How does recklessness differ from negligence in criminal law?

In criminal law, the distinction between recklessness and negligence centers on the actor's mental state regarding the risk created by their conduct. Under the Model Penal Code, these terms are defined as follows:1

• Recklessness: This involves a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk. The actor is aware that their conduct is creating an unreasonable peril but chooses to proceed anyway.1
• Negligence: This involves a failure to perceive a risk that a reasonable person would have recognized. It is characterized by inadvertence to a peril that should have been apparent, rather than a conscious choice to ignore it.1

While both concepts relate to the failure to meet standards of behavior intended to protect society from unreasonable risk, recklessness requires a higher degree of culpability because it involves actual awareness of the danger. In contrast, negligence is determined by an external, objective standard—what a hypothetical "reasonable person" would have done or foreseen in the same situation.12