Definition Of Crime

The prevalence of criminal activities in our society has really seized my attention. Every day, whether it is on TV or the radio, there is always some new crimes being reported. Some of these crimes are understandable if we take into account the offender upbringing and circumstance(s). But others are inconceivable, and allow no room for tolerance because of the criminal men 's era. Our society is witnessing various crimes that impel us to question ourselves, as to what might be the main factor of human criminal behavior -- nature or nurture. It is a debate that scholars in various fields have been tackling for years. With so many extraneous factors that may have a hand in influencing a person 's propensity towards committing crimes, it is sometimes …show more content…
Generally speaking, a crime occurs when someone breaks the law by an overt act, omission or neglect, that result in punishment. In our society today, what constitutes of a crime is not a clear one, with different states each imposed various laws that are meant to be abided; violating one of them is subject to some sort of punishment, and therefore, considered of a crime. It is quite obvious that these laws derived from religious ideologies, or the protection of the State 's citizens or system, like ' 'property laws ' ', that protect and benefit capitalism. Thus, for the purpose of my research, I am going to truncate the definition of a crime to a single and only definition. A crime is only a crime when the offender inflicted violence upon the victim, and there is clear evidence of 'intent '. For this reason, I am only considering criminal act like murder throughout the research, the most repugnant of all. And other criminal acts like negligent manslaughter, forcibly rape, robbery, and aggravated assault will not be considered. And also, I am only going to consider willingly act of murder, so other things like -- murdering in self-defense -- will be excluded. So, it is worth noting that throughout this paper, whenever the word crime is mentioned in a broader state, only murder is consisted of a crime. The reason why I narrow the definition of crime is because its meaning …show more content…
But in reality it is not. If we take a look at some of the most popular statistics that people usually refer to, they tend to show a very close correlation between poverty and crime. Or between family structure and crime, between the uneducated and their likelihood to engage in criminal acts. That such correlation can be so potent that they sometimes argue them to be the causation. But how certain can we be of these statistics, I think is something we should ask ourselves. They may be valid, but are they reliable? Though they show strong correlation that may proven to be a factor, but I think these statistics often failed to take into consideration some personality traits that are inborn in a person. It is logical to make the assumption that a child born in a household, where both of his parents are drug addict will have huge repercussions on the child 's life, resulting to deviant acts. But what about those that face the same situation, and still beat the odds? The reliability of these statistics do raise doubts. That is why I think throughout this research, it is important to gauge very keenly these distinctive forces, nature and nurture, that have a strong effect on human