Examples
Status offenses may include consumption of alcohol, tobacco smoking, truancy, and running away from home. These acts may be illegal for persons under a certain age, while remaining legal for all others, which makes them status offenses.
Status offense may also apply to other classes, including laws forbidding ownership of firearms by felons, where such ownership is otherwise legal.
Laws that prohibit certain actions to certain persons based on their sex, race, nationality, religion, etc., are also status offenses. A law that prohibits men from using public toilets intended for women, or a law that sets a curfew for people below a certain age, are examples of status offenses, although they are not always thought of as such.
In some jurisdictions, as social conventions have evolved over time, status offenses that were codified into law long ago are either no longer actively enforced or actually conflict with more recent legislation and cannot be enforced, even though they remain on the books.
Read more about this topic: Status Offense
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