Public Order and Morality Offenses

Offenses that disturb the peace, safety or shared standards of decency of a community rather than targeting one identified victim, the modern descendant of common law breach of the peace and close to the class the Model Penal Code groups as offenses against public order and decency. The group spans disorderly conduct, rioting and unlawful assembly, public intoxication and the regulation of gambling and unlicensed alcohol, vagrancy, loitering and begging, obscenity and public indecency, minor traffic and nuisance ordinances, and offenses against religious or funerary respect such as blasphemy, sacrilege, and the desecration or mishandling of a corpse or a grave. Belongs here: conduct a jurisdiction criminalizes because it offends a community shared order or decency norms, even where no individual complainant is harmed. Does not belong here: cruelty toward an animal, held under Animal-Related Offenses, or an offense that specifically obstructs a legal proceeding, held under Administration of Justice Offenses.