GROUNDS FOR CRIMINAL LIABILITY AND PUNISHMENT
CONTENTS
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
- Main Content
- Designating the Area of
- Distinction between Responsibility and
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
7.0 References/Further Reading
INTRODUCTION:
By grounds criminal responsibility or liability is meant the conditions under which a person may be held accountable or conditions under which a person may be held accountable or responsible for harm caused before the law. It is the basic assumption of law that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, people are able to choose whether to do criminal acts or not and that a person who chooses to commit a crime is responsible for the resulting evil and deserves punishment.
OBJECTIVES
At end of this unit, you will know the following:
- What crime is
- Whether the word ‘responsibility’ mean differently in law and moral
- If there is any conceptual gain in distinguishing between the concepts of liability and responsibility, etc.
MAIN CONTENT
Designating the Area of Crime
The court regards crime as a wrong. Sometimes, opinions are divided as to whether a crime is to be regarded solely as a moral wrong or simply a harm caused by doing an action prohibited by the law. Where crime is taken to be a moral wrong by the courts, then sentencing a criminal reflects, as Smith and Hogan wrote, the “revulsion felt by citizens for a particular crime”. This disapproval of the conduct of the criminal is reflected in punishment as a public denunciation of the conduct in question.
Should crime be taken necessarily as a moral wrong? Jerome Hall endorses the view that crime is a moral wrong, thus, when a criminal is punished, he is evidently punished for his wickedness, for doing evil. Patrick Devlin concurs with the view that sees crime as a moral fact. He claims that there is a common morality in the society that society is entitled to criminalize any behaviour that threatens its existence; hence it may be justifiable and necessary for the society to punish immoral acts or behaviour. Some others like H.L.A. Hart disagreed, insisting that the law should punish one for breaking the law and not necessarily for committing an immoral act, hence John Stuart Mill’s harm principle is evoked on the basis that immorality is not a sufficient reason for legally punishing someone.
The criminal law is chiefly concerned with anti-social behaviour. But not all acts that the law criminalizes are regarded as crime at the same level. The stigma ‘criminal’ will be attached to someone who is convicted of a criminal behavoiur, for example, murder. Someone who is penalized for over-speeding has broken the law, but we would not ordinarily tag him a ‘criminal’
There are many offences for which any element of stigma is diluted almost to the vanishing point, as with speeding on the roads, illegal parking, riding a bicycle without lights, or dropping litter. This is not to suggest that all these offences are equally unimportant, it can be argued, by reference to the danger to others that exceeding the speed limit ought to be regarded in a more serious light than commonly appears to be the case. Yet it remains true that there are many offences for which criminal liability is merely imposed by parliament as a practical means of controlling an activity, without implying the elements of social condemnation characteristic of the major or traditional crimes.
Regulatory Offences:
Offences of the regulatory group are referred to as strict liability offences. Liability is strict because the prosecution is relieved of the necessity of proving Mens rea as one or more of the elements of the actus reus. Strict liability has been criticized for dispensing with the conventional requirement of criminal conduct, that is, voluntary – act requirement. A soft defence that has been proffered for strict liability is that it is not a real offence, but a regulatory crime. In its theoretical assessment, strict liability is a compromise between the demands of full mens rea and the desire to protect society.
Distinction between Responsibility and liability
It may be asked, what is the basis for placing the tag ‘responsibility’ on one’s action? Hart and Honoré maintain that just as in moral judgments in ordinary life we blame people because they have caused harm, so also in all legal systems liability to punishment or to make compensation usually depends on whether actions or omissions have caused harm. Morality goes beyond liability based on causing harm. Moral judgment sometimes blame specially comes into focus when harm is caused.
Harm can be caused directly through initiating a series of physical events or through omission. Common sense blames people for harms caused through omission or neglect of certain precautions that should have been taken care of, “we do this even if harm would not have come about without the intervention of another human being deliberately exploiting the opportunities provided by neglect”. In its legal equivalent, it is held that “the instigation of crimes constitutes an important ground of criminal responsibility and the concepts of enticement and inducement are an element in many civil wrongs as well as in criminal offences”. To say then that one is responsible – that is, responsible for something in law and morality- means that one is blamed for or made to pay for a particular harm as determined by legal rules or moral principles. One’s conduct falls within the parameters stipulated by the rule, which one can be blamed or punished.
In one sense, it is important then to isolate questions of responsibility or liability for one’s action from liability for punishment, although they can be co-existence. But looking at the words ‘liability’ and responsibility separately, liability necessary connotes punishment while responsibility does not. In other words, responsibility for some action is not immediately reducible to liability for punishment. In the criminal law, however, harm is a basis for saying that one is responsible, thus, that harm occurs is a sufficient ground for punishment. Therefore, the meaning of the words liability and responsibility is close enough in their application in law.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Is there any conceptual gain in distinguishing between the concepts of liability and responsibility?
CONCLUSION
It is generally a principle of criminal law that a person may not be convicted of a crime unless the prosecution have proved beyond reasonable doubt that he caused or brought about a certain event which is prohibited by criminal law, and that he had a defined state of mind in relation to the event or state of affairs he has brought about.
SUMMARY
Liability and responsibility can mean the same thing but they are not necessarily reducible to each other, especially where conditions for any possible assimilation of meaning are not indicated. Whereas the state event or state of affairs is called actus reus, the state of mind is referred to as mens rea
TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT
- What is a crime? Are all anti-social behaviours criminal?
- Does the word responsibility mean differently in law and morals? Or
REFERENCES /FUTHER READING
Akintunde, A.K.R., (1960) The Nigerian Legal System, Owerri Spectrum Law Publishing.
Eze Melami, (1999) Outline of Nigerian Legal System Lagos, Grace Publisher Inc.
Freeman, M.D.A., (1994) Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, London, Sweet and Maxwell Ltd.