crime
A crime is held to be an offence that goes beyond the personal and into the public sphere, breaking prohibitory rules or laws, to which legitimate punishments or sanctions are attached, and that requires the intervention of a public authority (the state or a local body). Ideally, the latter administers a formal system for dealing with crime, and employs representative officers (for example a police force) to act on its behalf. In terms of law and jurisprudence, being guilty of the committing of a criminal act usually involves evil intent or conscious recklessness, although there are some exceptions in law. Where such conscious intent can be shown to be missing (as, for example, in the cases of children or the insane) then the offence is not a crime and will not attract the usual punishment (although some form of detention or therapeutic treatment may follow).... ...
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