Crime
Crime is defined as any act
that violates the law. Hence, it is defined
relative to laws, and varies from society to society , from state to state,
from time to time, and from strict enforcement to none. According to
Curzon (1973) “Crime is any act or omission resulting from human conduct which
is considered in itself or in its outcome to be harmful and which the state
wishes to prevent, which renders the person responsible liable to some kind of
punishment; the result of the proceedings which are usually initiated on behalf
of the state and which are designed to ascertain the nature, extent
and the legal consequence of that person’s responsibility.
To Emile Durkheim, crime is
a category which can be defined only by reference
to the specific social norms and values of the society in which it occurs.
Durkheim does not regard some actions as crime absolutely – he recognizes that
given the whole total of human social experience, crime should be that which
contradicts the collective sentiments of the social group.
There are categories of
terms. Among them are (1) moral order (victimless crimes) –
violation of law in which there are no readily apparent victim such as
prostitution, gambling, vagrancy, purchasing illegal drugs like cannabis or
marijuana; (2) property crimes – common crimes committed in industrial
societies, including Robbery, Burglary and Larceny, and (3) violent crimes –
involve threat of violence, include murder, manslaughter, infanticide,
assault, sexual assault, abduction and robbery.
The Components of Crime
Technically, crime is
composed of two elements: (1) the act itself (or, in some cases, the failure to
do what the law required) and (2) criminal intent (in legal terminology, mens
rea, or” guilty mind”) intent is a matter of degree, ranging from wilful
conduct to negligence in which a person does not deliberately set out to hurt
anyone but acts (or fails to) in a manner that may reasonably be expected to
cause harm. Juries weigh the degree of intent in determining the seriousness of
a crime and may find the person who
kills another guilty of first-degree murder, second- degree murder, or
manslaughter.
Criminal
Law
According to Curzon (1973),
criminal law is a branch of public law, which deals with the relationship
between members of the public and the state. It spells out clearly the trial
and punishment of offenders. It is the principles law of crimes. Sutherland and Cressey
(1974) define criminal law as “a list of specific forms of human conduct which
has been outlawed by political
authority, which applies uniformity to all persons living under the political
authority, and which is enforced by punishment administered by the
state”. From this definition Sutherland Cressey brought
out some fundamental characteristics of criminal law such as polity,
specificity, uniformity and penal sanction.
Polity
The criminal laws are
usually enacted by the political authority, eg the national or state assembly.
Specificity
Criminal laws are usually
specific in regard to those behaviours that are termed as deviant and at the
same time in which conditions such behaviour may not be regarded as crime.
Uniformity
Criminal law, as an
instrument of rule of law, is expected to apply to all persons irrespective of
class, sex, ethnicity and religions or political affiliation.
Penal
Sanction
Criminal law usually
prescribes a specific punishment for a particular deviance. Any law that does
not prescribe a punishment for its violation should not be regarded as a
criminal law.
The definition of criminal
law has a historical antecedent. The historical roots came from two
early sources: first is (a) the Babylonian code of Hammurabi (b)
the mosaic code and (c) the Roman twelve tables-Justinian corpus Juris Civilis (body of civil
law). The second source was the English common law, the source of the
present-day legal system. The common law developed in England after the introduction of feudalism (the monarch
was the supreme land lord; All title to real property was ultimately traced to
the crown) following the Norman Conquest in 1066. It was in the law that crime
was not seen as an act against the whole society, therefore compensation was
paid to the victim rather
than the state. Criminal law deals with criminal behaviour; it is that branch
of law, which lists the various criminal offences, identifying the elements or
ingredients, which make up the offences, and
specifying the punishment for each or
group of offences accordingly. A major
objective of criminal law is the prevention and control of crime. Crime, as we
have explained, is considered a public wrong, or wrongs against the society.
Norms
Norms are standards that
define the obligatory and expected behaviours of people in various
situations. They reflect a society’s beliefs about correct and incorrect
behaviours. Norms help society control appropriate or harmful behaviours. For
example, Driving under the influence of alcohol and Drugs is now normatively
defined as unacceptable, as are other harmful behaviours such as rape, murder,
and drug trafficking. And smoking in public places is increasingly
frowned upon, if not defined as illegal in some setting.
At the same time, a norm
defining appropriate behaviour of a student in a classroom situation
looks on him to sit down, open a notebook, have a pen or pencil
ready to take notes. He should not chat on a cell phone during class; he should raise his hand to speak. He ought to know all these without receiving written list of rules from
each individual teacher. These are the standards that define the
obligatory and expected behaviours of people. When people’s expectations of
behaviour are suddenly violated, they experience culture shock (Neubeck, 2005).
Broadly speaking, norms are
obeyed for two reasons: First, members of all cultures
develop mechanisms for internalization – the social processes by which norms
and values become thoroughly ingrained and are largely unquestioned as ways of
thinking and acting “normally”.
Second, when socialisation
fails to produce the desired behaviour mechanisms/traits, “social control”
comes in to enforce conformity. These range from such informal punishments as
gossip and ostracism, to official forms of sanctions such as imprisonment.
There are three types of
norms, based on their level of importance to the dominant members of the
society. They are (1) Folkways, (2) Mores and (3) Laws. The negative sanctions,
or punishments, meted out to violators of norms vary in severity
depending on the type of norm being transgressed.
Law
In its simplest meaning,
law is a body of rules of conduct prescribed by an authority with binding legal force, the violation
of which may attract punishment. Law is a term derived from the Anglo- Saxon
word ‘lagu’, meaning to determine. There are however some variations in the
definition of law .Salmond, for example, defined law as ‘the body of principles
recognized and applied by the
state for the administration of justice.’ Vinogradoff defined law as ‘a set of
rules imposed and enforced by a society with regard to the attribution and
exercise of power over persons and things’.
According to him, it is
important for the society to recognize and respect the rules. Pound defined law
as a means of ‘social control through the systematic application of the forces
of politically organized society, while Austin defined it as ‘a rule laid down
for the guidance of individuals by the individuals with power over them.
Criminal
A criminal should be
understood as a person who have violated the criminal law of the land and has
been found guilty by a court
of law and punished accordingly. This is the legal phenomenon of the
definition of criminal.
Another perspective however
argues that anyone who violates the criminal law should be deemed a criminal
,regardless of whether or not they are apprehended
,tried ,and punished by a court of law .This argument is based on the fact that many
acts defined by the criminal law as crimes e .g .murder ,robbery ,arson ,and
car-theft are committed daily .A good number of these criminals are not known
or reported to the police .Those who are reported may escape police prosecution
or conviction by the courts on account of corruption or incompetence on the
part of the police and court officials .Those who are prosecuted
may escape conviction as a result of procedural and other legal
technicalities .yet , such persons have violated the criminal law
by engaging in murder ,robbery ,arson or car- theft ,as the
case may be .These are what Kora and McCorkle have referred to as ‘offenders
–in facts’ as different
from ‘criminals by adjudication’. The latter are persons who have been tried
and convicted for particular offences by courts of competent jurisdiction,
whether or not they committed the offences alleged .It must be noted that some
persons may be convicted in error just as many people who should be convicted
escape the long arms of the law for whatever reason.
Types of Criminals
As Clinard notes, Criminal
offenders are often classified, from a legal point of view, by the
type of the crime, such as murder, burglary, arson, rape or embezzlement. In
these instances , such criminals will be classified as murders , burglars ,
arsonists , rapists or embezzlers respectively .At other times ,criminals may
be classified according to sex or age. But a good number of offenders
belong to career types , in which group or cultural influences play a
major role in the development of this offender-type ;e.g. is property offenders.
Deviance
Deviance is a violation of
norms of the land,-a deviation from or fail to conform to the norms.
Deviance ranges from the trivial to the
acute – from sleeping in class to committing murder. How others
react to a deviant act indicates how serious the violation is or whether or not
people ignore or disapprove of it. Some actions are regarded as deviant in some
societies, and not in others, while other actions are regarded as deviant in
all societies. For example, drinking of alcohol is a serious deviance in some
states of Northern Nigeria.
Distinction
between Deviance and Crime.
Deviance is a violation of the norms held by the society’s members
while crime is a particular form of Deviance. That is, crime is a violation of
a law. Law is the most formal of norms. Norms are the defined obligatory
and expected behaviours of people in a given situation. That is, they are
rules. They include the folkways, the mores, and the laws which are
translated into a written legal code and enforced by the state.
Therefore, the term
‘Deviance’ refers to the violations of folkways and mores while
‘crime’ refers to those behaviours that violate norms in the criminal and
penal codes. The punishments
for crime are commonly harsh and more formalized. But not everyone who engages
in the same behaviours is sanctioned, and not everyone who is
sanctioned receives the same kind of punishment. .
Criminology
Criminology is simply a
science of crime. Criminology is best seen as a social science which deals so
much on the aspects of human behaviour. Such study deals in conjunction with
criminal law which prohibits such behaviour, together with aspects of socially
deviant behaviours which is much closely related to crime. The fundamental
focus of the criminology is to ascertain the criminal behaviour. This includes
the ways the criminologist perceives the offender.
The criminologists have in
addition, gone outside the strict legal definition of criminology to include a
study of a particular type of behaviour such as robbery, violence, incest, and
serious heterosexual offences. To them, the study of such conduct in the
society brings social control. They view them as anti-social,
immoral and contrary to the public interest. So as criminologists, they condemn
such behaviours publicly.
It would be misleading to
conclude that criminology can easily be laid out as an appraisal of
individually distinct clumps of theory .But in the other side; it
has been a borrowed idea from other academic disciplines.
Penology
Penology, as a major branch
of criminology, deals with an important aspect of the criminal justice process,
that is, punishment, correction, prevention and control of crime. In the new
concept, penology must also consider “the causes of crime, the criminal in his
physical and mental aspects as product of such causes, and punishment as a
means to an end.” Law itself is defined on the basis of the punishment attached to its
violation, therefore there is no punishment without law as depicted by the Latin words – maxim null paean
sine lege, and (there is hardly any law without punishment).
Punishment can be defined
legally as simply the infliction of pain or suffering or deprivation of
something of value in relation to someone who has committed crime.
Violate rule. Societal norms or regulations. For Emile Durkheim,
punishment is the society’s responsibility to punish wrongdoers and it does so
through a recognized body which exercises the authority to punish on behalf of
the society.
REFERENCES
Carrabine, Eamonn, et al (2004). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction.
London: Routledge.
Ferdinand, Theodore N. (1966). Typologies of Delinquency: A Critical Analysis.
New York: Random House.
McGuire, Mike, et al, eds. (2002). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Neubeck, Kenneth J. and Davita S. Glasberg (2005). Sociology: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Williams, Hall J. E. (1984). Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Butterworths.
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