False Imprisonment - Essay Example

The detective later learns that the person is innocent, but still go-ahead to lock the person up. It could then be said that the detective has falsely imprisoned the individual and this is a clear case of false imprisonment.

It should be noted that false imprisonment differs from kidnapping in so many ways. While false imprisonment is usually done by officers of the law, kidnapping is not in any way done by officers of the law. Kidnapping is the criminal act of abducting somebody forcefully against their will and it is usually done for ransom. False imprisonment is usually carried out with the officers that made the false imprisonment giving the impression that they are working according to the statutes of the law, while kidnapping is in every way against the law. Thus, to a certain extent, false imprisonment has the support of the law at least up to the extent that it has been established that it is false imprisonment. While kidnapping on the other hand does not have the support of the law in any way (Friedman, 2002).

False imprisonment differs from false arrest in the sense that while false imprisonment generally involves the imprisonment of an individual by a detective or an officer of the law, a false arrest does not necessarily end in imprisonment. False arrest is an arrest of a person or persons without legal authority, while false imprisonment has legal authority to a certain extent as the detective gives people the impression that the person falsely imprisoned is actually guilty of the offense they have been imprisoned for (Friedman, 2002). It should be noted that while false imprisonment is usually carried out by officers of the law, false arrests could also be carried out by private individuals pretending to be custodians of the law.