Introduction
In order to maintain social cohesion, the criminal justice system must be able to adapt, expand and create laws to catch conduct that may have not been an offence in previous generations. This is shown in the repeal of ‘larceny’ and its subsequent ad hoc statutory offences to the replacement of a collection of dishonesty offences, known as ‘theft and its satellites’. This meant the laws were now capable to extend to conduct that neither threatened nor violated property rights, included the dishonest acquisition or imposition of intangible benefits and detriments and encompassed the mere usurpation of rights beyond ‘taking and carrying away .’ This commonality further extended to the replacement of obtaining property by false pretences to deception and its subsequent offences, dishonest dealing with documents , dishonest manipulation of machines and exploitation . Such expansion, however, brings forth concerns of indeterminacy, broadness and vagueness rather than uniformity and commonality. Hence, this essay will explore whether deception and two of its subsequent offences are principled and justified in an increasingly over-criminalised society.
Dishonest dealing with documents
This offence was dramatically condensed and simplified from the old law of forgery and related frauds. There must be an actual or projected deception involving a document, with the intention of causing a benefit or detriment to another person. This means the mere physical element of ‘dealing’ either by engaging in the creation or falsifying of a document or possession of such a document with the fault element of ‘intention’ to deceive, exploit, manipulate or cause benefit or detriment is sufficient enough to satisfy prosecution. Th...
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...to consideration the criminal law principles. The first offence explored provides a clear reconciliation with the ‘central model of criminal responsibility’ and in fact is paramount to satisfy ‘fair labelling’ in the interest of the offenders and prospective employers. The second offence appears to satisfy the ‘harm principle’ and is integral as it provides social cohesion and encompasses the progression of an ever-technological society. It also aims to remind potential offenders that such interruption with technology is a punishable offence. Hence, it appears that the laws expanded from the offence of deception , are principled within the criminal justice system. Not only does it prevent broadness, vagueness and indeterminacy but it arguable such offences provide depth, clarity and conciseness in order to outline acceptable standards of conduct within society.
Criminal law attempts to balance the rights of individuals to freedom from interference with person or property, and society’s need for order. Procedural matters, the rights of citizens and powers of the state, specific offences and defences, and punishment and compensation are some of the ways society and the criminal justice system interact.
Professor and Director of the Distance Learning Masters Program at The University of Cincinnati, Michael L. Benson has his Ph. D. in Sociology and is the author of "Denying the Guilty Mind: Accounting for Involvement in White-Collar Crime." In a classic study based on interviews with 30 convicted white-collar offenders all men, Benson examines the excuses and justifications used by White-Collar criminals to not only explain their involvement in the crime but also claim their innocence. It focuses mainly on the techniques that are used to deny they did anything wrong in categories separated by antitrust violators, tax violators, violations of financial trust and those committing fraud. Antitrust Violators focused on the everyday character and historical continuity of their offenses. They claimed to be following es...
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.
Each position in criminal justice holds power and responsibility, and therefore, it is very important that said people in those positions do not abuse it. Unethical behavior in the criminal justice system takes away trust and respect from authority, and as a consequence, the law is more easily disregarded if the people lack faith in the system. It can, also, contribute to crime and/or cause citizens to not report crimes. Society should have indubitable confidence in the men and women of the criminal justice system. Law enforcement officers violating even the smallest rule could lead to more serious infractions. Syed (1997) states, "Every instance of corruption bends or violates a rule or law and, similar to the granting of impunity, may contribute to an officer's perceptions of the law as applying differently to different people and increase the ease with which violations can be rationalized." Having less than ethical persons in our criminal justice system can lead to a weakened society, the ruining of lives, and even add to crime.
The TV show, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, often addresses criminal deviance such as rape and murder. In the episode, “Scorched Earth,” an African immigrant maid becomes a rape victim of a rich, Italian prime minister named Distascio (Wolf). This episode highlights how status can affect perception of certain deviant behaviors. Additionally, it addresses contemporary America’s values toward types of deviant acts, and sanctions that go along with them.
"And Punishment: Crime." The Economist US 27 January 1996, v338 n7950. : 25. Online. Expanded Academic Index. 16 October 1999.
Kelling, George L. Thinking About Crime: Is There a Right to Beg? 1993. Web. 10 December 2013.
There are several disagreements over the meaning of negligence, but it can be said to occur when the defendant has behaved in the way in which a reasonable person would not . There exists numerous crimes for which the mens rea is negligence, although some argue negligence should not be classified as a mens rea, where most of these are minor crimes of a regulatory nature . The concept of negligence is undoubtedly complex due to the fact that it is not certain whether it deserves criminal punishment. Whether culpability lies in choosing to act wrongly when having the capacity to do otherwise, or manifests itself in other forms such as carrying out a serious criminal offence regardless of lack of intention, recklessness or knowledge, continues to provoke debate. The arguments for and against the notion that serious criminal offences
Technology has opened new encounters and opportunities for the criminal justice system. There are so many new practices of criminal activity, such as computer crimes. There are different types of computer crimes that many people become victims of every day. Computer crime is any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target ("Computer Crime: Chapter 2: What Are the Crimes?", n.d.). Crimes such as data diddling, pump and dump, social engineering and spoofing are computer crimes. Even though these crimes are difficult by privacy issues, the new technology has made investigations and prosecutions well organized and effective. Though views are different on the pros and cons of specific technological changes in the criminal justice system, there is an agreement the system has changed affectedly ("Effects of Technology in Criminal Justice | eHow", n.d.).
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
Individuals have been taught from a youthful age that taking things that do not belong to them is wrong. From first discovering this and growing into young adults’ people become well informed that not only is it wrong but it is considered a crime. The justice system has dictated what makes up a crime and the elements that follow it. It has also outlined how to punish individuals based on the crimes they commit. Sometimes people mistakenly mix up crimes that seem closely related but based on further evidence are obviously different. Two crimes commonly mistaken because they are relatively close in terms is theft and shoplifting.
Crimes are not ‘given’ or ‘natural’ categories to which societies simply respond. The composition of such categories change from various places and times, and is the output of social norms and conventions. Also, crime is not the prohibitions made for the purpose of rational social defence. Instead, Durkheim argues that crimes are those acts which seriously violate a society’s conscience collective. They are essentially violations of the fundamental moral code which society holds sacred, and they provoke punishment for this reason. It is because of these criminal acts which violate the sacred norms of the conscience collective, that they produce a punitive reaction. (Ibid)
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society, along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime, are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfare and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years. Crime constructs us as a society whilst society, simultaneously determines what is criminal. Since society is always changing, how we see crime and criminal behavior is changing, thus the way in which we punish those criminal behaviors changes.
...puter technology are rooted in the general ethical issues that people in society deal with. For example, the ethical issues such as invasion of privacy, theft, and fraud have been around since human beings began interacting with each other. The fact is that elements of these ethical issues are not unique to the computer field or computer technology. These current technologies raise the same ethical dilemmas with conditions that are unique to computer and cyber technology. This explains why we general ethical issue are such as privacy, theft and fraud are reexamined as informational privacy, identity theft and computer fraud in computer technology.
Novakovic, J. (2012). Responsibility in Application of ICT as Legal, Moral and Ethical Issues. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6419151