Human Event to Qualify as a Crime

¶ … Human Event to Qualify as a Crime

According to criminal scholar Jerome Hall, there are seven basic requirements that transform a regular human event into a crime. These requirements are critical, because a person can do something that creates a significant harm to another person, but that event will not qualify as a crime unless it also has the other elements of a crime. These elements are: (1) act requirement; (2) legality requirement; (3) harm requirement; (4) causation requirement; (5) mens rea requirement; (6) concurrence requirement; and (7) the punishment requirement. Unless a prosecutor can prove all seven elements exist, they will be unable to convict someone of a crime.

The first element of a crime is the act requirement. People may not be convicted of status offenses. Instead, criminal offenses must be based on either an action or a failure to act. For example, while states may prosecute people for using, possessing, selling, or transporting drugs, which are all acts, they may not prosecute them for being drug addicts, which is a status (Cole & Smith, 2010, p.124).

The second element of a crime is the legality requirement. There has to be a law that describes the behavior in question as a crime, and that law had to be in existence at the time that the act was committed. Ex post facto laws are prohibited under the U.S. Constitution (Cole & Smith, 2010, p.124). Therefore, a person can only be prosecuted for laws in existence at the time the act is committed.

The third element of a crime is the harm requirement. The harm requirement means that an act must cause harm to a legally protected value. "The harm can be to a person, property, or some other object that a legislature deems valuable enough to deserve protection through the government's power to punish" (Cole & Smith, 2010, p.124). It is important to realize that the harm can be self-harm; society can protect the individual through laws, such as seatbelt or helmet laws, even if the individual would waive that protection. Furthermore, if an act, such as conspiracy, could lead to harm, it can be prosecuted, even if the actual harm is not completed. A good example of this is when a defendant is convicted of conspiracy, but the underlying crime is not completed (Cole & Smith, 2010, p.125).

The fourth element of a crime is the causation requirement. For an act to be considered a crime there has to be a causal relationship between that act and the harm suffered. However, it is important to realize that legislatures can specify that certain actions will be considered causal for certain crimes. For example, participating in a crime that results in a homicide, even if a person does not commit the action that leads to the homicide, can provide a basis for a conviction for that homicide as long as the legislature has included a felony homicide component in its criminal law.