What is Crime?
How can we best define crime? Discuss.
The Oxford English dictionary defines crime as “an act punishable by law, as being forbidden by statute or injurious to the public welfare, an evil act; an offence, a sin, -an act can only be considered a crime when identified as such by law. An act was defined a crime in the old testament with the creation of the Ten Commandments. This was when it was literally set into stone that numerous acts became a crime against God, the first rules of the world. Crimes are now defined as crimes with the help of the legal system and certain pieces of legislature and cannot always necessarily be traced back to the Ten Commandments.
Crime now has abundant definitions, the most obvious being crime as criminal law violation. The Hg Worldwide Legal Directories website delineates criminal law as encompassing, ‘the rules and statutes written by Congress and state legislators dealing with any criminal activity that causes harm to the general public, with penalties.’ Therefore to violate criminal law, the individual would be engaging in behaviour that is prohibited by the criminal law. However it has recently become extremely difficult to determine what is now perceived as a crime. Crime has no universal or objective existence but is relative to the subjective contingencies of social and historical circumstance, this is crime as historical intervention. For example, causing death of another individual, whether by neglect or with full intention is a crime, however it is almost justifiable and on many occasions heroic when practised in warfare. This is reiterated with the recent poaching ban, poaching only became criminalised through the convergence of new class and power interests in the 18th Century. James Treadwell argues this point as a criminologist and indicates that specific acts that were once socially acceptable are now becoming criminalised, ‘crime is not static or fixed, it constantly changes. Things that once were not criminalised
The Oxford English dictionary defines crime as “an act punishable by law, as being forbidden by statute or injurious to the public welfare, an evil act; an offence, a sin, -an act can only be considered a crime when identified as such by law. An act was defined a crime in the old testament with the creation of the Ten Commandments. This was when it was literally set into stone that numerous acts became a crime against God, the first rules of the world. Crimes are now defined as crimes with the help of the legal system and certain pieces of legislature and cannot always necessarily be traced back to the Ten Commandments.
Crime now has abundant definitions, the most obvious being crime as criminal law violation. The Hg Worldwide Legal Directories website delineates criminal law as encompassing, ‘the rules and statutes written by Congress and state legislators dealing with any criminal activity that causes harm to the general public, with penalties.’ Therefore to violate criminal law, the individual would be engaging in behaviour that is prohibited by the criminal law. However it has recently become extremely difficult to determine what is now perceived as a crime. Crime has no universal or objective existence but is relative to the subjective contingencies of social and historical circumstance, this is crime as historical intervention. For example, causing death of another individual, whether by neglect or with full intention is a crime, however it is almost justifiable and on many occasions heroic when practised in warfare. This is reiterated with the recent poaching ban, poaching only became criminalised through the convergence of new class and power interests in the 18th Century. James Treadwell argues this point as a criminologist and indicates that specific acts that were once socially acceptable are now becoming criminalised, ‘crime is not static or fixed, it constantly changes. Things that once were not criminalised