Inchoate Offences

Abstract

What are inchoate offences? The word ‘inchoate’ indicates that these offences are in a sense incomplete. As a preventive measure, liability is imposed for acts which fall short of a complete offence, such as murder or theft, but which come close enough to threaten public order. The criminal law intervenes to prevent the complete offence (usually termed the ‘substantive offence’) being committed. In each inchoate offence, the mental element is crucial: it is the intention of the actor that the substantive offence be committed which makes her conduct dangerous and justifies the intervention of the criminal law before any concrete harm has been done to another person or property. However, it is very important to remember that there is no liability for merely planning, alone, to commit an offence. There must be an actus reus, even for the inchoate offences, although of course this will differ from the actus reus of the substantive offence, and there is often a fine line between non-criminal and criminal behaviour.