by Michael Totten

Created on: March 10, 2009

What is a criminal?

A criminal is a person who has been found guilty by a court of law of having broken a criminal code law. Whether the person has actually broken the law is immaterial. Ideally the court of law tries to determine what actually happened, but what matters in the end is the verdict of 'guilty.'

Intent does not change the criminal label. A criminal is still a criminal whether he is convicted of manslaughter or murder. Intent may reduce the degree of responsibility for the criminal act, in which case a lesser charge may be substituted, resulting in a lesser sentence.

Ignorance of the law does not change the criminal label. However, a person who could not have been reasonably aware that his action would result in breaking the law may be found not guilty, and thus not a criminal. Inability to comprehend the law may also be a reason for being found not guilty.

Inability to distinguish between right and wrong does affect the judgement. A person who is found incapable of discriminating between right and wrong cannot be convicted of a criminal act. This is why young children and the mentally handicapped are not usually prosecuted for criminal acts. Different countries set the age at which a child is able to reason differently, but it usually falls somewhere between 8 and 13 years of age. Similar assumptions apply to those legal systems which try persons under 18 differently from adults, only here the reasoning is that young people have less ability to predict the consequences of their actions. In this case, the slate is often wiped clean once the person attains their majority and has paid any required penalty.

A court of law may also find a person not guilty by reason of insanity. Insanity is the legal distinction of whether a defendant had the ability to distinguish right from wrong at the time of committing the criminal act. Some jurisdictions additionally require that the defendant was not in control of his actions at the time of the crime. It is possible to find a person criminally insane at the time of the crime without judging on current sanity, such as a person who suffered a serious psychotic episode at the time the crime was committed. Those found criminally insane are technically not criminals, but they will be confined in a psychiatric institution and undergo psychiatric treatment until they are determined to no longer be a threat to society or themselves.

Criminals are defined by the laws of the country in which the crime is committed, although

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