Question

‘Only those acts criminalized by the law are worthy of study’.Discuss this statement with reference to the different perspectives relating to this issue.

Answer 1

A crime may, therefore, be an act of disobedience to such a law forbidding or commanding i t But then, sometimes, disobedience of all laws may not be a crime, for instance, disobedience of civil laws. Therefore, crime would mean something more than mere disobedience of a law.

Of all branches of law, the branch that closely touches and concerns man in his day-to-day affairs is criminal law, yet the law is not in a satisfactory state . Many attempts have been made to define crime, but they all fail to help us in precisely identifying what kind of act or omission amounts to a crime. The very definition and concept of crime is a changing notion from time to time and from place to place. For instance, suicide was a crime in England until the Suicide Act, 1961 was passed and abortion was a crime in India until 1971, but now legal excepting in some excepted circumstances.

Thus the crime is mostly defined by considering the following:

1. As a public wrong
2. As a moral wrong
3. As a conventional wrong
4. As a social wrong

Crime is not one or two factors which turn a man delinquent, but it is a combination of many more factors which cumulatively influence him to follow criminal conduct.