Crime
Essay Preview: Crime
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The sentence “Crimes, properly so called will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousness.” Means that acts that we may have found deviant or are seen to be deviant are not deviant anymore. It also means that crimes that may be thought to be deviant or bad are not. A very good example of this is speeding. Speeding is a good example because even thought it is a crime everyone does it. No one could ever say that they have never speeded but this is still a deviant, however people do not see it like that anymore because everyone does it. Another deviant act is jaywalking, this is also a deviant act and it is a crime, but people before may have seen this as deviant but, in todays world everyone does it and it is not seen as a deviant act even though it is a crime. This fits in directly with the sentence “Crimes, properly so called will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousness.” Because both speeding and jaywalking are crimes and you can be fined for both of them so they both have consequences, but people still do not see them as deviant. They are seen in a way that no one really cares if it is a crime because everyone does it.
This sentence also talks about are consciousness when it comes to committing these crimes or “deviant” acts. I do not think that are consciousness has anything to do with why we do not see these crimes as deviant anymore. I believe that people have just got more tolerant of these things because there is so many more things and worse things that people are doing out there everyday. For example why would a police officer pay attention to someone who is speeding if he sees someone killing another person. It is human nature that the cop would pay more attention to a murder than a person who was going fifteen over the speed limit. We see murdering someone as a worse crime or more deviant act than a person who is speeding or jay walking.
In conclusion people today pay more attention to crimes that stick out and crimes that seem more deviant than others. I think that a person who has committed murder is more dangerous and has committed a more deviant act than a person who has go twenty over the speed limit or a person that did not walk in the cross walk.