> On a more practical level, if someone is breaking into your house, should it be illegal to tell them to stop, on pain of you calling the police which presumably would cause them to be incarcerated?
Not a lawyer, but there's a fine line between extortion and not-extortion.
It's not extortion when you're making the threat to either stop an illegal behavior or secure something you already have rights to. Like, "I'm calling the cops if you don't return the kids on the time/date we agreed on in the goddamn divorce papers" is not extortion, because you have a legitimate claim to defend.
It is extortion when you're trying to use the threat of law enforcement as a means of engineering consent or coercing someone into doing something. Like, "I'm going to call the cops and tell them about your shoplifting unless you send me nudes/pay me $500/keep your mouth shut." You can't leverage withheld knowledge of a crime as a means of controlling someone. Otherwise it opens the door to "Remember that time you raped me? You need to do me another favor to make it right"-type of arrangements.
The first example would be extortion if the kids were returned late but it was not reported, and the other party continued threatening to report it after the fact to enforce future compliance.
Not a lawyer, but there's a fine line between extortion and not-extortion.
It's not extortion when you're making the threat to either stop an illegal behavior or secure something you already have rights to. Like, "I'm calling the cops if you don't return the kids on the time/date we agreed on in the goddamn divorce papers" is not extortion, because you have a legitimate claim to defend.
It is extortion when you're trying to use the threat of law enforcement as a means of engineering consent or coercing someone into doing something. Like, "I'm going to call the cops and tell them about your shoplifting unless you send me nudes/pay me $500/keep your mouth shut." You can't leverage withheld knowledge of a crime as a means of controlling someone. Otherwise it opens the door to "Remember that time you raped me? You need to do me another favor to make it right"-type of arrangements.
The first example would be extortion if the kids were returned late but it was not reported, and the other party continued threatening to report it after the fact to enforce future compliance.