MODULE 3:

CRIME

Learning Objectives

1. To define Crime.
2. To identify the classification of crimes
3. Summarize the different theories explaining why
crimes occur.

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SW 103: Philippine Social Realities and Social Welfare
 CRIME

There are two sets of definitions, one from the sociological viewpoint and the other
from the legalistic perspective.
Based on the sociological viewpoint, crime consists of violations of certain conduct
norms, possessing a specified character.
Based on the legalistic perspective, it is a behavior that diverges from the
prohibitions or injunctions in the criminal law

Classification of Crimes
1. Crime against national security and the law of nations
- Every citizen is duty to render his allegiance to his own country. The national
interest and security is primordial, having the highest priority over and above
anything else.
- When the country requires the military deployment of young men during war, it
is unlawful; for one to refuse to discharge this duty, or worse, deliberately works
against or does something inimical to the promotion of the well-being of the whole
nation.
A person may be convicted of treason when during war, aside from taking to the
country’s enemies by providing them with aid, support and assistance.
A person may be convicted of espionage if he divulges or discloses any
information to the country’s enemies that could adversely affect national
security, such information may consists of information, plans, photographs, or
other data that he has illegitimately obtained from any of the military
establishments either in time of war or in time of peace.

2. Crime against the fundamental laws of the state.

- Some of the rights of every citizen under the constitution include the right to due
process of law, privacy, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom to choose
one’s religion.

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 - Conversely, the crimes committed against these rights are arbitrarily and /or
illegal detention, trespassing, and/or domicile, prohibition, interruption and
dissolution of peaceful meetings and crimes against religious worship.
- Arbitrary detention: is an offense done by a public officer or employee who detains
a person without due process of law.
- Illegal detention: involves the dame act but it is committed by private person.

3. Crime against public order.

- Society evolves different ways to make its members follow certain standard of
behavior for the group.
- However, time and again this state of orderliness is being upset by the
commission of offenses ranging from minor ones like jaywalking and illegal
parking to major ones like rebellion or insurrection and disloyalty.
- Rebellion or insurrection: involves rising publicly and taking arms against the
government to the end of losing one’s allegiance to it and declaring a certain
territory independent and outside of the political jurisdiction of the country.
- Sedition: is a public uprising, utilizing force intimidation, illegal methods in
stopping legitimate political and social practices from taking places, e.g.
preventing a duly elected public official from assuming office or from discharging
his public functions.
- Disloyalty: is an offense committed by a public officer or employee when he allows
a rebellion to succeed, to continue assuming office under the direction of the
rebels and to accept new appointment from them.

4. Crime against popular representation.

- The following belong to this classification: (1) disturbances of proceedings in
legislative bodies; (2) violation of parliamentary immunity; (3) illegal assemblies
and associations; (4) assault, resistance and disobedience to persons in
authority, and their agents; (5) public disorders, and (6) evasion of service of
sentence on the occasion of disorders, conflagrations, earthquakes or other
calamities.

5. Crimes against public interest.

- Forgery: involves producing fake materials of great public significance like the
seal of the government, the signature or stamp of the chief executive, treasury or
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 bank notices, obligations and securities, importing and uttering false or forged
notes, obligations and securities.
- Counterfeiting: is the illegal manufacture or coins and paper money.
- Falsification: is the act of faking documents like legislative, public commercial
and private documents and wireless telegraph, and telephone messages.
- Perjury: it is a false testimony in which a witness being under oath denies the
truth and presents his own version of it.

6. Crimes related to opium and other prohibited drugs.

- Acts that is contributary too “drug trafficking” are punishable under our laws
like any of the following: (1) possession, preparation, and use of prohibited drugs;
(2) maintenance of opium den; (3) importation and sale of these drugs;
(4) planting marijuana; and (5) prescribing opium unnecessarily for a patient.

7. Crimes against public morals.

- Every human society upholds decency and that every member must manifest a
behavior that will not offend the sensibility of others.
- Prostitution: is a highly immoral crime since it greatly dehumanizes a person who
accepts payment in return for the sexual pleasure given.
- Vagrancy: a person who habitually and idly loiters.
- Other acts that are detrimental to public morality are immoral doctrines, obscene
publications, and exhibitions like indecent show in public theaters and illegal
gambling and betting and other grave public scandals.

8. Crimes committed by public officers.

- A government or an officer employee should be an epitome of public trust.
- Dereliction of duty or failure to discharge his official function legitimately: like a
judge who renders an unjust judgment in a case submitted to him for decision.
- Bribery: utilizing one’s public or official position as means in performing an
unlawful act in exchange of any offer, promise, gift and money consideration.
- Malversation of public funds or property: when he appropriates, takes, and
misappropriates public funds and/or allows another person to do the same.

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 9. Crimes against persons.
- The human body is sacred and must be respected. Therefore, it is a sin to injure
it physically and much more so to take away its life.
- Parricide: killing one’s own father, mother, or child or any of his ascendants or
descendants or his spouse.
- Infanticide: killing of any child less than three days of age by somebody related
by blood or by a stranger.
- Homicide: killing any person which falls outside parricide, murder and
infanticide.

10. Crimes against personal liberty and security.

- Personal liberty is being curtailed by illegal detention, kidnapping of minors,
slavery and servitude.
- Security is threatened by abandonment of helpless persons, exploitation of
minors, trespass to dwelling and threats and coercions (preventing another from
doing something lawful or compelling him to do something against his will).

11. Crime against property

- Both robbery and theft involve taking the personal property of another person,
but the former involves force, violence and intimidation while the latter does not.
- Brigandage: is another form committed by a band compose of more than three
armed persons who commit robbery in the highway and/or kidnapping persons
for the purpose of extortion or demanding ransom.
- Usurpation: is committed when one occupies another’s real property without the
latter’s consent or seizing them through force or violence.
- Swindling or estafa: is the act of defrauding another person by several means.
- Arson: is the destruction of property by fire.
- Malicious mischief: destroying or damaging statutes, public monuments or
paintings.
- Hijacking: illegal seizure of a vehicle like an airplane or a bus for the purposes of
robbery, extortion, kidnapping or other felonies is also included here.

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 12. Crimes against chastity
- The Filipinos regard chastity as very important.
- Adultery: is done by a married woman who has a sexual intercourse with a man
other than her husband.
- Concubinage: it involves a married man having ultimate sex relationship with a
woman who is not his wife.
- Rape: is committed by a man who shall have a carnal knowledge of a woman
under any of the following circumstances:
a. Through force, threat or intimidation
b. When the offended party is deprived of reason or otherwise unconscious
c. By means of fraudulent machination or grave abuse of authority
d. When the offended party is under twelve yeas of age or is demented, even
though none of the circumstances mentioned above be present.
- By any person who, under any of the circumstances mentioned in paragraph
1 hereof, shall commit an act of sexual assault by inserting his penis into
another person’s mouth or anal orifice, or any instrument or object, into the
genital or anal orifice of another person.

13. Crime against the civil status of persons

- Such crimes includes simulation of births, substitution of one child for another,
concealment or abandonment of a legitimate child, usurpation of civil status, and
illegal marriages like bigamy, premature marriages, and performance of illegal
marriage ceremony.

14. Crimes against honor

- Libel: or writing or publishing something as to cause the dishonor, discredit, and
contempt of a person either living or dead and slander or oral defamation.

Why crimes Occur?

There are certain theories advanced about why people commit crimes.

a. The classical theory.

- Leading proponents of this theory like Beccaria and Bentham subscribe to
Darwinian theory that associates criminality with the low-level intelligence
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 or some physiological disorders of the brain. The lower the intelligence or
the more disorderly the brain of person, the more likely he is capable of
committing a crime.
- Earlier, such causes were identified as hereditary, that is certain people
are “born criminals.”
- However, there is an increasing notion today that they are caused more by
environmental factors than hereditary.
- But environmental factors like inadequate education and nutrition could
greatly affect one’s intelligence and mental functioning.

b. The control theory

- People who are prone to commit crimes can be easily discerned according
to this theory.
- They are chiefly detached, apathetic, isolated and have a low level of
commitment and involvement with society.
- Because of this weak bond between the society and them, they tend to go
against one prevailing norm and standard of behavior. They can openly
defy the society and consequently end up to be hardened criminals

c. The differential association and social learning theory.

- These theories expound the important effects of one’s exposure to certain
bad elements of society.
- It is believed that children become delinquents because their association
with bad company.
- Likewise, minor offenders commit more serious offenses because they are
encouraged and rewarded by those who have been involved in the same
offenses.
- Thus immorality is learned and reinforced through the individual’s
participation in his own group.

d. The societal theory.

- Criminals are products of the excesses of a society that is highly polarized
in terms of power and wealth.
- Thus, criminality is a direct function of socio-economic class.

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 - The lower the socio-economic class of an individual, the more prone he is
in committing a crime.
- This theory expounds the imperfection of the society where the rich and
powerful are highly favored at the expense of the poor and powerless.
While the former can afford competent legal services, can get lighter prison
sentence and can be declared innocent through fabrication and
manipulation of evidences, the latter usually end up to be losers in a legal
prosecution.

e. The strain theory

- Criminals in this theory are described as frustrated persons. Thus robbers
ransack banks because they failed to get rich through legitimate means.
- In this theory, a person resorts to illegitimate methods because all of his
legitimate acts have proven to be an exercise of futility.

f. The psychological theory.

- Like the classical theory, this theory ascribe criminality to be originating
from the persons themselves and nothing beyond them. Thus, criminals
are regarded as abnormal persons since they may be suffering from
psychosis or psychopathy.
- Because of these mental disorders, they can easily become deviant
individuals.

g. The subcultural theory.

- The criminal act of a person may be a manifestation that he is conforming
to subcultural norms.
- An adolescent drug addict, for instance, does not at all look upset by what
people in general thinks of him as long as he maintains a position of good
standing in his own group.
- He does not see his status as problematic but rather takes pride in himself
for being associated with a subcultural group. To his mind, his loyalty to
his own group comes first and foremost. He is unmindful of how the
general society looks at and regards him.

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SW 103: Philippine Social Realities and Social Welfare
 h. The labeling theory
- This theory explains why certain criminals never reform.
- Like the societal theory, it takes cognizant of the imperfection of society
particularly in its inability to help criminals to become normally
functioning individuals again.
- The stigma attached against them limits their associations, opportunities,
self-advancement, and causes them to accept the label, and consequently
live up by this label. In the process, they resort to the same offenses that
they used to commit.

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SW 103: Philippine Social Realities and Social Welfare