Unlawful confinement generally refers to a situation wherein one person causes another person to to stay in a specific area without that person's consent. It can also occur when a person is forced or enticed to move from one place or another without consent. Almost all major countries have laws against unlawful confinement.
There are many different situations in which unlawful confinement can occur. A typical unlawful confinement situation occurs when a robber breaks into a home and takes hostages or requires the people in the home to stay in a certain room.
The punishment for unlawful confinement can change depending on different variables such as whether the person being confined is a child and/or whether the person doing the confining is doing so with deadly force such as with the use of a gun.