CRIMINAL LAW

Criminal law is categorized as a part of public law – the law regulating the relations between citizens and the state. Crimes can be thought of as acts which the state considers to be wrong and which can be punished by the state.

In many legal systems it is an important principle that a person cannot be considered guilty of a crime until the state proves he committed it. The suspect himself need not prove anything, although he will of course help himself if he can show evidence of his innocence. The state must prove his guilt according to high standards, and for each crime there are precise elements which must be proven. In codified systems, these elements are usually recorded in statutes. In common law systems the elements of some crimes are detailed in statutes; others, known as “common law crimes”, are still described mostly in case law. Even where there is a precise statute, the case law interpreting the statute may be very important since the circumstances of each crime may be very different.

For example, the crime of theft is defined in England under the 1968 Theft Act as “dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another with the intention to permanently depriving the other of it”.

There are further definitions of each element of the definition, such as appropriating, which may mean taking away, destroying, treating as your own, and selling. The same Act also defines in detail crimes such as burglary (entering someone’s land without permission intending to steal or commit an act of violence) and robbery (using force or threats in order to steal from someone).

There are usually two important elements to a crime: the criminal act itself and the criminal state of mind of the person when he committed the act. In Anglo-American law these are known by the Latin terms of Actus Reus and Mens Rea. The differences between these can be explained by using the crime of murder as an example.

In English law there is a rather long common law definition of murder: the unlawful killing of a human being under the Queen’s Peace, with malice aforethought, so that the victim dies within a year and a day.

Malice aforethought refers to the mens rea of the crime and is a way of saying that the murderer intended to commit a crime. Of course, the court can never know exactly what was in the head of the killer at the time of the killing, so it has the difficult task of deciding what his intentions must have been. The judgments in many recent cases show that English law is constantly developing its definition of intent.

Although most criminal laws in the world refer to acts of violence or theft, there are laws regulating almost every kind of human behavior: for example, what we do with our land; what we say and write; how we run our business; even what we wear. Sometimes governments “create new crimes” by identifying a form of behavior and passing a new law to deal with it. In most industrialized countries existing theft laws were not adequate to deal with computer crimes where complex kinds of information are stolen, altered or used to deceive others and thus, new laws have been passed.

Technical change is one reason why the criminal law is one of the fastest growing areas of the law. Another reason is that the number of crimes committed in some countries seem to be increasing rapidly – although sometimes it is not clear whether people are breaking the law more, being caught more, or reporting other people’s crimes more. One more reason is that different societies, or perhaps it is different governments, continually review their ideas of what should and shouldn’t be considered a crime. Homosexual acts, suicide and blasphemy (attacking religion) were once crimes in all European countries, but have now mostly been decriminalized. On the other hand, discrimination against someone on the grounds of race or sex was not acknowledged as a crime until relatively recently, and is still not recognized in some countries. Recent cases of euthanasia (shortening of life of a sick person) are causing re-evaluations of the concept of murder.

1. Criminal law is a part of private law.

2. Crimes are acts punishable by the state.

3. The suspect of a crime must prove his innocence himself.

4. In common law systems the elements of some crimes are set fort in statutes.

5. According to the 1968 Theft Act a crime is “dishonestly conferring property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it”.

6. There are three important elements to a crime.

7. Malice aforethought means a criminal’s intention to commit a crime.

8. New crimes are “created” by governments to pass a new law to deal with a new form of behavior.

9. Technical change does not influence the development of the criminal law.

10. Different governments permanently review their concepts of crime.