Forfeiture

A forfeiture is the suspension of the protection of a boundary. An agent causes a forfeiture when the agent crosses the boundary of a different agent. Rights bind in two directions: to claim a right is to owe the identical right to each agent like you. Thus an agent who crosses the boundary of a different agent without consent removes, by that act, the protection of their own boundaries. The removal applies to each kind of boundary that the full harm reached, consequences included. In those kinds, no protection remains. A thief who takes property that is not theirs loses the protection of the property that is theirs. Each boundary around their own property stands open. The thief refused the property principle, and thus the thief stands outside that principle. No one gives, votes, or declares a forfeiture. Like Guilt, a forfeiture exists objectively, from causation. A Judgment discovers a forfeiture. A Judgment does not make one. Because of Forfeiture, force can answer harm, and the answer is not a new crime. Harm in a boundary in Forfeiture has no Victim in the normative sense. The agent receives harm in fact, in the descriptive sense. But the harm crossed no protected boundary. Thus there is no violation, no new guilt, and no new moral debt. This is why the defender, the punisher who acts in a Mandate and in Proportion, and the ender of an Outlaw do no crime. The same acts against an intact boundary are crimes. A forfeiture has three phases. In phase one, a crossing continues or is immediately credible. The aggressor loses protection against each person, but only to the minimum force that is necessary to stop the crossing, as in self-defense. In phase two, the harm is done. Now the victim holds the forfeiture. It extends across each kind that the full harm reached, and only the victim, or a proxy in their Mandate, can use it. In phase three, the offender destroyed the victim, as in Murder. The forfeiture now has no holder who can limit, use, or release it. Thus the forfeiture becomes general and permanent. Such an agent is an Outlaw. The measure of a forfeiture is the kind that the full harm reached, not the size of the thing that the offender took. The ceiling for a thief is the loss of all the property of the thief. Because the thief took the property of a different agent, the thief loses the protection of their own property. A theft that goes sufficiently deep to cost lives reaches the body. Then death becomes the ceiling. Force above the kinds that the full harm reached crosses an intact boundary. To kill a thief who took only property is a new crime with a new victim. The person who increased the force becomes an aggressor. A forfeiture stops when Justice closes the moral debt, by collection or by release. After that, the boundaries of the former offender stand whole again. Harm to them then makes a victim, like each other victim. A forfeiture that was at no time real protects no person who acts on it. To punish the incorrect agent, or to end an agent who is not an Outlaw, crosses an intact boundary. Responsibility for that harm follows causation. It falls on a deceiver who caused the act by fraud. In other conditions it falls on the actor, without attention to their beliefs.