Blameworthiness

Culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. Culpability marks the dividing line between moral evil, like murder, for which someone may be held legally responsible and a randomly occurring event, like earthquakes, for which no human can be held responsible. One formulation of the concept is as follows:

A person is culpable if they cause a negative event and
(1) the act was intentional;
(2) the act and its consequences could have been controlled (i.e., the agent knew the likely consequences, the agent was not coerced, and the agent overcame hurdles to make the event happen); and
(3) the person provided no excuse or justification for the actions.

Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault (). The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom, and free will. All are commonly held to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for culpability.

From a legal perspective, culpability describes the degree of one's blameworthiness in the commission of a crime or offense. Except for strict liability crimes, the type and severity of punishment often follow the degree of culpability. "Culpability means, first and foremost, direct involvement in the wrongdoing, such as through participation or instruction", as compared with responsibility merely arising from "failure to supervise or to maintain adequate controls or ethical culture".

Modern criminal codes in the United States usually make distinct four degrees of culpability.

Legal definitions of culpability are:

(The above has been quoted from the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. That in turn derives from the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, which is the basis for large portions of the criminal codes in most states. The only difference is that the MPC uses "purposely" instead of "intentionally".)

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