decriminalizationn.

1945 S. S. Glueck & E. T. Glueck After-conduct Discharged Offenders viii. 99 This legislation is of great significance as probably constituting an entering wedge to the later decriminalisation of other behaviour categories of psychopaths.

1948 M. Grünhut Penal Reform xvii. 451 Decriminalization has a twofold meaning. First, it implies that although the new sanction can be legally applied only if a criminal offence has been committed, the treatment is selected and administered not in relation to the gravity of the offence, but to the prospects and needs of the individual... Decriminalization means, secondly, the substitution for punishment of another type of sanction, either reformative or protective.

1968 N.Y. Times 23 Aug. 67/3 Dr. Fort..called present drug laws ‘extreme, barbaric and inefficient’, and said that ‘immediate de-criminalization of the whole thing’ was needed.

1973 Daily Tel. 21 June 18 From time to time it is held against stores and firms that they adopt their own policy of ‘decriminalisation’ and do not take action against offenders where sums below a certain amount are involved.

1975 High Times Dec. 113/2 The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is laying plans for an autumn attack on the recently passed California decriminalization legislation.

1984 Listener 3 May 3/1 The emerging policy theory was..summed up as the three Ds: decriminalisation, diversion (from court) and de-institutionalisation.