What Is Crime?
By: Peter Moss
From: Crime and Justice
Exercises: J. Geffen
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1.
What is crime? The answer is obvious: crime is murder, blackmail, assault,
theft, wilful damage, giving false evidence, illegally possessing drugs and some
motoring offences, to name only a few of the more serious. In general, crimes are the
actions which society decides are against the public good at a particular moment in
time. Although here and now you may go to prison for what you do, in another place
or at another time your action is perfectly legal. Ten years ago any two adult men
(though not women) indulging in homosexual practices in private could be sent to
prison; today they are in no danger. In Britain you can stock a ton of baked beans and
two tons of corned beef into your kitchen if you wish to, but in Greenland in times of
shortage, hoarding food is a criminal offence.
2.
Your age and the actual circumstances of the incident also have a bearing on
what is, and is not, crime. The ten year old who holds his young playmate’s head
under water until he is dead has technically committed no crime because in the eyes of
the law the age of responsibility (when a person is said to be capable of distinguishing
right from wrong and being answerable for his deeds) is twelve. If I shoot a man dead
because I do not like him I am liable to spend the rest of my life in prison; if I shoot
fifty men who are considered to be enemies in wartime, I get a medal. The boundary
between legality and illegality is constantly moving, quite apart from time and place,
so that the hope of ever getting a crime-free Utopia is a faint one. If a particular
society becomes more law-abiding, then actions which were quite permissible before
become crimes. For example, in the medieval monasteries, where the good monks did
not fight, steal, murder or do wilful damage, they were severely punished for gabbling
prayers, raising their voices or arriving a few moments late for service. On the other
hand, in lawless communities such as the far west of the USA in the nineteenth
century it often did not seem worthwhile to call out the sheriff for an offence less than
bank robbery with murder. Can you in your own school find instances of how the line
between permitted and prohibited conduct varies from teacher to teacher and from
subject to subject?
3.
Many human activities which are perfectly harmless or even pleasant can, if
followed to excess, become anti-social or even criminal. If, for example, a
professional singer with a group on his way to a recording studio in the morning
rattles off the latest hit outside his neighbour’s house, the neighbour thoroughly
enjoys this snatch of live performance with his cornflakes. But if he stands outside his
neighbour’s bedroom window at midnight and bawls his ditty at the top of his voice
for an hour and a half, he is committing a public nuisance and can be prosecuted. But
What Is Crime? / 2
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at what point, what length, what volume, what time does his morning melody become
a midnight misery? Half a dozen different people would make half a dozen different
decisions.
4.
A very similar situation arises with crime: borrowing can move by slow steps to
theft; good business sense and ability can slide stealthily into fraud; playful chasing
can merge gradually into assault. There may be sound reasons why the same action at
one place, or at one time, or with one set of people, or in one situation is perfectly
legitimate, and at another it is a crime.
5.
Most people believe that to kill in battle or in the protection of a child is
justifiable, perhaps even honourable and brave; most would agree that killing for
personal gain, either money, prestige or satisfaction, is criminal and deserving of
punishment. But where between these extremes does the slaughter of another human
being pass from being right to being wrong? Or is killing always wrong though in
some circumstances excusable? For example, if a psychopath inflicts the most terrible
of sadistic torments on his victim, should he be excused because he is a very sick
man, needing devoted care and attention? Can you visualize any situations in which
no normal person could be expected to restrain his feelings of murder? Although
everyone knows what stealing is, theft is often a difficult charge to pin down in a
court. The law states that theft is: ‘dishonestly appropriating property belonging to
another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it…’. It is the final
clause ‘…permanently depriving the other of it…’, that is the problem. If I take an
apple from someone’s orchard and eat it, I obviously have no intention of returning it;
that is a clear case of theft. If I slip a tin of peaches under my coat and walk out of a
supermarket, it is reasonably certain that I am stealing, because I have no intention of
paying (though as long as I remain in the building, no matter how carefully I conceal
the goods, I can always claim that I did intend paying). But if I take a person’s
bicycle, car, clothing, radio, tools or picnic basket, a prosecuting lawyer might have a
great deal of trouble in convincing a judge that I am doing anything more than
borrowing them, even if without the owner’s permission (and that is a much less
serious offence than stealing).
6.
Should the reason for which we steal have any bearing on the crime? If we take
money to provide ourselves with luxuries such as foreign holidays, expensive motor
cars and rich living, should it be considered a crime? What if we steal to help others?
7.
Should the method of obtaining the money have any bearing on the seriousness
of the crime? Is it worse to take the money physically by snatching it from the bank
counter or security van than it is to fake entries in the office accounts so that some of
the money ends up in your personal bank account?
8.
Should the reputation of the owner of the stolen money have any bearing on the
severity of the crime? Would you rate stealing from a church, from the mansion of a
wealthy nobleman, from a tiny, slum, terraced house of a poor pensioner and from the
cellars of the home of a master criminal who had made a fortune selling drugs as
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equal crimes, or would they deserve different punishments irrespective of the amount
stolen?
9.
Should the frequency of theft have any bearing on the seriousness of the next
charge? Do you think the man who has over the years a record of fifty prosecutions
totalling £50 deserve a more severe sentence on his fifty-first offence (25p) than the
man who steals £50 in one go?
10. How would you treat the kleptomaniac – the mentally disturbed person who has
plenty of money yet steals (usually random articles of small value such as tinned food,
tights, nuts and bolts) because he feels compelled to do so?
11. Should the person who commits the crime have any bearing on the seriousness
of the offence – does one person merit a longer sentence or greater punishment than
another who breaks the same law? Should the Rev. Milites who, slightly the worse for
drink, was involved in a punch-up outside the Blue Ball deserve more or less
punishment than the two drunken labourers who were staging a rival fight a few yards
away? Is it worse for a policeman to steal from a traffic meter than it is for an
engineer? How much should a magistrate or judge take into account a person’s job,
background and social standing when awarding punishment? How would you feel if
you were caned for a certain school offence while the boy sitting next to you was
given a warning or perhaps a few lines for doing the same thing in exactly the same
circumstances?
12. In theory the law makes no difference between who does the stealing, how
much is stolen, from whom it is stolen or the purpose for which it is used, but in
practice a judge or magistrate would take all these factors into account when passing
sentence.
What Is Crime? / 4
Answer in your own words.
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
1.
How is crime defined in paragraph 1?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
2.
Answer the following question in English.
What makes the definition of crime – paragraph 1 – a rather arbitrary affair?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
3.
Answer the following question in English.
What does the case of Greenland illustrate? (paragraph 1)
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Choose the best answer.
4.
The various examples provided in paragraphs 2-3 indicate that __________________
is in fact possible.
a. no punishment of criminals
b. a simple definition of crime
c. no effective method of convicting criminals
d. no universal definition of crime
Answer the following question in English.
5.
Provide examples that would suggest that the line of demarcation – paragraph 4
– between the permissible and impermissible is very thin.
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
6.
Answer the following question in English.
What do the various cases of homicide described in paragraph 5 illustrate?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
What Is Crime? / 5
7.
Answer the following question in English.
What makes the definition of theft – paragraph 5 – such a tricky business?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
8.
What thesis does the information provided in paragraphs 8-9 illustrate?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
9.
10.
Answer the following question in English.
What makes the kleptomaniac so different from all other cases of theft?
(paragraph 10)
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Answer the following question in English.
What does paragraph 11 tell us about the way discipline used to be enforced in
some English schools not so very long ago?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________