Law And Crime Case Study

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There are several factors contributing to whether or not certain behaviours are criminalized by law in a society.

From the sociological aspect, there are two major theories that explain law and crimes: the consensus theory and the conflict theory. These two theories have radically different views on what crimes are. The consensus theory suggests that a crime is a behaviour that violates the general values of the society, whereas law is a collective agreement which is necessary to be functionally existed, and is enforced for a collective benefit. With the rapid process of globalization, the consensus theory is almost impossible to work out and can only remain as an academic theory, especially but not exclusively in Hong Kong and other multicultural countries. Hong Kong’s population consists of people of various races, religions and nationalities and we share different values. With a population of different backgrounds, it is often hard to come to a collective agreement on what behaviours should be criminalized. Having said that, it does not mean it is easy if the population is …show more content…

In the 19th century, the criminal law protected mainly the Europeans: an example can be the prohibition of Chinese living in the Peak area. Recently, the uprising of the Occupy Central Protests showed the existence of imbalance of power in Hong Kong, where “the minority upper classes control political power”. In fact, I reckon that the conflict perspective is more suitable to describe the world’s situation nowadays. Nearly all countries prioritize national’s interests over citizens’ benefits, regardless of how liberal the country seems to be. The perfect consensus perspective can never be achieved, unless a country is perfectly equal, not in war, completely atheism or homo-religious, homo-ethnic, and all of its citizens are highly

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