ABSTRACT
The degree of culpability of an actor depends, inter alia, on the degree of the harm that his action might have caused. The function of recklessness is to establish that the agent is sufficiently culpable to permit the conviction. In many countries, an agent cannot be convicted of a criminal attempt unless he has an intention to commit the relevant completed offence. It should also be noted that even a legislator who accepts the above line of thought and decides on the basis thereof to require intention for conviction of attempt may still think that in the context of the most serious of harms it is justified to penalise cases of reckless endangerment. If a certain legislator embraces the suggested principle he may decide to enact some basic crimes of intention, provided he believes that "intention is more culpable than recklessness" in the context of the offences involved.
