ABSTRACT
The law and doctrines of criminal attempts and complicity illustrate the long-standing and fundamental tenet of Anglo-American criminal law that the blame and condemnation of the political community, which gives criminal punishment its distinctive character, attaches primarily to actors’ states of mind rather than to the harms they cause or the results they bring about. This focus on blameworthy states of mind both reflects and has been shaped by the similar emphasis in Christian Scripture, tradition and moral teaching. And so, an examination of criminal attempts and complicity is an opportunity to explore Christianity’s influence on the theory, content and operation of the criminal law. It also reminds us of a central Christian concern that is and has been located, for the most, outside the scope of the criminal law: Christian moral teaching enjoins not only the avoidance of wrongful acts, but also the cultivation and practice of virtue. A Christian life of discipleship, it has been said, “is not simply about performing certain types of actions. It is a vocation, a transformation of one’s very self”. However, this aretaic dimension of Christian morality and moral theology, unlike the nexus between culpability and choice, is difficult to find in the criminal law, which is inclined more towards proscribing acts than prescribing character, more towards forbidding bad conduct than facilitating good character, more towards deterring decisions than transforming selves. It is worth asking why.
