What Is the Definition of Crime?

The criminal procedures used today are fruit borne from the seeds of long and accepted practices of conviction, trial and error. The beginnings of law and the horrible struggles with war, torture and the inequalities of history paint a glorious if brutal picture. We can define crime by briefly looking at its history, types, significance and features.

History

Every generation in the history of America has been concerned with crime. The Wild West was characterized by vigilantism where posses of angry young men took justice into their own hands. The Civil War period was rife with riots, looting and mob violence. During the Roaring Twenties, bootlegging was a common occurrence, and gangsters gunned each other down on city streets. The Great Depression told tales of banks that were "knocked over" by infamous characters such as Bonnie and Clyde, while dazed citizens followed their cross-country escapades in the daily papers.

Types

American criminal law, and the subsequent rights of the accused as we know them today, are a blend of two traditions. First, the common law was developed in Saxon England and was grounded in customs and precedents. The second, civil law, was derived from Roman antecedents and represents laws adapted from the earliest efforts used to control human behavior. These laws survived by means of written and established codes that defined offenses and prescribed penalties for those crimes.

Identification

"Substantive criminal law" is the more formal term for criminal law. The book, "Legal Ease: A Guide to Criminal Law, Evidence and Procedure" (see Resources below), defines the key elements of substantive criminal law as: (1) the acts, (2) mental states and (3) accompanying circumstances or consequences that make up the necessary features of crimes. In other words, law defines the kinds of behavior (either an act or omission) and the wrong committed against the state, and it assigns punishments for such conduct.
Basically, a crime defined is: "an intentional act or omission in violation of a criminal law, committed without defense or justification and sanctioned by the state as a felony or misdemeanor." These are the essential ingredients in every crime:
1. Legality
2. Actus reus (another way of saying "guilty act")
3. Mens rea (this means "guilty mind")
4. Concurrence of actus reus and mens rea (they work together to form a crime)
5. Harm
6. Causation (simply, the "intent")
7. Punishment

Significance

Crime sprees and criminal dilemmas are the stuff of legends. And the laws that sprung up around them are not static. Laws, sanctions and the norms that society live by are dynamic, because criminal law grows and changes as if it carries the breath of the people who fought the system. Historically, criminals have been banished, beheaded, impaled, burned, flogged, mutilated and chained to everything from trees to grinding wheels to the oars on great ships. Lawbreakers have also been enslaved, exiled and imprisoned.

Features

There are five sources of law: United States Constitution, acts of Congress, state constitutions, state statutes and territorial legislature acts and the common law.

Warning

Would you believe there is an extensive body of law that permits punishment for an incomplete or failed crime? Yes, the offenses of attempt, solicitation and conspiracy are all inchoate, or anticipatory, crimes. They include any uncompleted activity where the end result would have been, without fail, a crime. So these crimes are a "preparation," if you will.

Expert Insight

Ignorance of the law is not a defense for bad actions.

Resources

• Legal Ease: A Guide to Criminal Law, Evidence and Procedure