What Is an Attempt Charge

What an Attempt Charge Is

An attempt charge is a way for the law to reach conduct that was aimed at a crime even though that crime was never carried through to completion. The person is not being charged with the finished offense — they are being charged with having tried to commit it.

This matters because the criminal law in most systems does not wait for a harm to be complete before it steps in. If someone moves far enough toward committing a crime with the intent to follow through, many legal systems treat that progress as an offense of its own — separate from, but related to, the underlying crime that was the goal.

Attempt as an Inchoate Offense

Attempt belongs to a family of charges lawyers call inchoate offenses. “Inchoate” means incomplete or not yet fully formed. The defining feature of this category is that the underlying crime does not have to be completed for the charge to exist. Conspiracy — covered in the guide on What Is a Conspiracy Charge — works the same way: the agreed-upon crime need never happen for a conspiracy charge to attach. Attempt follows the same logic applied to a single actor’s own conduct.

The practical consequence is significant. Someone can face serious legal exposure even when the intended crime never occurred — when the victim was unharmed, when property was never taken, when whatever was planned never came to pass. The exposure flows from how far the conduct went and what was intended, not from whether the final harm landed.

The Two General Elements Most Systems Require

While the details vary by jurisdiction, most legal systems require two things before an attempt charge can be established. Understanding what an element is and how elements work is covered in the guide on What Is an Element of a Crime — the summary here is that each element is a building block the prosecution is expected to prove.

• Intent to commit the underlying crime. The person must have had the purpose of actually committing the target offense — not merely general recklessness or a passing thought. This is the mental element of the attempt, and it mirrors the concept explored in the guide on What Is Mens Rea. Without a genuine intent to complete the crime, most systems hold that no attempt exists.
• A substantial step toward committing it. Beyond intent, the law in most systems also requires that the person took action that went far enough toward the crime to count. Thinking about committing an offense, or even planning it privately, is generally not enough on its own. There must be some act in the external world that reflects a real move toward carrying it out.

Both elements typically must be present. Where one is genuinely missing — where the intent was absent, or where the conduct never crossed into qualifying action — the charge may not hold up. Whether both elements are established on the specific facts of a case is a question that turns on the evidence and the law of that jurisdiction.

The Line Between Preparation and a Substantial Step

One of the most contested and jurisdiction-varying questions in attempt law is where preparation ends and a substantial step begins. The line matters because conduct that stays on the preparation side of it generally cannot support a conviction — only conduct that has crossed over into a meaningful step toward the crime can.

Different legal systems have tried to draw this line in different ways, and courts within the same system often reason through it on a case-by-case basis. Some general observations tend to appear across many of these frameworks:

• Mere preparation is generally not enough. Acquiring information, forming a plan, or gathering resources may be consistent with intending a crime — but in many systems that alone does not rise to a substantial step. The conduct must typically go further.
• Proximity to the crime matters. How close the conduct came — in time, place, or sequence — to the moment the crime would have been committed is one factor many systems weigh, though no single proximity test is universal.
• Conduct that strongly corroborates intent may qualify. In some frameworks, an act counts as a substantial step when it is of a kind that a person would not take unless they genuinely intended to follow through — conduct that is, by its nature, hard to explain innocently given what surrounded it.

Because the preparation-versus-step distinction is fact-intensive and genuinely varies by jurisdiction, it is often one of the sharpest contested points in an attempt case. Understanding Your Criminal Charges offers context on how the charge as a whole is structured once that determination has been made.

The Concept of Abandonment

Some legal systems recognize a concept sometimes called abandonment or renunciation — the idea that a person who voluntarily and completely gave up the criminal purpose before the crime was completed may have a potential consideration available that would not otherwise exist.

The shape of this concept, and whether it applies at all, varies considerably across jurisdictions. In systems that recognize it, the abandonment is generally required to be genuine and voluntary — not prompted by an obstacle the person encountered or by the fear of being caught, but by a real change of purpose. A person who stopped only because something prevented them from continuing is not the same, in most frameworks, as a person who stopped because they chose to.

Whether abandonment applies, what it requires, and what effect it actually has are all jurisdiction-specific questions. In many systems it is narrow or not recognized at all. It is worth knowing the concept exists — and equally important to understand that it is not a universal exit from an attempt charge.

Questions to Explore About an Attempt Charge

Questions that tend to clarify what an attempt charge actually rests on in a particular situation:

1. What is the underlying offense the attempt is based on, and what are its own elements?
2. What specific act is being characterized as the substantial step — and does that act go beyond what this jurisdiction treats as mere preparation?
3. What evidence of intent exists, and does it support the conclusion that the goal was to actually complete the underlying crime?
4. Does this jurisdiction recognize abandonment, and if so, what would qualify — and does anything on the facts here arguably fit?
5. How does the exposure on the attempt charge compare to the exposure on the underlying offense itself?
6. Are there lesser charges in the picture, and what distinguishes them from the attempt charge as filed?