Legalization is the process of removing a
legal
Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. ...
prohibition against something which is currently not legal.
Legalization is a process often applied to what are regarded, by those working towards legalization, as
victimless crime
A victimless crime is an illegal act that typically either directly involves only the perpetrator or occurs between consenting adults. Because it is consensual in nature, whether there involves a victim is a matter of debate. Definitions of vi ...
s, of which one example is the consumption of
illegal drug
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the ...
s (see
drug legalization
Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug ...
).
Legalization should be contrasted with
decriminalization
Decriminalization or decriminalisation is the reclassification in law relating to certain acts or aspects of such to the effect that they are no longer considered a crime, including the removal of criminal penalties in relation to them. This reform ...
, which removes criminal charges from an action, but leaves intact associated laws and regulations.
Proponents of
libertarianism support legalization of what they regard as victimless crimes, such as
recreational drug and alcohol use,
gun ownership
Gun ownership is the status of owning a gun, either legal or illegal. In 2018, Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which 857 million (about 85 percent) are in civilian hands. , and
prostitution.
In
U. S. immigration context, the term "legalization" is colloquially used to refer to a process whereby a person illegally present in the country can obtain
lawful permanent residence. Since 1929, the US law has provided the legalization procedure known as
registry Registry may refer to:
Computing
* Container registry, an operating-system-level virtualization registry
* Domain name registry, a database of top-level internet domain names
* Local Internet registry
* Metadata registry, information system for re ...
, which simply requires the applicant to prove that he has continuously resided in the country since before a certain specified "registry date" (originally, 1921; presently, 1972), and is not inadmissible on other grounds (criminal history, ''etc.'').
One legalization proposal that was widely discussed recently was the
DREAM Act
The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to illegal immigrants who entered the United States a ...
.
See also
*
Drug liberalization
Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug ...
Notes
{{reflist
Criminology
Libertarian theory