Criminal law and crime

Criminal* law is the body of statutory and common law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offences. It is intended to enforce social control by discouraging behaviour that is harmful to societal well-being, as well as behaviour that challenges the government's authority and legitimacy. Criminal law establishes procedure for punishing offenders, with punishment handled by the state, and thus serves as a deterrent, helping to restrain behaviour. In this unit the following areas of criminal law are covered: (1) definition of a crime (offence), (2) classification of offences according to the degree of their seriousness, (3) classification of offences according to their object, (4) criminal liability and (5) criminal penalties. The material is based on English-Welsh criminal law.
In modern common law, there is a tendency to refer to crimes as offences. The term "crime" in the broad sense includes not only serious, but also minor crimes, but in practice a minor crime would not be referred to as a crime which is felt to be too strong description of it. Therefore, the term "crime" is dropping out of use and is replaced by the term "offence" which now dominates in legal documents. In this unit both terms are used as synonyms.
The definitions of a crime (offence) given by the law theorists can be grouped into descriptive and prescriptive ones. The descriptive model of a crime defines not the nature of the act, but the legal consequences which follow it: a crime is a legal wrong that can be followed by criminal proceedings which may result in punishment (Williams 1978, 14). The prescriptive model of a crime, on the other hand, analyses the characteristics of criminal conduct: a crime is a wrongdoing which directly and in serious degree threatens the security and well-being of society (public wrong),...

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