Inchoate offense

An inchoate offense, inchoate offence, preliminary crime, or inchoate crime is a crime of preparing for or seeking to commit another crime. The most common example of an inchoate offense is "attempt". "Inchoate offense" has been defined as: "Conduct deemed criminal without actual harm being done, provided that the harm that would have occurred is one the law tries to prevent."

Intent

Every inchoate crime or offence must have the mens rea of intent or of recklessness, but most typically intent. Absent a specific law, an inchoate offense requires that the defendant have the specific intent to commit the underlying crime. For example, for a defendant to be guilty of the inchoate crime of solicitation of murder, he or she must have intended for a person to die.

Attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation all require mens rea.

On the other hand, RICO merely requires "knowing", that is, recklessness. Facilitation also requires "believing", yet another way of saying reckless.

Intent may be distinguished from recklessness and criminal negligence as a higher mens rea.