criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...

, a regulatory offence or quasi-criminal offence is a class of crime in which the standard for proving

culpability In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word, culpability, "ordinarily has ...

has been lowered so a (

Law Latin Law Latin, sometimes written L.L. or L. Lat., and sometimes derisively called Dog Latin, is a form of Latin used in legal contexts. While some of the vocabulary does come from Latin, many of the words and much of the vocabulary stem from English. ...

for "guilty mind") element is not required. Such offences are used to deter potential offenders from dangerous behaviour rather than to impose

punishment Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular acti ...

for moral wrongdoing.

Absolute liability offences

An absolute liability offence is a type of

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

offence that does not require any fault elements (''

mens rea In criminal law, (; Law Latin for "guilty mind") is the mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action (or lack of action) would cause a crime to be committed. It is considered a necessary element ...

'') to be proved in order to establish guilt. The prosecution only needs to show that the accused performed the prohibited act (''actus reus''). As such, absolute liability offences do not allow for a defense of

mistake of fact A mistake of fact may sometimes mean that, while a person has committed the physical element of an offence, because they were labouring under a mistake of fact, they never formed the mental element. This is unlike a mistake of law, which is not ...

. Due to the ease in which the offence can be proven, only select offences are of this type. In most legal systems,

absolute liability Absolute liability is a standard of legal liability found in tort and criminal law of various legal jurisdictions. To be convicted of an ordinary crime, in certain jurisdictions, a person must not only have committed a criminal action but also h ...

offences must be clearly labeled as such in the

criminal code A criminal code (or penal code) is a document that compiles all, or a significant amount of a particular jurisdiction's criminal law. Typically a criminal code will contain offences that are recognised in the jurisdiction, penalties that migh ...

or criminal

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolled bill, enrolling, enactment of a bill, enacting, or promulgation, promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous Government, governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law i ...

Public welfare offences

A public welfare offence is a crime for which "a reasonable person should know

hat the proscribed activity A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

is subject to stringent public regulation and may seriously threaten the community's health or safety".

References

Criminal law {{Criminal-law-stub

Absolute liability offences

Public welfare offences

See also

References