What ought to be criminalized? There are many different answers to this question and the justifications vary widely. There are some things that most people seem to be able to agree onbut the opposite is very much true of other behaviors, examples that spring to mind are drugs, prostitution and gambling. The subject matter of this analysis falls square in the latter category. Bad samaritan laws prohibit individuals from refraining to rescue others in peril aslong as the risk to their own safety is minimal. Many countries in the world have passed such laws and yet they remain fiercely contested. At a glance this might seem odd: isn’t it a moral imperative to come to the aid of others who need our help, especially when there is little at stake for ourselves? Few actually contest this principle but there is a big leap from immorality to criminalization. Certain bad behaviors should be of no concern to the state but there are difficulties in deciding what kinds of immoral behavior should be subject to criminalization. This analysis is an attempt to determine whether bad samaritanism is the kind of wrong that merits state punishment. An ideational critique where a variety of arguments from the literature are surveyed, these arguments are then tested against the normative criteria of two theories of punishment: consequentialism and retributivism. Although there is some merit to bad samaritan laws, the author concludes that both traditions should reject them.