Definition
Reset of theft is a term from Scots law denoting the offense of receiving and retaining stolen goods with knowledge that they were stolen and with the intent to feloniously withhold them from the rightful owner. It is the Scottish legal equivalent of what English and American law call receiving stolen property or the modern offense of theft by receiving.
The term breaks into two functional components: the act of receiving stolen property, and the continued retention of it with a guilty mind. The mental element is essential — receipt without knowledge of the theft does not constitute reset.
Reset is a substantive criminal offense in its own right under Scots law, distinct from the underlying theft. A person may be convicted of reset even if the original thief is not identified, tried, or convicted.
Common Confusion
Reset of theft should not be confused with the principal offense of theft itself. The resetter (the receiver) and the thief occupy separate legal positions: the thief commits the taking; the resetter commits a distinct offense by accepting and holding the proceeds. In historical Scottish practice this distinction was carefully maintained, and the two offenses could not be charged conjunctively against the same accused on the same facts — a person cannot logically be both the thief and the resetter of the same property.
Researchers should also distinguish reset from the accessory-after-the-fact doctrine familiar to English common law. Reset in Scots law is a principal offense, not a mode of accessorial liability. This is more than a terminological difference; it affects charging, pleading, and evidentiary standards.
Why It Matters in Research
Reset of theft is almost exclusively a term of Scottish legal provenance. Researchers encountering it in American or English sources are almost certainly reading a Scots law reference imported into a comparative or treatise context, not a live operative doctrine.
The term will appear in older American legal dictionaries primarily as a borrowing, included for completeness and comparative instruction rather than as a term of art in U.S. jurisdictions. When Black's, Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence each define it identically (with all three tracing to Alison's Criminal Law of Scotland), that convergence signals a shared upstream source rather than independent verification of American relevance.
Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should note:
— If the term appears in an 18th or 19th century American legal text, it likely signals a Scottish-trained author, a comparative law section, or a quotation from a Scottish authority.
— The functional equivalent in English and American law is receiving stolen property, and in modern American codes, theft by receiving. These terms will carry the operative doctrine in U.S. jurisdictions and should be the primary research target.
— The knowledge element (scienter) that defines reset is the same element most litigated in modern receiving-stolen-property cases. Historical Scottish authorities on reset, including Alison, can occasionally illuminate the theoretical underpinnings of the knowledge requirement in comparative arguments, though American courts rarely cite them directly.
— The corpus connections between reset and modern retail or motor vehicle theft statutes are thin. The offense shares conceptual DNA with those crimes but operates in a different doctrinal register — reset concerns receipt and retention after the fact, not the mechanics of the initial taking.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's — converge on an essentially identical definition, and all trace to the same authority: Alison's Principles of the Criminal Law of Scotland (cited as "Alis. Crim. Law, 328" in Black's and Bouvier's). This degree of uniformity is a signal of a term whose American dictionary presence is purely derivative. None of the three dictionaries attempt to extend the term beyond its Scottish context or analogize it to a specific American statutory offense.
The definitions emphasize two elements: (1) knowing receipt and retention and (2) the design to feloniously retain the property from the true owner. Rapalje & Lawrence's version is the most compressed, stripping the definition to its core; Black's and Bouvier's add the purposive element ("with a design of feloniously retaining them from the real owner"), which more precisely captures the volitional quality of the offense.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the procedural rules governing reset prosecutions in Scotland, the relationship between reset and art and part liability (Scots law's equivalent of concert of action), or the evidentiary presumptions that historically attached to possession of recently stolen goods. Researchers needing that level of detail must go to Alison directly or to later Scottish criminal law treatises.
Jurisdictional Note
Reset of theft has no operative force in any U.S. jurisdiction. It is a term of Scots law only. The functional American equivalent — receiving stolen property, or theft by receiving — is codified in all fifty states and in the Model Penal Code, but under different nomenclature and with varying scienter standards.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry corresponds directly to reset of theft as a Scots law doctrine. For the functionally equivalent American offenses, see:
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_58: Grand Theft vs. Petit Theft (Felony vs. Misdemeanor Thresholds) — relevant for understanding how modern American law categorizes theft-adjacent offenses by severity.
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_75: Motor Vehicle Theft — illustrates how receipt and retention of stolen property is treated in a specific modern statutory context.