CRIME

the intentional commission of an act usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined, prohibited, and punishable under the criminal law. Difficulties arise from the preceding definition because of the practical problems frequently involved in determining whether or to what degree an act is intentional, because some offenses known as strict liability offenses are punished as crimes even though they may be unintentional, and because there are wide differences of opinion concerning what is socially harmful and dangerous. Legislatures are sometimes influenced by powerful vocal minorities to enact legislation that benefits only a certain group or that reflects only the group's views of what is right and wrong. Such laws may be contrary to the general good and opposed to the moral convictions of the general public. In short, laws themselves may be immoral. For example, violations of anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany constituted crimes, but the morality of such laws was quite a different matter. Conceptions of crime vary so widely from culture to culture and change with time to such an extent that it is extremely difficult to name any specific act universally regarded as criminal. Treason or disloyalty to the group, especially in time of conflict or war, is perhaps one of the most universal and among the first acts to have been recognized as a public wrong. Other types that emerge very early in human history are sacrilege or the violations of supernatural taboos, and incest, which, although almost universally condemned in primitive and modern societies, is differently defined in different cultures. Other disapproved forms of sexual expression are handled in many ways in contemporary societies and are sometimes covered by the criminal code. Murder is a recognized crime in all civilized societies. Primitive peoples and folk communities within civilized societies may treat the killing of a human being as a relatively private matter to be dealt with by the kinship groups involved. The deliberate killing customary in some societies, such as infanticide, head hunting, and the killing of very old persons, would be classified as murder in other societies. In general it may be said that primitive peoples, more often than civilized peoples, handle infractions of social norms as torts (private wrongs) rather than as crimes; that they pay less attention to the state of mind or intention of the offender; and that responsibility is more often collectively assessed than is the case in modern criminal law, in which criminal guilt is generally regarded as strictly personal. While practices vary widely, the manner of determining guilt among preliterate peoples is usually very different from that of the contemporary criminal trial and involves much that has nothing to do with the actual evidence, such as ritual oaths, ordeals, and various magical devices. In modern industrial society there has been an enormous proliferation of criminal laws designed to protect property rights. The conception of property and the nature of property crimes have changed enormously with the evolution of capitalist economic institutions such as those of credit, large-scale business and industry, and the modern publicly owned corporation. With this expansion of criminal law in economic and certain other areas, there has been a compensating tendency for laws relating to religious observances and to certain kinds of sexual behaviour to disappear or not to be enforced. The criminal codes of modern nations are enormously complicated, growing bodies of written rules and doctrines, most of which are unknown to the average citizen. Offenders are detected, brought to court, tried, convicted, and punished by professionals especially trained for their particular functions; in the meantime, other professionals, the criminologists, investigate the causes of crime and examine the ways in which correction and prevention are handled. Judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, police, prison officials, sociologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and psychologists all have different functions to perform in the criminal-justice system. The dominant conflict of views in the field of penology is between those who put their faith in severe punishment in the belief that this will prevent the criminal from repeating his crimes and also serve as a deterrent to others and, at the other extreme, the school of thought that emphasizes the futility of punishment and the evil effects of prison life. The advocates of this latter position often conceive of the criminal as a victim of social and psychological forces outside his control. A compromise position between the two extremes rejects the idea that punishment should be abolished and insists that moderate and just punishment itself has rehabilitative value. Instead of severity, it stresses swiftness and certainty of punishment, which it regards as having more deterrent effect and as increasing the opportunity to reform the criminal. Treatment without punishment is regarded as applicable only to the mentally ill and the very young. During the last several centuries, use of the death penalty has declined, and it is under attack in many of the jurisdictions that still retain it, as do some of the states of the United States. Corporal punishment, torture, banishment, and other more brutal forms of punishment have largely been abandoned in favour of imprisonment for almost all serious crimes and fines for the lesser ones. Public opinion in regard to the punishment of criminals is divided and vacillating. Rising crime rates invariably create a demand for greater severity of punishment, restoration of capital punishment, or more frequent infliction of the latter. When legislatures respond to these pressures, however, public opposition often develops and may prevent the actual imposition of the increased penalties. See also delinquency.