Crimes Compared to Legal Crimes.

¶ … crimes compared to legal crimes. The writer explores the difference between natural and legal crimes, gives examples of both and discusses which crimes are wrong in themselves and which ones are only crimes because they are deemed illegal. There were three sources used to complete this paper.

In civilized society there are natural crimes and legal crimes. While they are all crimes when held against the state, local or federal statutes they are viewed differently in the eyes of those who are mandated to uphold and obey them. For the purpose of discussion natural crimes are crimes that are morally and ethically wrong and would be wrong regardless of what the law said about them, while legal crimes will be discussed as crimes in which the only obvious rationale for them being deemed illegal is that the government has deemed them as such.

NATURAL CRIMES

Natural crimes are crimes in which they would be wrong even if there was no law prohibiting them. There are large scale and small scale natural crimes that include murder, rape, child molest, arson and other crimes that harm society by harming individuals. On the large scale of crime the Holocaust could be considered a natural crime. While at the time there was no law prohibiting what Hitler and his Nazis did to the millions of innocent people they tortured and killed, morally it was wrong in every sense of the civil world. Other crimes that could be considered natural crimes would be the rape of anyone, the rape or molesting of a child, kidnap, murder of an individual, arson against personal property, burglary, robbery, armed robbery and any other crime that puts a person in fear, or destroys personal property without permission.

For the most part each of the crimes listed as an FBI major crime should be considered a natural crime. The FBI reported in 2002 that after a brief and concerning few years of increased major crime there was a much welcomed downward turn in the number of major crimes reported. According to the released FBI report there were 11.0 million major crimes reported in the United States during the year, which was only a one tenth of one percent increase over the year 2001(Eggen, 2003).

In addition to murder, the FBI considers kidnap, robbery, aggravated assault, and aggravated theft to be major crimes (Eggen, 2003).

The latest FBI numbers contrast sharply with a separate set of statistics compiled by the Justice Department, which uses surveys to estimate the number of crime victims and which has reported the lowest victimization levels in three decades (Eggen, 2003)."

Natural crimes are crimes that would be frowned upon and handled with "Texas Justice" even if there were no laws in place to prohibit the crimes.

LEGAL CRIMES

Legal crimes are also against the law. Legal crimes are crimes that society usually refers to as "victimless." While there are some people who believe no crime is victimless for the purpose of this discussion, legal crimes are crimes in which all parties are willing participants.

One example of a legal crime is prostitution. Except for rare circumstances in certain areas of Nevada, prostitution is considered illegal, though it has no victim. Prostitution is sex between two willing adults and one of the adults pays the other adult for that sex.

While it is illegal to be the prostitute or the John it shouldn't be. Both are adults, that is not illegal, both are engaging willingly is sex, that isn't illegal, and one hands the other one money. If the John handed the prostitute money without getting sex, he would not be breaking the law. If the prostitute slept with one man, called him her boyfriend and the only thing he asked is that she maintain her figure and be available for Friday night visits, and in exchange he paid all of her bills it would not be illegal. But if that same woman decides to sleep with a dozen men a month and let them each contribute to her bill fund that makes her a criminal. The bottom line is one John equals boyfriend, more than one John equals a crime.

Sociology dictionaries define victimless crimes as "an activity classified as a crime in the laws of a country, which may therefore be prosecuted by the police or other public authorities, but which appears to have no victim in that there is no individual person who could bring a case for civil damages under civil law. Unlike (say) a case of theft, the damage is to society as a whole, and to notions of morality, proper conduct, and so on. Examples might be drinking alcoholic beverages, reading Marxist literature, homosexuality, gambling, or drug-taking, in societies where such activities are prohibited (Marshall, 1998)."

Another example of legal crime was recently brought to light in India when the son of a royal family announced he is gay. He is breaking the law and can be punished accordingly but it is only a crime because the government says that it is. He has not hurt anyone and there is no victim.