Kidnapping, also spelled kidnaping, criminal offense consisting of the unlawful taking and carrying away of a person by force or fraud or the unlawful seizure and detention of a person against his will. The principal motives for kidnapping are to subject the victim to some form of involuntary servitude, to expose him to the commission of some further criminal act against his person, or to obtain ransom for his safe release. More recently, kidnapping for the purpose of extortion has become a tactic of political revolutionaries or terrorists seeking concessions from a government. In all countries it is considered a grave offense punishable by a long prison sentence or death.

In earlier times kidnapping meant carrying a person away to another country for involuntary servitude. It also referred to the practices of impressing males into military service (also known as crimping) by fraudulent inducement or force and of shanghaiing merchant seamen in port cities.

Abducting young women and selling them for purposes of concubinage or prostitution has also been characterized as a form of kidnapping. In current statutes this is often described as abduction and ordinarily includes the taking or detention of a girl under a designated age for purposes of marriage. In some countries the alienation of a husband from his wife by another woman who entices him away is also delineated as a criminal offense within the meaning of abduction.

Modern kidnapping laws are drawn so as to proscribe the offense of taking a person with the object of extorting large amounts of ransom money or other concessions for his safe return. This became common in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. The kidnapping in 1932 of the infant son of the internationally known American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh spurred legislation imposing the death penalty for transporting a kidnapped victim across a state line.

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In most countries, the offense of kidnapping includes false imprisonment. False imprisonment aggravated by the carrying of the person to some other place is considered a kidnapping, thus inviting a more severe penalty.