> If a mandated reporter fails to report, they can be subject to civil penalty, criminal prosecution, or both.
Not sure how subject to criminal prosecution would work without a law.
So that's good enough for me. Do I want to dig through the legal docs today to quote the exact paragraphs for all the US states or other countries? Nah, maybe some other time.
You understand that having doctors and social workers report a specific type of crime to law enforcement is not the same thing, and not even related to the idea, as the idea that law enforcement has to pursue prosecution of crimes they are aware of, right?
Law enforcement has no real obligation to investigate and prosecute crimes that are reported to them. Beyond that, the idea that mandated reporting, which mostly involves medical professionals reporting abuse, is such a big deal is because the default state is that you are under no obligation to report crimes or assist with prosecution of crimes.
> You understand that having doctors and social workers report a specific type of crime to law enforcement is not the same thing, and not even related to the idea, as the idea that law enforcement has to pursue prosecution of crimes they are aware of, right?
There are multiple entities here. The OP mentioned "public agents", both the museum employees may be public agents (working for some preservation or historical department), and the police, or the prosecutors maybe public agents. I was talking about the first case most when someone witnessed a crime and they have to report it. It doesn't apply directly to the case here, but that general principle exists.
It seems you're talking about whether the prosecutors can selectively prosecute or not. In US they pick and choose, can but other countries that may not have that choice they are forced to if they are aware of crimes: https://www.ibanet.org/article/A835FD91-8EB7-4CBF-8AFE-E7E2E...
> For example, the new German corporate criminal liability framework[3] removes prosecutorial discretion (opportunity) and requires that public prosecutors prosecute legal persons whenever there is sufficient reasonable suspicion of occurrence of a criminal offence attributable to a legal person. Furthermore, due to the legality principle, the majority of legal systems are not allowed to choose whom to prosecute and must prosecute both the legal person and the natural person without the possibility of giving a preference.
So both options exist: forcing people to report crimes they are aware of, and prosecutors not having the discretion to prosecute but being forced to.
It’s for abuse so we’re not talking about a few old axes. But such a thing as a concept does exist.