Administration of Justice Offenses

Offenses that interfere with the proper functioning of a court, a legal proceeding, a legislative inquiry, or a law enforcement investigation, rather than harming a victim directly. The class covers perjury and its variants, tampering with a juror, a witness or physical evidence, obstructing or perverting the course of justice, escaping or failing to appear from lawful custody, harboring or assisting a person wanted by the law, contempt of a court, a legislature or a lawful order, and falsely posing as a police officer or public official in the course of another scheme. What unites the group is the target of the wrongdoing, the machinery of justice and government process itself, rather than a private person or piece of property. Belongs here: an offense whose essential harm is to a judicial, legislative or investigative process. Does not belong here: misconduct committed by a sitting public official while exercising their own lawful office, held under Official Misconduct, or a general legal doctrine such as attempt or conspiracy that applies across every kind of crime rather than naming one of its own.