Speaking of laws, every country has two major types of laws which are criminal laws and civil laws. While most other laws come under these two such as family cases come under civil law. Coming back to criminal laws, these laws are made to address human behavior towards other people, society, and state which is considered offensive in any manner. Look at it this way, the criminal law is the body of rules and regulations of the federal and judicial, and state that the government thinks to be offensive and/or harmful to the public and society.
Now, how is a crime considered a crime? What are the norms, under which an act is considered harmful and a crime? Well, these rules are defined by and classified under criminal law. Not only the crime, however, the punishments are also mentioned in these criminal laws. These law proceedings take place in the criminal courts where the victims and accused are represented by the lawyers just like the Austin criminal lawyers. After the proceedings, someone who is found guilty is punished; they either have to pay a fine for their crimes, or they may lose their personal freedom and all the privileges due to imprisonment in jail.
Different types of crimes
There are a lot of different types of crimes, and what is considered to be a crime varies from nation to nation, and sometimes, what is considered as a crime differs from state to state in the same country. However, there are some acts that are considered a crime in every nation. These are divided into 4 categories namely:
- Personal crime
- Property crime
- Inchoate crime
- Statutory crime
Let us talk about these four categories in detail.
Personal Crime
These crimes are the violent type of crime in which the one causes physical, emotional, or psychological harm to a victim. Usually, these damages are caused to a person or a group of people.
Some of the personal crimes include:
- Assault – Assaults are the most common type of crimes that occur everywhere. Assault in simple words is a situation where one person causes the fear of being harmed to another person.
- Battery – This is another type of crime that in simple words means when someone applies force or forcible actions against someone else’s body. This involves offensive touching or physical injury. In some places, assault and battery are merged together to make it one crime instead of two. And the charges are also combined as a single charge under assault and battery.
- Kidnapping – Kidnapping is defined as forcible taking or carrying a person away without their consent or will. This can also be termed as a seizure of a person in order to get the ransom in exchange and making sure that the kidnapped person is safe.
- False Imprisonment – As the name suggests, it is defined as forcible and intentionally keeping a person restrained against their will and consent by developing fear in them for the safety of their life. These types of crimes sometimes also involve kidnapping and then false imprisonment.
- Homicide – Homicide is defined as killing someone, manslaughter, or vehicular homicide. These include charges such as first-degree murder or second-degree murder.
- Rape – This is referred to as sexual assault against another person.
The list doesn’t end here, there are other types of personal criminal offenses as you can never tell what is going on in one’s mind. If you fear for your life or you think something is wrong, contact Austin criminal lawyers at once, they will be ready to help.
Property crimes
Simple to understand, property crimes are the crimes or offensive actions taken against the properties. It does not necessarily involve hurting any individual, instead, it involves cases of hurting an individual by causing harm to their property. Let’s have a look at some of the examples of types of property crimes:
- Theft – This refers to the action of a person who takes the property of another person in order to deprive him or her of the legal ownership of the property. Theft includes robbery which means forcible theft, burglary which is also known as breaking and entering.
- White-collar crimes – White collar crimes involve embezzlement, forgery in which an entrusted person takes finances or property by illegal actions and without the consent of the actual owner, forging documents, altering signatures, etc.
- False pretense – This is a combination of larceny (theft) and fraud in which a person misrepresents himself or herself as the owner in order to obtain the property or the finances in an illegal manner.
- Receiving stolen goods – Already a crime has been committed as it involves stolen goods, and if you receive or purchase those stolen goods, it will automatically make you a criminal.
Inchoate Crimes
These crimes are also referred to as incomplete crimes which mean exactly the same as its name incomplete. These types of crimes were initiated but were never completed. For examples:
- Attempt – these are also known as attempted crimes, where criminal attempts to commit a crime but for some reason do not succeed or complete the task such as attempted robbery, or attempted murder.
- Conspiracy – These types of crimes involve performers, actors, or importers who form a group in order to commit a crime.
- Solicitation – In this type of crime, the criminal who intends to harm someone does not complete the task himself or herself, instead, hires someone else to complete the task for them.
Statutory crimes
These types of crimes involve breaking the rules of the judiciary or the government that are made for the safety of the general public such as DUI which means driving under influence, selling alcohol or other illegal substances to minors, illegal consumption, or possession of banned drugs, speeding, etc.
These categories of crime also have another category that defines the seriousness of the crimes. Austin criminal lawyers tell that the seriousness of the crime can be categorized under 2 categories namely:
- Misdemeanor
- Felony
A misdemeanor is considered to be a less serious crime such as shoplifting, where no one is hurt, and the punishment is also less which includes a fine up to $1000 or a maximum of 1-year imprisonment.
On the other hand, a felony is considered to be a more serious crime where another individual is hurt. The punishments include higher fines and along with it imprisonment of a minimum 1 year and maximum imprisonment can be life long depending on the seriousness of the crime.