One of the most significant current discussions in the legal field is the arisen uncertainty of several areas when defining terms, statutory acts, phrases or even specific words of English law in courts, which some do not have a specific definition. For example, ‘dishonesty’ is not specifically defined rather, negatively defined i.e. showing what dishonesty is not, instead of what dishonesty is. However, one question that needs to be asked, is whether the law surrounding theft, robbery and burglary have been drafted as to leave out ambiguity. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the law relating to theft, robbery and burglary accordingly to the statement by J.R. Spencer from Lloyds, “…sprouts obscurities at every phrase…”. Throughout the paper, relevant case law will be applied …show more content…
One would be found guilty if he steals immediately before or after the time of doing so. As robbery can be consented, AR of theft must be present, adding one of the three activities; uses force, puts or seeks to put anyone in fear and ‘MR for theft’ must be present.
Burglary is committed when a trespasser enters any building, with intent to commit theft and grievous bodily harm or criminal damage. There are two types of burglary. The AR of burglary consists of three elements; trespass, entry and ‘a building or part of a building’. The MR of burglary is specifically stated by Edmund Davies LJ: “…a serious offence like burglary should require MR in the fullest sense of the phrase: D should be liable for burglary only if he knowingly trespasses or is reckless as to whether he trespasses or not” in Collins.
Two criticisms described by Mitchell are that burglary and robbery are barely defined that the current law is unable to identify crimes of multiple wrongdoing. He also suggests that new offences that consist of one or more omission should be
R N Howie and P A Johnson, Annotated Criminal Legislation NSW, 2011-2102, (Lexis Nexis Butterworths 2012) 17769-1774
Between the years of 1714 and 1799 the rate of theft in London increased for many reasons. The method of research use to prove this hypothesis was Old Bailey online. Old Bailey is a court in the city of London in the county of Middlesex. The court is held eight times a year for the trial of prisoners; the crimes tried in this court are high and petty treason, petty larceny, murder, felony, burglary, etc. The goal of this paper is to prove that not only did theft increase, but also why it increased. My preliminary findings suggest that overall theft did increase, and that the main causes for this were: political, economical, and social problems.
Crime causation is looking at why people commit crimes. There are many theories that have been developed to explain this. The theories can be grouped into eight general categories of which one is the Classical theory (Schmallegar, 2011, p. 79). A subset of this theory, rational choice theory, will be specifically looked at to explain the crime of burglary. Just as no one causation theory explains all crimes committed, the rational choice theory itself does not completely explain why all burglars commit their crimes. Therefore, the pros and cons of the rational choice theory will be discussed in relation to the crime topic of burglary.
This paper will provide an explanation into how differential association theory explains burglary. Burglary, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (F.B.I), considers a property crime a Type 1 Index Crime because of its potentially violent nature. The F.B.I. breaks burglary down into three sub classifications. This paper discusses the elements of the crime of burglary and what constitutes a structure or dwelling. It will discuss a brief history of the deviance, trends and rates, and how it correlates to the specific theory that this paper will also discuss.
Kelling, George L. Thinking About Crime: Is There a Right to Beg? 1993. Web. 10 December 2013.
Major problems were experienced in the early years after the Act over how the preserved common law conspiracy to defraud dovetailed with the new statutory conspiracy to commit a crime as frequently, an agreement to defraud will necessarily involve an agreement to commit a substantive offence entailing dishonesty such as theft or the new offence of fr...
Over the years, different jurisdictions had built their specific system of rules of conduct to govern behaviour. These legal systems, influenced by historical and cultural roots, can be distinguished in two families, the Civil law and the Common law legal systems. The distinctions lies in the process in which each decision is make by the judge and on the legal sources that shapes the law. Indeed, by contrast to the Common law system, which is largely based on Precedents, meaning the decisions that have already been made by judges in similar cases, the Civil law system is based on legislator’s decisions and legal codes with which judges have to justify their judgment . Consequently, instead of referencing to concepts and rules
Ashworth A and Horder J, Principles of Criminal Law (7th edn, Oxford University Press 2013)
This theory can be used to explain why an offender will decide to commit burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, or murder. It is 9:00am on a warm July morning. John Smith is dropped off near an affluent neighborhood. He creeps down a side street and enters the back yard of a large home. John uses a pry bar he had hidden in his pants to break open the door.
Throughout the history of what is now part of most state statutes, theft laws have made significant progressions. The beginning of the modern idea of theft began long ago with the growing concerns of the violent crimes against persons (Samaha, 2015, p. 433). These concerns the people of the time shared, lead to the creation of the felony robbery, within common law (Samaha, 2015, p. 433). The idea behind robbery was, “taking property by force or the threat of force” (Samaha, 2015, p. 433). The creation of this law within the idea of crimes against persons lead to the next big jump towards the criminal action of theft.
The English legal system is ostensibly embedded on a foundation of a ‘high degree of certainty with adaptability’ based on a steady ‘mode’ of legal reasoning. This rests on four propositions
A common theoretical example is that starving a child, can be equally as bad as poisoning them. This example demonstrates that the distinction is not so clear. This unclarity is supported by Wilson who has said that, ‘it is certainly puzzling if not downright unsatisfactory, when there is so fragile a moral and analytical basis for differentings acts and omissions, that so much should depend on it. J.C Smith has said that, ‘there is no precise borderline between acts and omissions’, but he assures that this is not uncommon among other divisions in the criminal law. The distinction is even less clear, because the criminal law contains various offences that exist in the absence of actions, including possession offences.
Lippman, M. (2012). Contemporary Criminal Law Concepts, Cases and Controversies (3rd ed.). [Vitalsouce Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781452277660/5/3
United Kingdom is a country with a distinctive set of legal system. It is fairly different from other countries having civil law based legal systems. The legal system in the United Kingdom consists of various sources of law, where other civil law based countries rely only on a written set of law. European influences on the English Legal System came much later in near decades. This essay will aim to examine the development of the English Legal System by reviewing applications of various sources of law in the English Legal System furthermore to discuss the recent European influences on the law of England.
The courts of England and Wales acknowledge that the above must be something of value, in order to amount to consideration. A valuable consideration in the perspective of the English La...