ABSTRACT
The community may be the other victim of the supposedly victimless crime. Some scholars claim that laws against consensual crimes discriminate against the poor and minorities, and that prohibitions often have been enacted by those influenced by racism and xenophobia. Cigarettes do more damage and cause more deaths than all of the consensual crimes combined, yet their use is not usually treated as criminal. The punishment for drug crimes is more severe in the United States than in other industrialized nations. Roughly half of the arrests and court cases in the United States each year involve consensual crimes. Incarceration puts persons in proximity with other criminals and may result in their being schooled for other crimes and/or being preyed on by fellow criminals. Even if it is difficult to identify the victims of behavior or the nature of the harm done, criminalization performs an educational function for society by indicating behaviors of which it disapproves.
