Ingredients of a Crime

Crime Against Property

A crime against property includes unlawfully taking or attempting to take someone’s property from them or willfully damaging another person’s property. Property crimes may or may not involve violence against a person. Some examples include:

· theft, for example, stealing someone’s car or stealing something from a vehicle;

· having stolen property or being dishonest with someone to gain something illegally (fraud);

· breaking and entering into someone’s home or breaking someone’s windows.

Other Types of Crime. Other crimes under the Criminal Code of Canada that do not fall under the above two categories (crime against a person or property) include:

· drug offences;

· motor vehicle offences (for example, impaired driving that results in death);

· arson (setting fires on purpose);

· gaming and betting; and

· weapons possession.

It is generally agreed that the essential elements of a crime are voluntary action or failure to act and a certain state of mind. Failure to act includes not doing something an individual is required to do by law, such as file an income tax form or get a driver’s license before operating an automobile.

The mental element in a crime is that the person committing it usually acts purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently.

It has long been said that ignorance of the law is no excuse, and criminal law systems generally recognize this principle. It is no defense for a person to say he was unaware that what he did was against the law. Behind this is the supposition that criminal acts may be recognized as harmful and immoral by any reasonable adult. By contrast most countries recognize that an individual who acts in ignorance of the facts of his action is not criminally responsible. Hence, someone who takes another person’s goods, believing them to be his own, has not committed larceny because he lacks intent to steal. Any inconvenience he has caused the other person may, however, be a matter taken up in civil law.

A person who committed a crime in a state of inebriation caused by the consumption of alcohol or other intoxicating substances, shall not be exempt from criminal liability.

It is generally recognized that persons suffering from mental defects are not responsible for their actions. Much controversy has arisen over the appropriate tests for determining responsibility in such cases. The individual who committed the offense was found not guilty by reason of insanity and put in a mental institution. Since that time some states have revised their insanity-plea laws to allow for verdicts of “guilty, but insane,” instead of “not guilty on account of insanity”.

The law recognizes that the use of even deadly force may be justified under some circumstances. Such special circumstances include cases of self-defense, including the use of force in defense of others, by law-enforcement agents, or in defense of property.

Persons who are subject to criminal liability. Only a sane person who reached the age established by the Criminal Code shall be subject to criminal liability.

A person shall be subject to criminal liability who reached sixteen years of age by the time of the commission of a given crime.

Persons, who reached fourteen years of age by the time of the commission of a crime, shall be subject to criminal liability for murder (Article 96), deliberate causation of serious damage to health (Article 103), deliberate causation of medium gravity damage to health under aggravated circumstances (Article 104, the second part), rape (Article 120), forcible acts of a sexual character (Article 121), kidnapping (Article 125), theft (Article 175), robbery (Article 178), brigandage (Article 179), extortion (Article 181), illegal occupation of an automobile or other transport vehicle without the purpose of theft under aggravated circumstances (Article 185, the second, third, and fourth parts), deliberate destruction or damage to property under aggravating circumstances (Article 187, the second and third parts), terrorism (Article 233), capture of a hostage (Article 234), deliberately false notice of an act of terrorism (Article 242), theft or extortion of arms, ammunition, explosive materials, and explosion devices (Article 255), hooliganism under aggravating circumstances (Article 257, the second and third parts), vandalism (Article 258), theft or extortion of drugs or psychotropic substances (Article 260), desecration of the bodies of the deceased and places of burial under aggravated circumstances (Article 275, the second part), and deliberate spoilage of transport vehicles or communications ways (Article 299).

A person shall not be subject to criminal liability who, during the commission of a publicly dangerous act stipulated by the Criminal Code, was in a state of insanity, that is could not be aware of the actual character and public danger of his acts (failure to act), or guide them, as a consequence of a chronic mental disease, temporary psychic disorder, feeblemindedness, or other morbid state of mind.

Дата добавления: 2014-10-17