example of criminal law essay

example of criminal law essay

The Importance of Criminal Law in Society

1. Overview of Criminal Law

In the Middle Ages, the criminal justice system was formed. This was a system of village, hundred, and tithing in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the system of frankpledge was introduced, and law and order were maintained by certain constables, sheriffs, and justices of the peace.

In the Anglo-Saxon period, a systematized law was generated in shire and hundred courts, curia regis, and county courts. By the 12th century, criminal law was quite separate from civil law. The early European system of law mixed with Roman law and systems of canon law.

In the good old days, the laws and punishments were quite simple. For example, it was customary in ancient civilizations that if a person was found guilty, they would be made to pay for the crime they had committed, either in terms of commodities or money. The early law was a mixture of criminal and civil law, and the resolution of disputes was done quite easily.

Criminal law exists before any society came into existence. In past societies, the system of rules was quite informal. The difference with criminal law is that there was a system of rules, but it was not properly defined in the UK. Previously, it was thought that there were rules imposed on society by God, and these rules were a reflection of the people’s duty to God.

2. Role of Criminal Law in Maintaining Order

An example of trial by ordeal involving criminal law is the ordeal of boiling water. In this particular ordeal, the accused was to plunge their arm into a kettle of boiling water and retrieve a stone from the bottom. Their arm would then be bandaged. When it was checked several days later by a priest, if the wound was clean, the accused was deemed innocent.

Trial by ordeal was a method by which one party’s guilt or innocence was determined by subjecting them to a painful experience that would likely harm or kill the innocent or guilty. It was held that the supernatural forces which governed the universe would ensure that a person who was pure of heart would emerge unharmed, while guilt would be met with retribution.

As early societies grew larger and more complex, the tribal communities developed means for resolving disputes in a manner more conducive to an ongoing unified existence. One such method was trial by ordeal.

In early human history, when a person’s tribe or family was attacked, it often fell to the victim or the victim’s family to seek vendetta. That is, they would exact retribution directly on the offender or his family. Remembering that the feud would continue so long as their side suffered more than the other’s, it was of the utmost importance to make the first strike and to make it deadly.

3. Protecting Individual Rights and Safety

Rights can be best protected if both the accused and the victim have access to a lawyer. Legal counsel can help individuals to protect their rights, whether it be by advising the accused how to plead in order to receive a sentence that fits the crime, or to ensure that the victim does not say something that might damage his own case. Even if a person cannot afford to hire a lawyer, it is the duty of society to provide a lawyer if an individual’s rights are in jeopardy of being denied. The net effect of these provisions is that the innocent will be protected from wrongful conviction, and the guilty can only be convicted in accordance with the fair and equal enforcement of the law.

Protecting an individual’s rights and safety is very important in the criminal justice process. The legal system could be a very powerful tool in the protection of the rights of an individual if the system is used properly. If a person has been victimized by crime, the only way he might feel that real justice has been done might be the conviction of the person who committed the crime against him. The guilty person can also be ordered to pay restitution to the victim if the crime caused loss or damage to the victim. If a person accused of a crime is acquitted and it is clear that the person was factually innocent, then the criminal justice system can still achieve some measure of justice by having identified the fact that it was not a proven crime by this person.

4. Punishment and Rehabilitation in Criminal Law

Deterrence is the act of preventing the offender from offending again and discouraging others from committing the same crime. The characteristics of the offender and the sentencing are collated in the offender’s mind to determine the likelihood of being caught and the severity of the sentence. The cost-benefit analysis that underpins this decision can be influenced by the deterrence of different sentencing options for the current or different offenses. A judge may be less likely to imprison a first-time offender of petty theft with a clean work history, but is more inclined to sentence an offender with a previous conviction of a violent crime to imprisonment for a similar crime. High recidivist offenders or “career criminals” are seen to have failed the deterrence theory.

Retribution is defined as an act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as possible. With this definition in mind, retribution is often seen as being unrestrained, but has been regarded as an essential constraint on the severity of a sentence, given that a sentence more severe than the crime is regarded as unjust in most legal systems. Retribution is the only theory of punishment which also purposes that the offender deserves to be punished, thus incurring a debt to society in the form of suffering. This idea of getting even, or “just deserts,” has been the predominant.

When a person commits a crime, it is the society’s responsibility to enforce sanctions on them. There are numerous ways in which society can respond to a crime. One way is through punishment. The justification of punishment is a topic of broad theoretical diversity. Punishment can be defined as “any action designed to deprive a person of things of value (including liberty) because of some offense the person is thought to have committed”. The purposes of punishment are also diverse. Four of the purposes commonly identified are retribution, deterrence, denunciation, and incapacitation. Another way to respond to a crime is through rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is the attempt to return a convicted person to a constructive place in society through training or therapy. Both punishment and rehabilitation have their issues and each affect different members of society in different ways.

5. Challenges and Reforms in Criminal Law

The criminal justice systems today face a number of challenges. Some of these are old and have been around for many years, while the world changed around them. A great example of this would be the one mentioned above, which is the ability for people to commit crimes outside of the current jurisdiction of any particular state. This may have been extremely difficult centuries ago when the notion of jurisdiction was more fluid and states were constantly at war over territories, but in the current age of nation-states and the ability to travel anywhere in the world in a single day, this challenge has become quite serious. Other challenges are newer. Changes in technology have created new ways for people to commit old crimes, such as the creation of new street drugs and the ability of sexual predators to use the internet to seek out victims. These new technologies have also altered the nature of old crimes, such as identity theft in lieu of simple credit card fraud, and have created entirely new legal situations, such as whether or not a cyber-attack from one nation against another can be considered an act of war.