Essay On Criminal Law

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Well, I have done my project on economic theory of criminal law to understand the economic aspects of criminal law. While doing this project I came across the idea as what should be considered as a crime? What should be criteria for determining a crime? By this I mean to say what the acts which should be punished. Now the other follow up question which comes is that after determining which acts are to be punished, how should we determine their extent?
By the above statement I meant what should be the punishment given for each such act or to be more precise what should be the degree of punishment? For example if person A has committed theft of bread and he is given death sentence then it will definitely be considered as disproportionate.
In search of these answers I came across the traditional theory of criminal law. In this theory I came across two aspects. The first one is utilitarianism and the other “retributivism” which talks about moral behavior.
The next thing which comes is the criminal intent which talks about the necessary intent for a commission of crime.
After all this I come to economic theory of criminal law.

Theory of criminal law

This theory gives us the answer of the two basic but most important questions which are what act should be treated as a crime and punished and till what extent its punishment should be. This theory provides us with two aspects Utilitarianism and Retributivism.
Utilitarianism
Having a similar nature to the economic theory of torts, the economic theory of crimes tries to minimize the social cost, i.e. the cost harm caused by crimes and the cost of its prevention.
According to this aspect the act which if treated as a crime reduces the social cost should be treated as a crime. Law...

... middle of paper ...

...n the case of Bacchan Singh, it was given not to restore the interest of the plaintiff but to show what punishment should a person have to for committing a crime with that much level of seriousness.

An Economic theory of Criminal Law
The economic theory of criminal law provides us with a predictive model of criminal behavior. The first question which comes into our minds what is the need of criminal law in a society is civil law not enough to deal with the crimes.

Why Criminal Law?

So, to understand the need of criminal law the best example could be found when no perfect compensation i.e. a state where victim becomes indifferent between an injury with damages or no injury at all. So, in a case where no perfect compensation can be given instead of compensation or with compensation, the punishment is given.
If we want to understand this concept then an example is v

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