In criminology, public-order crime is defined by Siegel (2004) as "crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently", i.e., it is behaviour that has been labelled criminal because it is contrary to shared norms, social values, and customs. Robertson (1989:123) maintains a crime is nothing more than "an act that contravenes a law". Generally speaking, deviancy is criminalized when it is too disruptive and has proved uncontrollable through informal sanctions.
Public-order crime should be distinguished from political crime. In the former, although the identity of the "victim" may be indirect and sometimes diffuse, it is cumulatively the community that suffers, whereas in a political crime, the state perceives itself to be the victim and criminalizes the behaviour it considers threatening. Thus, public-order crime includes consensual crime and victimless crime. It asserts the need to use the law to maintain order both in the legal and moral sense. Public-order crime is now the preferred term by proponents as against the use of the word "victimless" based on the idea that there are secondary victims (family, friends, acquaintances, and society at large) that can be identified.
For example, in cases where a criminal act subverts or undermines the commercial effectiveness of normative business practices, the negative consequences extend beyond those at whom the specific immediate harm was intended. Similarly, in environmental law, there are offences that do not have a direct, immediate, and tangible victim, so crimes go largely unreported and unprosecuted because of the problem of lack of victim awareness. In short, there are no clear, unequivocal definitions of "consensus", "harm", "injury", "offender", and "victim". Such judgments are always informed by contestable, epistemological, moral, and political assumptions (de Haan, 1990: 154).
A vice squad is a police division whose focus is stopping public-order crimes like gambling, narcotics, prostitution, and illegal sales of alcohol.
England and Wales
Note that under English and Welsh law, a "public-order offence" is a different category of crime related to disorderly conduct and other breaches of the peace.
Crimes without apparent victims
In public-order crimes, there are many instances of criminality where a person is accused because he/she has made a personal choice to engage in an activity of which society disapproves, e.g., private recreational drug use. Thus, there is continuing political debate on criminalization versus decriminalization, focusing on whether it is appropriate to use punishment to enforce the various public policies that regulate the nominated behaviours. After all, society could deal with unpopular behaviour without invoking criminal or other legal processes.
Following the work of Schur (1965), these types of crime usually include the sexually based offences of prostitution, paraphilia (i.e., sexual practices considered deviant), underage sex, and pornography. They also include the offences involving substance abuse which may or may not involve some element of public disorder or danger to the public, as in driving while intoxicated. Since 1965, however, societal views have changed greatly. For example, prostitution, often considered a victimless crime, is classified by some countries as a form of exploitation of women; such views are held in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, where it is illegal to pay for sex, but not to be a prostitute (the client commits a crime, but not the prostitute), see Prostitution in Sweden.
When deciding whether harm to innocent individuals should be prohibited, the moral and political beliefs held by those in power interact and inform the decisions to create or repeal crimes without apparent victims. These decisions change over time as moral standards change. For example, Margaret Sanger who founded the first birth-control clinic in New York City was accused of distributing obscene material and violating public morals. Information about birth control is no longer considered obscene (see the U.S. case law examples). Within the context of a discussion on whether governments should regulate public morals in the interest of the public good, Meier & Geis (1997) identify which social problems might be deemed appropriate for legal intervention and the extent to which the criminal law should enforce moral positions which may lack societal consensus.
This reflects a more fundamental problem of legal consistency. People have the right to engage in some self-destructive activities. For all its carcinogenic qualities, tobacco is not a prohibited substance. Similarly, the excessive consumption of alcohol can have severe physical consequences, but it is not a crime to consume it. This is matched in gambling. The state and its institutions often rely on lotteries, raffles, and other legal forms of gambling for operating funds, whether directly or indirectly through the taxation of profits from casinos and other licensed outlets. Qualitatively, there is nothing to distinguish the forms of gambling deemed illegal. A side effect of turning too many people into criminals is that the concept of crime becomes blurred and genuine criminality becomes less unacceptable. If the key distinction between real crime and moral regulation is not made clearly, as more consensual activities become crimes, ordinary citizens are criminalized for tax-evasion, illegal downloading, and other voluntary rule-breaking. A further perceptual problem emerges when laws remain in force but are obviously not enforced, i.e. the police reflect the consensus view that the activity should not be a crime. Alternatively, if the activities prohibited are consensual and committed in private, this offers incentives to the organizers to offer bribes in exchange for diverting enforcement resources or to overlooking discovered activity, thereby encouraging political and police corruption. Thus, any deterrent message that the state might wish to send is distorted or lost.
More generally, political parties find it easier to talk dismissively about crimes if they are classified as victimless because their abolition or amendment looks to have fewer economic and political costs, i.e., the use of the word "victimless" implies that there are no injuries caused by these crimes (Robertson 1989:125) and, if that is true, then there is no need to create or retain the criminal offences. This may reflect a limited form of reality that, in the so-called "victimless crimes", there are no immediate victims to make police reports and those who engage in the given behaviour regard the law as inappropriate, not themselves. This has two consequences: Because these crimes often take place in private, comprehensive law enforcement (often including entrapment and the use of agent provocateurs) would consume an enormous amount of resources. It is therefore convenient for the law enforcement agencies to classify a crime as victimless because that is used as a justification for devoting fewer resources as against crimes where there are "real" victims to protect; and These crimes usually involve something desirable where large profits can be made, e.g., drugs or sex.
The hidden crime factor Because most of these crimes take place in private or with some degree of secrecy, it is difficult to establish the true extent of the crime. The "victims" are not going to report it and arrest statistics are unreliable indicators of prevalence, often varying in line with local political pressure to "do something" about a local problem rather than reflecting the true incidence of criminal activity. In addition to the issue of police resources and commitment, many aspects of these activities are controlled by organized crime and are therefore more likely to remain hidden. These factors are used to argue for decriminalization. Low or falling arrest statistics are used to assert that the incidence of the relevant crimes is low or now under control. Alternatively, keeping some of these "vices" as crimes simply keeps organized crime in business.
Decriminalization of public-order crimes
Maguire and Radosh (1999: 146/7) accept that the public-order crimes that cause the most controversy are directly related to the current perceptions of morality. The most fundamental question remains whether the government has the right to enforce laws prohibiting private behaviour.
Arguments in favor of decriminalization Those who favor decriminalization or legalization contend that government should be concerned with matters affecting the common good, and not seek to regulate morality at an individual level. Indeed, the fact that the majority ignore many of the laws, say on drug-taking, in countries founded on democratic principles should encourage the governments elected by those majorities to repeal the laws. Failure to do so simply undermines respect for all laws, including those laws that should, and, indeed, must be followed. Indeed, when considering the range of activities prohibited, the practical policing of all these crimes would require the creation of a police state intruding into every aspect of the peoples' lives, no matter how private. It is unlikely that this application of power would be accepted even if history showed such high-profile enforcement to be effective. Prohibition arguably did not prevent the consumption of alcohol, and the present war on drugs is expensive and ineffective. Those who favor decriminalization also point to experience in those countries which permit activities such as recreational drug use. There is clear evidence of lower levels of substance abuse and disruptive behavior.
The presence of public-order crimes encourages a climate of general disrespect for the law. Many individuals choose to violate public-order laws, because they are easily violable, and there is no victim to complain. This encourages disrespect for the law, including disrespect for laws involving crimes with victims.