Criminal Classification of Crimes

Felonies and Misdemeanors

Felonies and misdemeanors are one of the most classic classifications of all crimes. This classification is not only prevalent in civil law countries, but also recognized by common law countries. In civil law countries, the distinction between felonies and misdemeanors comes from the French Penal Code of 1810. In addition to felonies and misdemeanors, there are also offenses against the police. In common-law countries, felonies, as a special class of crimes, have a specific meaning that refers to something cruel, ferocious, evil or vile. Therefore, the same classification of felonies and misdemeanors has different connotations in the two legal systems.

Felonies and misdemeanors are mainly divided according to the degree of seriousness of the crime, and the significance of the division lies in both substantive and procedural aspects: substantively, the division of felonies and misdemeanors has a certain significance in the determination of the crime and the application of the penalty. For example, the range of penalties for attempt is related to felonies and misdemeanors; attempts to commit felonies are generally punishable, while attempts to commit misdemeanors are punishable only on occasions provided for by law. The application of penalties is more directly related to the classification of felonies and misdemeanors. Probation, for example, generally applies only to misdemeanors. Procedurally, the division between felonies and crimes is of some significance in the choice of proceedings and in the determination of the level of jurisdiction. For example, where proceedings are divided into ordinary and summary procedures, only summary procedures are generally applicable to misdemeanors. In addition, in determining the level of jurisdiction, it is also a general principle that felonies are under the jurisdiction of higher courts and misdemeanors are under the jurisdiction of lower courts.

Chinese criminal law does not have explicit provisions on felonies and misdemeanors, but there are provisions in the criminal law on "less serious crimes" and "less severe penalties", as opposed to "less serious crimes" and "less severe penalties", and there are provisions in the criminal law on "less severe crimes" and "less severe penalties". However, in criminal law, there are provisions for "lesser crimes" and "lesser penalties", and there are of course "greater crimes" and "greater penalties" in relation to "lesser crimes" and "lesser penalties". The less serious and more serious crimes here do not refer to the difference between different kinds of crimes, but rather to the difference between the serious and the less serious in the same kind of crime. For example, the crime of intentional homicide in Chinese criminal law is divided into two situations: one is the basic composition, which is punishable by death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for more than 10 years; the other is the mitigating composition, which is punishable by imprisonment for more than 3 years and less than 10 years. Here the lesser circumstances of intentional homicide is the misdemeanor of intentional homicide.

Natural vs. Statutory Offenders

Natural vs. Statutory Offenders is a doctrinal categorization of crimes that is important because it involves a basic understanding of the nature of the crime.

The distinction between natural and statutory offenses can be traced back to ancient Roman law. Ancient Roman law applied the theory of evil in ancient Greek ethics to the understanding of crime, and established two different types of crime, the self-evil (mala in se) and prohibited evil (mala prohibita). In modern times, Garofalo in his concept of natural crime, obviously contains the content of the ancient Roman law of the self-evil, on the basis of which the dichotomy between natural and legal offenses is formed. In the modern civil law system criminal law theory, the classification of natural and statutory crimes is widely recognized, but in the two types of crime differentiation standard is indistinguishable. In the common law system of criminal law theory also exists in the classification of similar natural and statutory apolitical, but due to the ambiguity of the classification criteria, the theory of the denial of the view. In my opinion, the distinction between natural and legal offenses involves the relationship between ethics and law. In general, ethics and law are unified; anything that violates the law is a violation of ethics, and vice versa. However, it is also an undeniable fact that in terms of the degree of ethical violations, some are heavier and some are lighter. Particularly in the context of the growing development of subsidiary criminal law, there has been a gradual increase in the number of certain crimes which are due solely to the violation of legal rules and which have no ethical connection. In such cases, the distinction between natural and legal offenses is of some significance. Of course, the distinction between natural and legal offenses is relative and can be transformed into each other. In the process of social and ethical evolution, environmental crimes and other statutory crimes are increasingly taking on the color of natural crimes, which is the so-called natural criminalization of statutory crimes. The categorization of natural offenses and statutory offenses has certain significance in criminal law. For example, on the issue of consciousness of illegality, whether the establishment of intentional crimes requires the consciousness of illegality, there are different opinions, among which the theory of difference between natural and statutory offenders is focusing on the distinction between natural and statutory offenders in the nature of the crime, and advocating that natural offenders do not need the consciousness of illegality for intentionality, while the intentionality of statutory offenders requires the consciousness of illegality. Although this opinion may not be completely correct, but still shows that due to the nature of the difference between the natural crime and the statutory crime, may affect the content of their constituent elements.

Crimes against private law and public law

In civil law criminal law theory, according to the nature of the crime against the interests of the law, the crime can be divided into crimes against private law and crimes against public law. Because public law can be divided into social law and state law, and can be divided into the following three categories: crimes against personal law, crimes against social law and crimes against state law. This is the civil law system of criminal law theory in the most common classification of crime.

Crimes against personal legal interests, crimes against social legal interests and crimes against the state legal interests of the trichotomy, the initial historical origin can be traced back to ancient Roman law. In ancient Roman law, crimes were divided into two categories: public and private crimes.

Public crimes are crimes against the legal interests of the state and the social interests of the law, and their legal consequences are penalties;

Private crimes are behaviors that violate the legal interests of individuals.

Initially, they were viewed as disputes between individuals, where only debts were incurred, and victims could only claim damages under ordinary procedures. It was only later that the victim could bring a private criminal prosecution for a private offense, although he or she lost the right to claim damages as a result. In the Middle Ages, the categorization of public and private crimes was replaced by secular and religious crimes. Secular crimes are those under the jurisdiction of the secular authorities, including treason, delinquency, and so on. Religious crimes are those that are dealt with by ecclesiastical judgment, including blasphemy, heresy, etc. Beccaria divides crimes into three broad categories: the first are those that directly ruin society or its representatives, i.e., crimes against the legal interests of the state. In the second category are crimes against private security, i.e., crimes against individual juridical interests. The third category of crimes are those that are contrary to what the public interest requires every citizen to do or not to do, i.e., crimes against the interests of society. Among the three categories of crimes mentioned above, the first and third categories are essentially crimes against the public interest, similar to the public crimes in Roman law, while the third category is essentially crimes against the private interest, similar to the private crimes in Roman law. This classification of crime through the criminal classical school of other criminal lawyers to carry forward, become the civil law system of criminal law theory in the classification of crime, and for the civil law system of countries in the criminal law sub-rule system has laid the foundation for the construction of the system. For example, the French Penal Code of 1810 takes crimes against public law interests and crimes against private law interests as the basic framework of its criminal law division. It divides crimes into two categories, namely, felonies and misdemeanors against the public interest and felonies and misdemeanors against the private interest, with felonies and misdemeanors against the public interest as the first part of the subsection of criminal law, and felonies and misdemeanors against the private interest as the second part of the subsection of criminal law, which forms the system of subsection of criminal law. Another example is the German Penal Code of 1871, which does not divide crimes into crimes against public law and crimes against private law, but rather establishes a system of criminal law subdivisions based on a generalization of crimes against the law of the State, crimes against the law of society and crimes against the law of the individual. Thus, the categorization of crimes against public law and crimes against private law is of great significance to the establishment of the criminal law subdivision system.

Chinese criminal law does not use the classification of crimes that do not infringe on private legal interests and crimes that infringe on public legal interests, and the system of subdivisions of Chinese criminal law is constructed mainly on the basis of the nature of the social relations violated by the crime. However, the nature of the social relations and their content can also be divided in terms of crimes against the interests of the State, crimes against the interests of society and crimes against the interests of individuals. For example, crimes against national security, crimes against the interests of national defense, crimes of corruption and bribery, crimes of dereliction of duty and crimes of violation of duty by military personnel are of the nature of crimes against the legal interests of the state. Crimes against public **** security, crimes against the socialist market economic order and crimes against the social management order have the nature of crimes against the social legal interests. Crimes against the personal and democratic rights of citizens and crimes against property are in the nature of crimes against the legal interests of individuals. From this, the crime of infringement of private legal interests and the crime of infringement of public legal interests, for the correct understanding of our criminal law sub-rule system has certain significance.

Four, domestic and foreign crimes

From the general sense of criminal law, crime refers to domestic crimes. When it comes to international criminal law, it is only when the problem of international crime arises that the distinction between domestic and international crime takes on theoretical significance.

Domestic crime is a violation of domestic criminal law and, as such, can be criminalized under the criminal law of each country. International crime is the violation of international criminal law, the scope and type of international criminal law is not as certain as domestic criminal law due to differences in the understanding of international criminal law. It is generally recognized that crimes are initially crimes under domestic criminal law, and that international crimes have developed from foreign-related and transnational crimes, and thus international crimes are closely linked to domestic crimes. Foreign-related crime refers to crimes with foreign factors, including subject-related, such as the subject of the crime is a foreigner; object-related, such as the victim is a foreigner or jeopardize the foreign property; the place of the crime is foreign, such as extraterritorial crime, and so on. Although foreign-related crime has a foreign element, due to this crime is recognized as the standard of domestic criminal law, and therefore it is still different from international crime, the two should not be confused. As for transnational crime, it refers to crimes that are committed across two or more countries. Similarly, there is also cross-border crime, which refers to a crime where the crime spans two or more regions. The transnational nature of transnational crime gives it the nature of a foreign-related crime, but transnational crime also has a characteristic that is different from the general foreign-related crime, that is, the crime spans different countries. The narrowest manifestation of this transnational crime is the transnational crime, i.e. the transnational crime that is formed when the place of commission of the act and the place of occurrence of the result are in two different countries, one of which is in the territory of the home country. In a broader sense, the offense itself is committed in different countries, such as transnational drug trafficking, or the same crime is committed in different countries.

The existence of the above foreign-related crime and transnational crime phenomenon shows that: crime can not be confined to a country's domain, with the increase of international social interaction, will inevitably appear with the countries related to crime. It is in order to maintain the international public **** order, it is necessary to regard certain crimes against the international community as international crimes. International crime has developed from foreign-related crime and transnational crime. Compared with domestic crimes, international crimes have independence and dependence. The independence of international crime means that international crime, as a crime against the international community, violates not only the domestic criminal law of the country concerned, but also the norms of international criminal law established by the international community through the conclusion of international conventions, and that international crime needs to be recognized in domestic criminal law, which is the so-called domestication of international crime. Thus, international crimes are in turn dependent on domestic crimes. In this sense, a country's criminal law recognized in the international crime, at the same time, must be its domestic crime, from which it can be seen that the distinction between domestic crime and international crime is relative, and should be seen in the close connection between the two.

Fifth, the harm of crime

Crime will make a person lose his conscience, his family will be broken, and the lesser person will be imprisoned, and the heavier person will be executed.