Crime

By
Mahesh Deshpande
 Penal law
• Penal law means statute enacted and enforced
by the State in its own name
imposes penalties for the conducts that are
prohibited by the state.
• a body of rules that prevents acts that threaten,
harm or otherwise endanger the safety and
welfare of the public
by imposing punishment on those who breach
these laws. (uslegal.com)
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 Concept
• A violation of the criminal law, i.e., a breach of
the conduct code specifically sanctioned by
the state, which through its administrative
agencies prosecutes offenders and imposes
and administers punishments. The concept
includes unacceptable actions whether
prosecuted or going unpunished.

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 Definition
• an action, or an instance of negligence:
1)deemed injurious to the public welfare or
morals or to the interests of the state, and
2) is legally prohibited.
• an illegal act for which someone can be punished
by the government
• conduct that is prohibited and has a specific
punishment (as incarceration or fine) prescribed
by public law
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 Definition
• An action or omission which constitutes an
offence and is punishable by law.
• An act or omission which is prohibited by criminal
law and punished, usually by fine or
imprisonment.
• A crime, also called an offence or a criminal
offence, is an act harmful not only to some
individual, but also to the community or the state.
Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law.

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 Nature
• Harm resulting from human conduct
• State wants to prevent it by means of
• Warning of painful consequences for the
perpetrator
• Criminal proceedings to establish the guilt or
innocence of the person accused
• If found guilty, punished

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 Wrong
• An injury, a violation of right
• With or without force
• Two types: Public wrong and private wrong

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 Public Wrong

• "an act committed or omitted in violation of

Public Law forbidding or commanding it".

- William Blackstone
• “A crime is a violation of the public rights and
duties due to the whole community,
considered as a community.”
- William Blackstone
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 Public Wrong

• “A crime is a violation of a right, considered in

reference to the evil tendency of such
violation as regards the community at large.”
-Serjeant Stephen

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 Public Wrong

• “an unlawful act or default which is an offense

against public and renders the person guilty of
the act or default liable to legal punishment.”
-Halsbury’s Laws of England

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 Moral Wrong
• “Crime is an immoral and harmful act that is
regarded as criminal by public opinion,
because it is an injury to so much of the moral
sense as is possessed by a community- a
measure which is indispensable for the
adaptation of the individual society”.
-Raffaele Garofalo

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 Conventional Wrong

• “Criminal behaviour is behaviour in violation of

criminal law. No matter what the degree of
immorality, reprehensibility, or indecency of an
act, it is not a crime unless it is prohibited by
criminal law.

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 Conventional Wrong
The criminal law in turn, is defined
conventionally as a body of specific rules
regarding human conduct which have been
promulgated by political authority, which apply
uniformly to all members of the class to which
the rules refer, and which are enforced by
punishment administered by the state.
-Edwin Sutherland
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 Social Wrong
• “an act that has been shown to be actually
harmful to society, or that is believed to be
socially harmful by a group of people that has
the power to enforce its beliefs, and that
places such act under the ban of positive
penalties.”
-John Gillin

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 Organic Analogy Theory
• Understands human society as made up of
inter-related organs, and any act, which
disrupts or threatens to disrupt the
functioning of the system is criminal. By
adhering to this analogy it forms a consensus
of society and any action perpetrated by any
person constitutes an act of crime and the
person is also criminal.

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 Social Interest
• Roscoe Pound’s theory was founded on the
assumption of legal phenomenon being
nothing but social phenomenon. His
jurisprudence was of ‘social engineering’. His
emphasis was on interest in life, liberty,
security, religion, social institutions and
general progress, and any infringement on
these are considered to be crimes.

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 Crime As a Normal Phenomenon
• “There is no society that is not confronted
with the problem of criminality, its form
changes; the acts thus characterised are not
the same everywhere and always, there have
been men who have behaved in such a way as
to draw upon themselves penal repression.

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 Crime As a Normal Phenomenon
• No doubt, it is possible that crime itself will
have abnormal forms, as for example, when its
rate is unusually high. This excess is indeed
undoubtedly morbid in nature. What is
normal, simply, is the existence of criminality,
provided that it attains and does not exceed,
for such social type, a certain level.

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 Crime As a Normal Phenomenon
• To classify crime among the phenomenon of
normal sociology is not to say merely that it is
inevitable, although regrettable phenomenon
due to incorrigible wickedness of man, it is to
affirm that it is a factor in public health, an
integral part of all healthy societies.
- Emile Durkheim

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 Procedural Wrong
• A wrong which is pursued by the Sovereign or
his subordinate is a crime (public wrong).
• A wrong which is pursued at the discretion of
the injured party and his representatives is a
civil wrong (private wrong)
-John Austin

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 Procedural Wrong

• Crimes are wrongs whose sanction is punitive,

and is in no way remissible by any private
person, but is remissible by the crown alone, if
remissible at all. – Courtney Kenny

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 Procedural Wrong
• Criminal offences are basically the creation of
the criminal policy adopted from time to time
by those sections of the community who are
powerful, or astute enough to safeguard their
own security and comfort by causing the
Sovereign power in the state to repress
conduct, which they feel may endanger their
position.
-William Russel
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 Legal Wrong
• Roman law
• Res Sanctae
• Perdullio
• Maiestas minuta populi Romani

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 Legal Wrong
• Crime is an intentional act or omission in
violation of criminal law (statutory and case
law), committed without defence or
justification, and sanctioned by the state as
felony or misdemeanour.
-Paul Tappan

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 Legal Wrong
• A Crime (or offence) is a legal wrong that can
be followed by criminal proceedings which
may result in punishment.
- Glanville Williams

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 Legal Wrong
• Wrong which the government deems injurious
to public at large and punishes through a
judicial proceeding in its own name.
• Any act becomes a crime or ceases to be a
crime if so declared by the state.

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 Characteristics of Crime
(i) that it is a harm, brought about by human
conduct, which the Sovereign power in the State
desires to prevent,
(ii) that among the measures of prevention
selected is the threat of punishment; and
(iii) that legal proceedings of a special kind are
employed to decide whether the person accused
did in fact cause the harm, and is, according to
law, to be held legally punishable for doing so.
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 Criminal Science
• Criminology:
a) Criminal Biology
b) Criminal Sociology
• Criminal Policy or Penology:
a) The appropriate measures of social
organization for preventing harmful activities,
b) The treatment to be given to those who
have caused harm.
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 Criminal Science
• Criminal Law: The Criminal Policies postulated
by the above two interconnected branches i.e.
Criminology and Penology, are implemented
through the instrumentality of ‘Criminal law’.

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 Criminal law
• Branches of Criminal law: Criminal law consists
of two branches.
a) Substantive Criminal Law,
b) Adjective/Procedural Criminal law

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 Substantive law
• Law that creates or defines rights, duties,
obligations, and causes of action that can be
enforced by law

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 Substantive Criminal law
• Defines an offence:
Whether the issue at hand can be considered
a crime or not.
Existence of specific elements(essential
ingredients) in a given case
Does a given set of facts disclose a particular
offence?

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 Adjective/Procedural Criminal law

• Law that prescribes the procedures and

methods for enforcing rights and duties and
for obtaining redress (as in a suit) and that is
distinguished from law that creates, defines,
or regulates rights

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