11. Financial crime

This chapter examines three major examples of financial crime: fraud, bribery, and money laundering. The importance of financial crime, and of vigorous prosecution policies in relation to it, should not be underestimated. Fraud accounts for no less than one third of all crimes captured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The European Union Parliament has estimated that corruption costs the EU between €179 and €990 billion each year. Finally, the Home Office estimates that the impact of money laundering on the UK economy is likely to exceed £90 billion. An understanding of these crimes, and in particular the way that they reflect corporate activity, is nowadays essential to the study of criminal law.

7. Excusatory defences

This chapter discusses ‘excusatory’ defences. These are defences that are concerned with absence of fault or culpability in a broader sense than is understood by a ‘fault element’ when such an element is included in the definition of an offence. Even when an accused person (say) intended to harm another person, and thus possessed the fault element in the definition of the crime, he or she may still be all but blameless if, for example, what was done was done only because he or she would be killed if the action was not undertaken. In that regard, the chapter covers duress and coercion, reasonable mistake, and ‘putative’ defences. The ‘defence’ of intoxication is also tackled here, even though it is not really an excuse in the sense just explained.

2. Criminal law history

This chapter explores aspects of the criminal law’s history. The main focus is the influence of religious—and, especially, biblical—thought on the criminal law. This influence does something to explain the law’s harsh attitude to theft and homosexuality, as well as to murder. Examination of efforts to codify the law is also included. This exploration is central to the analysis of how the past has shaped the criminal law’s values. However, the development of the law has not been one of continuous moral improvement. Old injustices have been replaced by new ones. In that regard, threats to civil liberties are also discussed in the final section, focusing on bureaucratic regulation, terrorism, and free speech.

12. Complicity

This chapter examines the issue of complicity. ‘Complicity’ arises when two or more people agree to commit an offence which is then committed by one of more of them, or when a person plays a supporting role in the commission of an offence. The discussions cover the distinction between principals (those who commit the crime itself) and accessories (those who assist or encourage its commission). The discussion involves addressing complex questions about the conduct element in complicity, the fault element in complicity, joint ventures, and accessorial liability for different results. Also covered are derivative liability, the ‘missing link’, and special defences to complicity.

8. Homicide

This chapter discusses homicide offences. It covers in detail murder, defences to murder, and involuntary manslaughter. However, these traditional topics no longer cover the whole ground, as Parliament has created a number of new homicide offences in recent years. Accordingly, attention is paid to causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult, and causing death by driving. It concludes with a review of the structure of the law of homicide: is the current structure adequate, with murder at the top, and then manslaughter of different kinds beneath that, together with a hotchpotch of specialized homicide offences with varying degrees of gravity?

5. Criminal conduct: actus reus, causation, and permissions

This chapter focuses on the ‘general part’ of the criminal law—the rules and principles of the criminal law whose importance and application can be analysed and debated without necessarily referring to a specific crime. It first examines the limits of the notion of involuntary conduct. It then looks at various challenges to the ‘voluntary act’ requirement—where is the act if the law criminalizes the occurrence of a state of affairs, or mere possession? Next, it considers how the voluntary act requirement relates to crimes of omission. This is followed by discussions of causation and the circumstances in which conduct may be recognized as justifiable.

1. Criminal law process

This chapter discusses the process of criminal law. The focus is on the importance of the exercise of official discretion, on the criminal law in action, and on the role of bureaucracy in criminal law. There is also an outline of sentencing powers. Patterns of decision-making by criminal justice officials are one of four key pillars of criminal law and justice, along with criminal law principles, rules, and standards. We will see how these patterns are structured by crime management and bureaucratic-administrative techniques designed to reduce the number of contested trials and issues, and hence take pressure off the criminal justice system as a whole.

13. Inchoate offences

This chapter begins by explaining the concept of an inchoate or ‘incomplete’ offence. Such an offence may occur when D does all that he or she can do to commit the crime (such as shooting at the victim), but simply fails to bring about the outcome. Alternatively, such an offence may occur when D is still at the stage of preparation for committing the offence, but has come so close to committing it that it would be right to call the acts in question an ‘attempt’ in themselves. The chapter then discusses the justifications for penalizing attempts at crimes, the elements of criminal attempt, the justifications for an offence of conspiracy, the elements of criminal conspiracy, incitement, encouraging or assisting crime, voluntary renunciation of criminal purpose, the relationship between substantive and inchoate crimes, and the place of inchoate liability.

10. Property offences

This chapter discusses property offences. These include theft, taking a conveyance without consent, robbery, blackmail, burglary, handling stolen goods, and criminal damage. Amongst these, the offence receiving the most detailed treatment is theft. The current definition of theft dates back to 1968, long before the time when it became possible to hold and transfer money and other items (such as photographs) electronically, and the courts have sought to interpret the law in such a way that in can meet this challenge. But, in seeking to modernize the law’s approach to new forms of property holding and transfer, has the definition become too wide?

9. Non-fatal violations of the person

This chapter discusses two main forms of physical violation: the use of physical force, and sexual interference. The first part covers non-fatal physical offences (offences against the person), including the contested question of the limits of consent, and possible reforms of the law. There have been numerous recommendations for reform of this area of the law, including Law Commission proposals in the recent past. The second part is devoted to the law of sexual offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, focusing on the main offences and the definition of consent. It concludes with a review of the law’s successes and failures. Arguably, whilst the law’s basic definition of rape is much improved, the 2003 Act falls down in relation to many other problems that it was meant to solve.