An offense involving unlawful confinement, restraint, or movement of a person without lawful authority. It requires proof of the prohibited restraint conduct and any purpose or aggravating elements specified by law. It does not include restraint authorized by law or restraint lacking the required unlawful purpose where an element is required. It protects personal liberty and is treated as high-severity due to coercive control and risk of harm. The concept is generally stable, though statutory gradations and penalty schemes evolve over time.

Principle

Liability requires intentionality to confine, lack of consent or legal justification, and typically that the restraint be non-trivial though duration need not be long; the offense is distinct from physical assault where contact is the focus and from kidnapping where movement or asportation may be required.

Demonstration

A store employee locks a suspected shoplifter in a backroom and prevents exit for an hour without reasonable cause or authority; the employee intentionally restricted the person’s liberty without consent or lawful justification, constituting false imprisonment.

Misapplication

Treating a lawful detention—such as a police arrest based on probable cause or a consensual game (e.g., an escape room)—as false imprisonment; or charging someone for brief, unintended obstruction without intent to confine.

Consequence

A proven false imprisonment exposes the perpetrator to criminal penalties and civil liability (damages for loss of liberty), creates remedies for immediate release and compensation, and reinforces limits on private actors’ power to detain others.

Reversal

The reversal is lawful restraint: an arrest by authorized officers under legal procedures, or voluntary confinement with informed consent; these lack the element of unlawful deprivation of liberty necessary for false imprisonment.

Boundary

Excludes lawful arrests, detentions under statutory authority, parental discipline within legal bounds in some jurisdictions, and transient physical obstruction without intent to detain; context and authority determine whether restraint is unlawful.

Semantic Tension

Tension arises with kidnapping (which often requires movement or higher mens rea) and with the tort of false imprisonment in civil law where remedies and standards differ even if the core deprivation of liberty is similar.

Synthesis

False imprisonment criminalizes the intentional, nonconsensual, and unlawful deprivation of a person’s freedom of movement, distinct from lawful arrest or mere physical interference by its lack of authority and the offender’s intent to restrain.