ABSTRACT
How we dene crime and criminality is of interest to both professionals and the layperson. Many disciplines, such as law, criminology, sociology and psychology, have provided denitions of what we mean by crime and criminality. In this chapter we will explore these dierent approaches and their understanding of crime and criminality. The introduction points us to how we are readily inuenced by the media in our construction of what constitutes a crime and criminal behaviour, but it is the legal approach for a denition and understanding of crime and criminal behaviour that we will address rst. Two important aspects of crime denition using a legal stance is the distinction between Latin terms actus reus (wrongful act comprising the physical component of a crime) and mens rea (a guilty state of mind necessary for proving guilt). In this chapter we will explore the use of actus reus and mens rea in the determination of an individual’s guilt. Circumstances where criminal responsibility can be mitigated against, such as age of criminal responsibility, impact of mental impairment and learning disability, ignorance or mistake of fact or law and acting in self-defence, will be explained. We will also explore within the legal approach, separate issues contextualising how law and punishment evolved. British laws can be traced back to King Henry VII in the late 1400s where a distinction between mala in se (morally wrong behaviour) and mala prohibita (legislative laws) was made. It is mala in se crimes, such as murder, where the role of religion had taken a strong lead in the determination of an individual’s punishment, and still continues to have a presence today in the form of Canon Law and Islamic Sharia. Religion plays an important role in formulating a consensus understanding of how we should behave and live our lives – in eect inuencing our understanding of morality. This has had both a direct and indirect inuence on English law and the laws of other countries. Using a cross-cultural perspective of laws and religious inuence, we will explore the similarities and dierences in jurisprudence (the study and theory of law) towards various types of crime. In particular, we will focus on serious crimes against the human moral code such as murder, rape, assault and genocide.
