Rout

A common law and public order criminal offence which has gone beyond an unlawful assembly in that some action has been taken towards either the crime intended or the disturbance of the peace.

In his 1897 edition of his American Law Dictionary (The Boston Book Company), John Bouvier wrote that:

"(Rout) generally agrees in all particulars with a riot, except only in this: that it may be a complete offence without the execution of the intended entreprise."

Designed to capture conduct beyond unlawful assembly but not quite a riot, the common law offence has practically never been used, one British author saying that "prosecutions for it are unknown" (Byrne in A Dictionary of English Law, London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1923 at page 786).