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6.2: False Imprisonment

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    The crime of false imprisonment is defined in section 236 of the California Penal Code. The crime is defined as the unlawful violation of the personal liberty of another.45

    In many jurisdictions, false imprisonment, also called felonious restraint, is a lesser included offense of kidnapping. This means that the crime of false imprisonment is missing one or two of the kidnapping elements and is graded lower than kidnapping. Often, false imprisonment functions as a partial defense to kidnapping because of the less serious sentencing options.

    Example of False Imprisonment

    Shawna asks Thomas to pull over and let her out. Thomas pulls over but thereafter locks all the doors and refuses to let Shawna out for twenty minutes, in spite of her begging and pleading for him to unlock the doors. In this case, Thomas might have committed false imprisonment. Although Shawna’s entrance into Thomas’s vehicle was consensual, when Thomas confined Shawna to his vehicle by locking the doors, he deprived her of her liberty against her will.

    Thomas did not move Shawna without her consent because he pulled over and stopped the vehicle at her request. However, asportation is not required for false imprisonment. Although Thomas’s actions do not indicate specific intent or purposely to injure Shawna, commit a separate offense, or seek ransom, often general intent or knowingly to commit the criminal act is sufficient for false imprisonment. Thus, these facts indicate the lower-level crime of false imprisonment rather than kidnapping, and Thomas may be charged with and convicted of this offense.46

    45California Penal Code (2024)

    46University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing (2015)

    This page titled 6.2: False Imprisonment was last modified on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:42:43 GMT and is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by George Cartwright.