Crime is a revolt against the whole society and an attack on the civilization of the day. Elucidate and discuss the essential elements of the crime

Question: “Crime is a revolt against the whole society and an attack on the civilization of the day”. Elucidate and discuss the essential elements of the crime. [U.P.C.J 1992]

Find the answer to the mains question of IPC only on Legal Bites. [“Crime is a revolt against the whole society and an attack on the civilization of the day”. Elucidate and discuss the essential elements of the crime.]

Answer

Criminal law has been defined by Sutherland and Cressey as ‘conventionally a body of specific rules regarding human conduct which has been promulgated by a political authority which apply uniformly to all members of the class to which the rules refer and which are enforced by punishment administered by the state.

Salmond maintains that a crime is an act deemed by law to be harmful to society in general even though its immediate victim is an individual.

A crime can be said to be an act of commission, or omission, contrary to law, tending to prejudice of the community, for which punishment may be inflicted as the result of judicial proceedings taken in the name of the state. IPC does not define a crime.

The essential of the crime are:

1. The elements of a crime should be legal in nature (must be in law),
2. Actus Reus (human conduct),
3. Causation (human conduct must cause harm),
4. Harm (to some other/thing),
5. Concurrence (state of mind and human conduct),
6. Mens rea (state of mind and guilty); and
7. Punishment.

Thus, it is clear that a crime is what the state has through the enactment of the legislature declared as punishable. In other words, there is no crime apart from what the legislature has laid down in this regard. It is to be noted that an act while not falling within the purview of crimes defined by the legislature may still be a moral crime. As crimes are acts declared by the legislature at a given time to be punished, it follows that there can be no hard and fast rule in respect of the law of crimes.

In a fast-changing world, the ideas and the ideals of society may change and today’s idea of crime may not necessarily correspond with that of a later age. Further, different societies and different countries may have different ideas about criminality. What is criminal in one particular country may not so be in another. The crime is a relative concept and an act is a crime if the state says so and not otherwise. For example, adultery may be a crime under the IPC but may not be so under the legal system of another country. Further, acts or omissions, however, immoral they be, are not criminal unless they contravene the provision of the IPC.

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