Principles of Criminal Law: Concepts, Criminalisation and Punishments

Syllabus Principles of
Criminal Law in
particular

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
The term crime can be explained as an illegal act done by an individual for which he is
liable for punishment. This punishment is prescribed under the criminal law for the criminal
act. The provisions related to the crime is formulated by the legislation of the country.
Moreover, the crime is an illegal act that is especially against the morality of the society. There
are various types of punishments given to the criminals1. These punishments includes penalty,
imprisonment or death sentence. Further more, the punishment of death sentence is given for
very severe crime which includes murder. These punishments are given so that it can decrease
the crime in the society. In this report, the concepts related to crime is described in detail. It
also describes about the principles related to criminalisation.
MAIN BODY
The crime can be defined as a harmful and dangerous act that is specified as illegal by
the legislation of the country. This would mean that the crime can be described as the act that
is prohibited by the law. Further more, according to Salmond, a crime is a criminal wrong
done against the society as a whole, rather than its main victim is the individual. So, he defined
crime as wrong against the people of the society. Moreover, these acts are punishable by the
law. Therefore, these illegal acts are known as criminal acts. These criminal acts are
punishable by the law of the country. Furthermore, there are different types of punishments as
prescribed by the law. The degree of the punishments depends upon the severity of the crime. It
means that more severe crime would have more serious type of punishments. For instance, the
punishment for the criminal act of murder is death sentence as per the law of the country. In
addition to this, the petty offences like small theft will result into the punishment to pay penalty
and short term imprisonment. There are also various categories of crime like molestation,
defamation, rape, etc. for which there are specified punishments written under the law of the
country. Furthermore, crime is a forbidden act as per the criminal law of the country.
1 Ameratunga R and others, 'Criminalisation Of Unintentional Error In Healthcare In The
UK: A Perspective From New Zealand' [2019] BMJ
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