A state crime is an act of serious wrongdoing carried out by, or with the tacit approval of, a government or its agencies, such as extrajudicial killing, torture, mass surveillance abuse, or systemic corruption. Investigating and prosecuting these offenses is unusually difficult because the very institutions responsible for law enforcement and prosecution may be complicit in, or protective of, the offending state actors.
Facts
Jurisdiction VariationUnder internal, domestic criminal law, prosecution of a state crime is typically only possible after a change of regime, since incumbent state authorities generally control domestic law enforcement and prosecution 1 Classification
Offense GradeSerious or Indictable Offense 1 Connections
Has Offense Grade
Entity-backed identity for the offense-grade enum value this offense already carries, resolved to a crime concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The offense-grade fact itself stays on the offense unchanged.
Sources
1. State Crime (Wikipedia)
Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_crime, lead paragraph
State crimes are crimes committed on behalf of or with the connivance of governments.
Internal criminal law section
There is therefore typically only a possibility of prosecuting these crimes when there has been a change of regime.
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