NCJ Number
86249
Date Published
1982
Length
13 pages
Annotation
Discussion objectives are to identify the major alternatives for defining criminality as adjective and object and to offer criteria for deciding when to use each definition of criminality.
Abstract
Criminality may be defined legally, polemically, or empirically, and the criminal object may be characterized in behavioral or relational terms. In its most simplistic form, a legal definition of criminality merely quotes or alludes to the statutes or proclamations of some polity or unit of a polity. To define criminality in polemical terms is to formulate a conception of right and wrong in other than legal terms to serve as a standard for modifying the existing order (reformers) or instituting a new one (radicals). Empirical definitions of criminality indicate events whose variable features can be observed and analyzed by methods designed to produce naturalistic, communicable, and demonstrable knowledge. A legal definition of criminality should be used when the aim is to articulate a polemical definition to maximize both the effectiveness and the justifiability of control efforts within a political framework. A reformist polemical definition should be used when the aim is to indicate the internal, systemic implications of theoretical inconsistencies in the law and of theory-practice discrepancies, while a radical polemical definition should be used when the aim is to indicate the external, contextual implications of inconsistencies in legal theory and of theory-practice discrepancies. An empirical definition should be used when the aim is to specify the varied ways in which human beings distinguish between right and wrong, with special references to variations in institutionalization and in impact upon the life changes of the people involved. The abuses of each type of definition are also considered, and six references are listed.