing
  participants.
• Pornography is the depiction of sexual behavior
  in such a way as to excite the viewer sexually.
  Obscenity, a related crime, can be defined as
  that which appeals to the prurient interest (a
  morbid interest in sex) and lacks serious
  literary, artistic, political, or scientific
  value. Sex and obscenity are not synonymous, and
  obscenity is not constitutionally protected under
  First Amendment free speech guarantees.

34
SUMMARY

• Obscene matter means material, taken as a whole,
  that to the average person, applying contemporary
  community standards, appeals to the prurient
  interest, depicts or describes sexual conduct in
  a patently offensive way, and lacks serious
  literary, artistic, political, or scientific
  value.
• An emerging concern in the area of crimes against
  public decency and morality is the availability
  of pornography via the Internet. Lawmakers
  (especially at the federal level) have attempted
  to restrict access to pornographic materials.

35
SUMMARY

• Crime against nature refers to intercourse
  contrary to the order of nature. It can include
  homosexuality, bestiality, and even heterosexual
  intercourse in positions other than the
  conventional missionary position.
• Drug use and abuse and lawfully controlled
  substances represent an area of special interest
  to many Americans today. Controlled substances
  are specifically defined as bioactive or
  psychoactive chemical substances that come under
  the purview of the criminal law.

36
SUMMARY

• Under federal law and the laws of many states,
  controlled substances are classified according to
  five schedules. Schedules are an attempt to
  categorize controlled substances according to
  their abuse potential.
• Laws regulating public morality have sometimes
  been criticized as contributing to a crisis of
  overcriminalization. Overcriminalization refers
  to the idea that laws regulating public morality
  may result in a substantial diversion of police,
  prosecutorial, and judicial time, personnel, and
  resources.