Culpability in the context of "Regulatory offence"

Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choose between different possible courses of action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral responsibility, or (c) be the ultimate source or originator of their actions. There are different theories as to its nature, and these aspects are often emphasized differently depending on philosophical tradition, with debates focusing on whether and how such freedom can coexist with physical determinism, divine foreknowledge, and other constraints.

Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility and moral desert, praise, culpability, and other judgements that can logically apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists and the implications of whether it exists or not constitute some of the longest running debates of philosophy.

Manslaughter is a term in common law for homicide considered less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.

The definition of manslaughter differs among legal jurisdictions.

In jurisprudence, an excuse is a defense to criminal charges that is a distinct from an exculpation. Justification and excuse are different defenses in a criminal case (See Justification and excuse). Exculpation is a related concept which reduces or extinguishes a person's culpability, such as their liability to pay compensation to the victim of a tort in the civil law.

The excuse provides a mitigating factor for a group of persons sharing a common characteristic. Justification, as in justifiable homicide, vindicates or shows the justice. Thus, society approves of the purpose or motives underpinning some actions or the consequences flowing from them (see Robinson), and distinguishes those where the behavior cannot be approved but some excuse may be found in the characteristics of the defendant, e.g. that the accused was a serving police officer or suffering from a mental illness. Thus, a justification describes the quality of the act, whereas an excuse relates to the status or capacity (or lack of it) in the accused. These factors can affect the resulting judgment which may be an acquittal, or in the case of a conviction may mitigate sentencing. An excuse may also be something that a person or persons use to explain any criticism or comments based on the outcome of any specific event.

In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice (malice aforethought). It "affects the quality of the actor's state of mind as an indicator of moral blameworthiness."

Provocation is often a mitigating factor in sentencing. It rarely serves as a legal defense, meaning it does not stop the defendant from being guilty of the crime. It may however, lead to a lesser punishment. In some common law legal systems, provocation is a "partial defense" for murder charges, which can result in the offense being classified as the lesser offense of manslaughter, specifically voluntary manslaughter.

In ethics and governance, accountability is equated with answerability, culpability, liability, and the expectation of account-giving.

As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit, private (corporate), and individual contexts. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment of and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies such as administration, governance, and implementation, including the obligation to report, justify, and be answerable for resulting consequences.

A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with low intelligence or with mental disorders are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit – but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge – and how often false confessions played a role in these.

Although most false confessions are coerced, some are voluntary. While coerced confessions have long been considered too unreliable to produce valid convictions, more sophisticated psychological interrogation methods may also produce false confessions.