Criminal law

Criminal law, the body of law that defines criminal offenses, regulates the apprehension, charging, and trial of suspected persons, and fixes penalties and modes of treatment applicable to convicted offenders.

Criminal law is only one of the devices by which organized societies protect the security of individual interests and ensure the survival of the group. There are, in addition, the standards of conduct instilled by family, school, and religion; the rules of the office and factory; the regulations of civil life enforced by ordinary police powers; and the sanctions available through tort actions. The distinction between criminal law and tort law is difficult to draw with real precision, but in general one may say that a tort is a private injury whereas a crime is conceived as an offense against the public, although the actual victim may be an individual.

This article treats the principles of criminal law. For treatment of the law of criminal procedure, see procedural law: Criminal procedure.

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Principles of criminal law

The traditional approach to criminal law has been that a crime is an act that is morally wrong. The purpose of criminal sanctions was to make the offender give retribution for harm done and expiate his moral guilt; punishment was to be meted out in proportion to the guilt of the accused. In modern times more rationalistic and pragmatic views have predominated. Writers of the Enlightenment such as Cesare Beccaria in Italy, Montesquieu and Voltaire in France, Jeremy Bentham in Britain, and P.J.A. von Feuerbach in Germany considered the main purpose of criminal law to be the prevention of crime. With the development of the social sciences, there arose new concepts, such as those of the protection of the public and the reform of the offender. Such a purpose can be seen in the German criminal code of 1998, which admonished the courts that the “effects which the punishment will be expected to have on the perpetrator’s future life in society shall be considered.” In the United States a Model Penal Code proposed by the American Law Institute in 1962 states that an objective of criminal law should be “to give fair warning of the nature of the conduct declared to constitute an offense” and “to promote the correction and rehabilitation of offenders.” Since that time there has been renewed interest in the concept of general prevention, including both the deterrence of possible offenders and the stabilization and strengthening of social norms.

Common law and code law

Important differences exist between the criminal law of most English-speaking countries and that of other countries. The criminal law of England and the United States derives from the traditional English common law of crimes and has its origins in the judicial decisions embodied in reports of decided cases. England has consistently rejected all efforts toward comprehensive legislative codification of its criminal law; even now there is no statutory definition of murder in English law. Some Commonwealth countries, however, notably India, have enacted criminal codes that are based on the English common law of crimes.

The criminal law of the United States, derived from the English common law, has been adapted in some respects to American conditions. In the majority of the U.S. states, the common law of crimes has been repealed by legislation. The effect of such actions is that no person may be tried for any offense that is not specified in the statutory law of the state. But even in these states the common-law principles continue to exert influence, because the criminal statutes are often simply codifications of the common law, and their provisions are interpreted by reference to the common law. In the remaining states prosecutions for common-law offenses not specified in statutes do sometimes occur. In a few states and in the federal criminal code, the so-called penal, or criminal, codes are simply collections of individual provisions with little effort made to relate the parts to the whole or to define or implement any theory of control by penal measures.

In western Europe the criminal law of modern times has emerged from various codifications. By far the most important were the two Napoleonic codes, the Code d’instruction criminelle of 1808 and the Code pénal of 1810. The latter constituted the leading model for European criminal legislation throughout the first half of the 19th century, after which, although its influence in Europe waned, it continued to play an important role in the legislation of certain Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. The German codes of 1871 (penal code) and 1877 (procedure) provided the models for other European countries and have had significant influence in Japan and South Korea, although after World War II the U.S. laws of criminal procedure were the predominant influence in the latter countries. The Italian codes of 1930 represent one of the most technically developed legislative efforts in the modern period. English criminal law has strongly influenced the law of Israel and that of the English-speaking African states. French criminal law has predominated in the French-speaking African states. Italian criminal law and theory have been influential in Latin America.

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Since the mid-20th century the movement for codification and law reform has made considerable progress everywhere. The American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code stimulated a thorough reexamination of both federal and state criminal law, and new codes were enacted in most of the states. England enacted several important reform laws (including those on theft, sexual offenses, and homicide), as well as modern legislation on imprisonment, probation, suspended sentences, and community service. Sweden enacted a new, strongly progressive penal code in 1962. In Germany a criminal code was adopted in 1998 following the reunification of East and West Germany. In 1975 a new criminal code came into force in Austria. New criminal codes were also published in Portugal (1982) and Brazil (1984). France enacted important reform laws in 1958, 1970, 1975, and 1982, as did Italy in 1981 and Spain in 1983. Other reforms have been under way in Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Japan. The republics formerly under the control of the Soviet Union also have actively revised their criminal codes, including Hungary (1961), Bulgaria (1968), Uzbekistan (1994), Russia (1996), Poland (1997), Kazakhstan (1997), Ukraine (2001), and Romania (2004).

Comparisons between the systems of penal law developed in the western European countries, and those having their historical origins in the English common law must be stated cautiously. Substantial variations exist even among the nations that adhere generally to the Anglo-American system or to the law derived from the French, Italian, and German codes. In many respects, however, the similarities of the criminal law in all states are more important than the differences. Certain forms of behaviour are everywhere condemned by law. In matters of mitigation and justification, the continental law tends to be more explicit and articulate than the Anglo-American law, although modern legislation in countries adhering to the latter has reduced these differences. Contrasts can be drawn between the procedures of the two systems, yet even here there is a common effort to provide fair proceedings for the accused and protection for basic social interests.