Violent crimes and the victims usually relate to the following:
• Murder – the unlawful killing of a human being. The act of murder needs to include premeditation, or planning (mens rea ~ guilty mind), and it must occur without excuse or justification. It’s this state of mind that differentiates homicide (murder) from manslaughter. These thoughts and the actions (actus reus) needs to be happening at the same time, which is called concurrence, and the actions and thoughts together must lead to the death, called causation. All of these factors are considered when deciding whether something is a crime, including murder.
• Rape – unlawful carnal knowledge (sexual intercourse) of another person without their consent or toward a person who cannot legally give consent (children and intellectually disabled individuals are examples of this).
• Aggravated Assault – inflicting serious bodily harm on a person. Factors that go into deciding whether it was simple or aggravated assault include the use of a weapon, how serious the injuries are, whether the offender had intended to seriously harm the person, and the status of the person. For instance, assaulting a police officer or police dog, teacher, or fire person carries a more significant punishment than the same crime against an ordinary citizen.
This graph shows the trends in violent crime in the United States from 1960 to 2014. Image: Trends by Crime in the US. Authored by: Delphi234. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_in_the_United_States.png. License: CC-0
• Robbery – the taking of property by means of force or fear. It’s basically theft through assault or attempted assault. Some examples of robbery include armed robbery, which is when a weapons is used, and mugging or highway robbery that takes place in a public space like a street or parking lot.
These are broad definitions for these four types of violent crime. Each of these is more nuanced in terms of degrees of severity, which is taken into account when talking about punishment of a crime. We will discuss these in much more detail in future chapters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) groups these four types of
crime together as their Part 1 offenses. Because these are the most serious crimes, these terms are used to talk about how much crime occurs in the United States.
Property crimes are much more common than violent crimes. This category includes burglary, larcey, auto theft, and arson, which are included in the Part 1 offenses for the FBI as well. Often offenders are looking for economic gains when they commit property crimes, although crimes like destruction of property may have other motivations.
• Larceny/Theft is the most common crime in the United States. It is the unlawful taking of someone’s property without their permission. The difference between larceny and robbery is that larceny does not include the use of or threat of force and robbery does. Even if you find something, the act of not attempting to return it is considered theft.
• Burglary, also known as breaking and entering, is when someone forces their way into a structure, including barns, warehouses, homes, and offices, and includes both successful and unsuccessful entries and theft.
• Because auto theft has become so common, many countries, including the United States, have started putting it into its own category, although it is a type of theft. Like larceny, it is the theft of a self-propelled vehicle that runs on land surfaces and not on rails. Motor vehicle theft does not include farm equipment, bulldozers, airplanes, construction equipment, or water craft.
• Arson is intentionally setting something on fire to cause damage. There is often a financial motivation behind the arson, such as to collect the insurance money, but not always. The severity of the arson depends on whether people were in the building (first degree), the building was empty (second degree), or they just burned an abandoned building or empty space (third degree).
High tech crimes, or cybercrimes, such as identity theft, fraud, embezzlement, etc. have also been placed into their own category because the frequency and severity of this family of crimes continues to grow. Cybercrimes that have been around for quite some time include the following:
• Cyberstalking and harassing – continually trying to contact and/or track someone who doesn’t want you to contact them using technology like email, cellphone, or social media
• Obscene materials – the posting, sharing, or distribution of obscene materials including posting unauthorized images of someone against their will and child pornography
• Hacking/Cracking – the use of code and programming for malicious purposes (hacking) or to gain unauthorized access to someone’s computer or network (cracking)
• Identity theft – stealing someone’s personal information
These are some of the most common types of crimes that are committed in the United States. All of them have at least one and many have multiple victims.