2015-01-21
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1. Every violation of law is a crime, isn’t it?
2. Do different societies define crimes in the same way?
Crime is a breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a punishment. Individual human societies may define crimes differently. Modern societies generally regard crimes as offences against the public or the state. The word ‘crime’ is generally associated with wrongdoing but not every type of wrongdoing is a crime. Telling lies is immoral wrong but if telling lies is put into practice resulting in physical harm to another, then such action becomes both criminal and immoral.
There are some acts which are considered to be crimes in one country but not in another. For example, it is a crime to have more than one wife at the same time in France, but not in Indonesia. There are quite a lot of agreements among states as to which acts are criminal. But such acts as stealing, physical attack or damaging somebody’s property will be unlawful in all countries and the way of dealing with people suspected of crime may be different. Sometimes government “creates” new crimes by identifying a form of behavior and passing a new law to deal with it. Different societies or governments often review their ideas of what should and shouldn’t be a crime. For example, race or sex discrimination hasn’t been considered a crime for a long time. In recent years the Internet has grown explosively and there appeared the new crimes such as unauthorized access or “hacking”, copyright infringements, child pornography, etc. Cybercrimes may intentionally harm the reputation of the victim, they may threaten a nation’s security or financial health.
Most crimes are not reported, not recorded, not followed through, or not able to be proved. When informal relationships and sanctions are insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a state may impose more strict systems of social control.
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UNIT 2. CATEGORIES OF CRIMES IN THE UK
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Categories of Crimes in The UK
