Criminal Law Does Not Punish People For Commit A Crime

Board of trade v Owen (1957) - in Owen the court considered that the correct definition of a crime in the criminal law was the following passage from Halsbury’s Laws of England. “A crime is am unlawful act or default which is an offence against the public and renders the person guilty of the act or default liable to legal punishment.”

A crime is conduct (or an act of omission) which, when it results in certain consequences, may lead to prosecution and punishment in the criminal court. Newburn (2012:8). Crime is usually defined as breaking the law. The government and authorities usually set out laws for its general public to follow and those who break the law will be faced with the consequences of being punished. The behavior codes introduced by the state are examples of codes that influence society. The criminal justice system forces the law and those that break it will be faced with its consequences. Crime is often set aside for the offences that cause harm or injury to the community, individuals or state, The institute of alcohol studies stated that according to the 2011/12 CSEW, there were 917,000 violent incidents where the victim believed the offender(s) to be under the influence of alcohol, accounting for 47% of violent offences committed that year, this represents a rise of 3 percentage points on the previous year [2010/11].

One of the fundamental principles of the Criminal Law System is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty (McSherry, 2003). By enacting punitive legislation such as the examples given above, it has been said that it is removing this Common law right from the individual (Greig, 1995). It has also been said that it creates an exception to the general principle of law that no person shall be imprisoned unless a court comprised of Judge/Jury is convinced, beyond reasonable doubt that the person committed a very serious offence. Thereby effectively allowing people to be detained without the burden of proving guilt (Keon-Cohen, 1992).

A person commits an offense if, with intent that a capital felony or murder be committed, he requests, commands, or attempts to induce another to engage in specific conduct that, under the circumstances surrounding his conduct as the actor reasonably believes them to be, would constitute the felony or make the other party its commission.

A statutory law are guidelines that are passed by the legislature, a government of any country and those laws are accepted by the people. Mitigate crime. Protecting the right of every person, bringing more offences to justice, and balancing the goals of controlling and preventing crime these are the four goals/purposes of criminal

Criminal intent is a requirement for criminal responsibility it’s the intent to do wrong but has various meaning at times such as a state of mind to commit a criminal act and intentional negligence used to break the law. The intent part of criminal intent aids in the law’s general goal of punishing conscious wrongdoers. (Mallor, 02/2015, p. 144) An example of criminal intent is the Enron scandal where employees illegally destroyed documents relevant to the investigation they were under after hiding the financial debt they were in due to intentional misleading financial

In order to overcome the complications in the last test courts may rely on the proximity test to determine if the defendant’s preparatory actions came close to the completion to the intended crime (J R Articles, 2001). In People v. Rizzo 1927, the defendants attempted to rob a payroll clerk. They chose to drive around New York and spent a considerable long time doing so. The police intervened and arrested them before they could find a clerk. The courts did rule that this was not a punishable attempt. In this case the defendants never did come close to attempt because the clerk was never located. Preliminary acts should be punishable when the intent is established because if the police did not intervene, then they did pose a dangerous risk of success in completion of the crime. Courts are more known to

Common law also permitted the prosecution to adduce evidence that was relevant to the accused’s guilt of the offence charged,

In this essay, I will describe the elements of a criminal act, address the law of factual impossibility, the law of legal impossibility, and distinguish whether the alleged crime in the scenario is a complete but imperfect attempt or an incomplete attempt. I will address the ethical or moralistic concerns associated with allowing a criminal defendant to avoid criminal responsibility by successfully asserting a legal defense such as impossibility. The court was clearly wrong to dismiss the charge against Jack of attempted murder of Bert.

Crime is an act against the law where the consequence of conviction by a court is punishment is a serious one such as imprisonment. The Oxford English Dictionary states that crime is: - “An act punishable by law, as being forbidden by statute or injurious to the public welfare…An evil or injurious act; an offence, a sin”. The government usually set laws that the people must follow, punishment is given for those who lighten those laws. The legal or criminal justice system applies the law and punishes those who break it. Crime is described by Blackburn (1993; p.5) ‘acts attracting legal punishment […] offences against the community’. There is a social shame associate with crime. It is important to note that all breaches of the law are not criminal such as civil offenses and breach of contract. The word ‘crime’ is reserved for the offences that cause harm or injury to the public, individuals or the state. Social, political, financial and emotional conditions influence the definition of crime and how the law is useful. These changes may ban or allow behaviour. The data on crime will have to take this reason into account.

The Criminal Law of England and Wales "means the portion of the law of England and Wales, which deals with the components and consequences of criminal acts. The English criminal law is in large part not regulated by law, but in the tradition of common law judge-made law. The offense consists in the English law of Actus Reus and mens rea together.

The Court of Appeal can sometimes pay lip-service to s 8 and quash convictions because the jury were not clearly directed that the test of intention is subjective9. Nevertheless, originally an objective test was used to decide oblique intention in DPP v Smith10 which widened the MR of murder. The House of Lords held that the accused was guilty of murder for two reasons. Firstly, because death or grievous bodily harm was foreseen as a likely result of the accused’s unlawful act. Secondly, the accused was deemed to have foreseen the risk which a reasonable person in the position of the accused would have foreseen. The second ground for the House of Lords’ decision had been widely criticised as it introduced an objective element in the meaning of intention.11TheVickers12 has modified by DPP v Smith that the mental element in murder requires proof of an intention to kill or cause GBH, where the probability of foreseeing can be defined as exceeding a certain degree, is equivalent or alternative to the necessary intention. The Court of Appeal held that a defendant can be convicted of murder if it is established that he had intended to kill or create grievous bodily harm. In considering the construction of s1(1) [Homicide Act 1957], it can be said that an intention to cause GBH at least evidenced a willingness to

The Supreme Court case, R v Murray[4], states that the appellant pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder – where the appellant was found guilty of manslaughter – where, although the appellant intended to kill the deceased, he was only criminally responsible for manslaughter because of provocation under section 304[5] - where the appellant was sentenced to nine years imprisonment under section 161B[6] - where there was a declaration that the applicant had been convicted of a serious violence offence. Where the case R v McDougall and Collas[7] was applied as a precedent to the final decision of the case.

Laws serve several purposes in the criminal justice system. The main purpose of criminal law is to protect, serve, and limit human actions and to help guide human conduct. Also, laws provide penalties and punishment against those who are guilty of committing crimes against property or persons. In the modern world, there are three choices in dealing with criminals’ namely criminal punishment, private action and executive control. Although both private action and executive control are advantageous in terms of costs and speed, they present big dangers that discourage their use unless in exceptional situations. The second purpose of criminal law is to punish the offender. Punishing the offender is the most important purpose of criminal law

The definitions of crime and law differ from country to country as well as it is also affected by time. For instance, it is not a crime to eat or butcher a dog in Mainland China but it is illegal to do so in Hong Kong (China and Hong Kong are one country but both have their own political and social system, so their definitions and process of crime and law differ) and to consume or trade of opium was legal in Hong Kong before second world war but after that it is criminalized to trade or consume opium in Hong Kong. Today opium is illegal all over the world. Now we can make a point that criminalizing any behaviour by the law is relatively affected by time and space in general. The certain types of behaviour that is criminalized in early days