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INTRODUCTION CONCEPT OF CRIME Legal Definition of Crime The legal definition of crime is that it is behaviour or an activity in violation of the legal code. Paul Tappan has defined crime as “an intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law committed without defence or justification and sanctioned by the state for punishment as a felony or a misdemeanour”. Six elements as under are important in this definition: 1. The act should be actually committed or it should be an omission of a legal duty 2. The act must be voluntary and committed when the actor has control over his actions. 3. The act should be intentional, whether the intent be general or specific. 4. The act should be a violation of a criminal law, as distinct from a non-criminal law or civil and administrative law. 5. The act should be committed without defence or justification. 6. The act should be sanctioned by the state as a felony or a misdemeanour. Hall Jerome has defined crime as “legally forbidden and intentional action which has a harmful impact on social interests, which has a criminal intent, and which has legally-prescribed punishment for it.”1 CONCEPT OF A CRIMINAL Legally speaking, a criminal is one who is convicted by a court for violating the law of the land. A person who is arrested by the police but is let off by the court cannot be designated as a criminal, i.e., technically the term criminal cannot be applied to one who has not been convicted of a crime. However, the law has never specified whether the criminal status of a person ends after completing the term of imprisonment imposed upon him, i.e., when the status begins and when it ends. A serious problem thus occurs when society refuses to erase the label of criminal. In practice, a person who is once labelled a criminal is often not permitted to forget that status. Caldwell has stated that a question is often asked today: Is criminal a victim of adverse 1 Ram Ahuja, Criminology, (Rawat Publications, New Delhi, 2015).

circumstances, unsavoury environment and changing social conditions and social values or is he, as Lombroso claimed, a moral degenerate? Is he a mental imbecile as claimed by psychiatrists? Is he a hardened desperate individual or a dangerous beast as penologists would have us believe? It is not easy to answer the question why he is a criminal. But one thing that is accepted mostly by all scholars today is that he is not a born criminal and efforts can and should be made to correct and resocialise him. Those who commit crime as a matter of choice or as a means of livelihood are few indeed. A large number of criminals are victims of situations or criminals by accident who entertain in the heart of their hearts the same ideals, the same hopes, and the same ambitions which ordinary people have.2

CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENDERS The classification of criminals is not simply a matter of theoretical interest; it is also a matter of great practical importance for the proper treatment of criminals in our courts of law and in our correctional institutions. Some classification of criminals there has always been, as it has been a juridical necessity. But the legal classification, based on tile nature of the crime committed, and its greater or less social opprobriousness, is not so much a classification of criminals as of criminal acts. While such classification is a practical legal necessity, it has been found inadequate for that scientific treatment of the criminal which is now generally recognized to be socially desirable; for a scientific classification of criminals must be based, not on the nature of the crime committed, which may be quite an accidental matter, but upon the nature of the criminal himself.3 Criminals have been mainly classified as first offenders, casuals, habituals, professionals and white-collars. However, different criminologists have classified criminals on the basis of different criteria.

2 Supra note 1. 3 Charles A. Ellwood, The Classification of Criminals, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Nov., 1910), pp. 536-548

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CLASSIFICATIONS BY CRIMINOLOGISTS Garofalo has classified them into four groups: 1. murderers, 2. Violent criminals, 3. criminals deficient in probity and 4. lascivious (with feeling of lust) criminals. Ferri has classified them as follows: 1. the insane, 2. the born, 3. the habitual, 4. the occasional, and 5. the passionate. Alexander and Staub have classified criminals as: the accidental and the chronic. The accidental criminal is one who commits a single crime or only a few crimes because of unusual circumstances, while the chronic criminal is one who commits crime repeatedly either because of his association with criminals (normal criminal) or because of his anxieties, guilt feelings and personality conflicts (neurotic criminal) or who engages in criminal behaviour because of an organic condition (pathological criminal). Thus, of the three subcategories of chronic criminals, the ‘normal’ criminal is a product of sociological factors, the ‘neurotic’ is a product of psychological factors, and the ‘pathological’ is a product of biological factors. Lindesmith and Dunham have suggested two types of criminals; the social criminal and the individualised criminal. The social criminal is one whose criminal behaviour is supported and prescribed by his cultural milieu. In this milieu, crime is customary, and by committing it skillfully, he achieves status and recognition within a certain minority group. In this group, he learns to be a criminal because of his association with criminals. For committing crime, he uses means which are generally regarded as illegitimate. The best example of this type of criminal is the professional criminal. The individualised criminal is one who commits crime only for his

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personal ends. He may commit crime under the stress of economic needs or in a state of emotional disturbance, etc. Ruth Cavan has classified criminals in the following six categories: (1) Criminals who live in non-criminal world. These include: the casual (who violates minor laws, including local laws, for his convenience), the occasional (who occasionally commits crime of a minor nature), the episodic (who commits crime, usually a serious one, under some great emotional strain), and the white-collar (who commits crime, usually financial in nature, while engaged in some legitimate business). (2) Professional, who depends upon crime for his livelihood, moves in the world of criminals, and develops a philosophy in support of his activities. (3) Organised (racketeer), who systematises his criminal activities much as some business is organised, with specialised personnel and permanent gradations of leadership. (4) Habitual, who repeats his crime. (5) Mentally abnormal, whose crime satisfies his psychological need. (6) Non-malicious, who is law-abiding in terms of the norms of his own group and in general conforms to the laws of the larger society except in some few instances where his small group norms contradict these laws. The categories, as given by Cavan, however, are not mutually exclusive. A professional criminal may also be engaged in organised crime and/ or be a habitual criminal. Similarly, a criminal who lives in a non-criminal world may also be a habitual criminal and/ or a non-malicious criminal, and so on in varying combinations of the categories. In fact, Cavan’s classification is based on three criteria: the number of crimes committed, the kind of crime committed, and the kind of person committing the crime. These criteria are loosely fitted together in various combinations. SOCIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION There are two types of criminals from the sociological point of view: (1) The ‘social criminal’, and (2) The ‘individualised criminal’. 4

The first refers to a general category supported by general cultural ends. The second refers to those who commit crime for their diverse personal and private ends. Political crime and crime by terrorist organisations can be included in the first category. Society has some pre-ordained goals to be realised by its members with some means or norms to be followed for realising the goals. Robert K. Merton (1949) calls lack of correspondence between means and ends as a situation of anomie. According to Merton, a situation of deviation arises when there is a lack of fit between culturally accepted goals and institutionalised means of attaining them. Durkheim’s Classification: The sociological dimension of crime is stated by Durkheim (1952) as follows: “Crime is a social fact and human act. Crime is both normal and functional. No society can be completely exempted from it. Crime is one of the prices we pay for freedom.” The modern state has taken up development programmes. The functionaries working in the state bureaucracy often indulge in underhand and unlawful tactics for making money. Bribes, commissions and gifts are accepted in lieu of the favours extended to the people who are otherwise not eligible for benefits from the government. This as known as ‘white-collar crime’. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGIES: Psychiatrist Richard Jenkins and sociologist Lester Hewitt put forth an influential psychological typology of juvenile offenders many years ago. They examined youths in a child guidance clinic and concluded that delinquents fall into two groups: pseudosocial boys and unsocialized aggressive youths. The former were psychologically normal youngsters who were responding to antisocial conditions in their local communities, while the latter were asocial, violent juveniles who had suffered severe parental rejection. A more recent and well-known psychological typology of offenders is Marguerite Warren's Interpersonal Maturity Levels (I-Levels) description of delinquents. Warren hypothesized that children become well-adjusted social beings by passing successfully through seven stages, from infantile dependence to adult maturity and interpersonal competence. Some individuals fail to attain the highest levels of personal development: their development stops at an intermediate 5

stage, and they consequently behave in relatively immature ways. According to Warren, juvenile delinquents are usually found in three of the lowest levels of maturity. For example, some are easily led by peers into misbehavior, whereas others have great difficulty conforming to reasonable demands of authority figures. The I-Levels model is faulty in some respects (Gibbons, 1970). For example, Warren did not adequately compare nondelinquents with offenders in terms of interpersonal competence. Moreover, the validity of the scheme is suspect. Investigators have tried to assign delinquents to Warren's typology through the use of personality tests or inventories, but have generally failed to obtain results consistent with I-Levels diagnoses based on clinical judgment. Another psychological typology rests on felons' Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scores (Megargee et al.). This typology can be useful in correctional programs, but many nonoffenders would probably exhibit psychological profiles similar to those that have been found among prisoners. Finally, a number of psychiatrists have drawn upon their clinical experiences with offenders to create less formal typologies of lawbreakers. These descriptive typologies of murderers, sex offenders, and other kinds of criminals usually emphasize forms of psychological maladjustment that are said to differentiate criminal types. INMATE SOCIAL ROLE TYPOLOGIES: Existential types noted among inmates of both juvenile correctional institutions and adult facilities have sometimes served as the basis of offender typologies. Proponents of this approach argue that these types parallel behavior patterns among lawbreakers at large. In this tradition, Clarence Schrag reported that male prisoners are labeled in inmate argot as "square Johns," "right guys," "outlaws," or "politicians," according to the nature of their relationships with fellow prisoners (pp. 346–356). Loyalty to other inmates is the decisive variable: thus, the "right guy" is faithful to his peers and hostile toward guards and other authority figures, whereas the "square John" is an alien in the convict social system. Schrag also contended that the criminal records and other characteristics of prisoners vary predictably with their position in the inmate role system. In fact, however, there is only a relatively loose fit between this inmate typology and the real world. Peter Garabedian conducted research in the same prison from which Schrag's conclusions were derived. Garabedian assigned inmates to role types on the basis of their responses to an 6

attitude questionnaire containing statements designed to reflect social roles. Significantly, he found that about one-third of the sample was unclassifiable through this procedure and that the correlations between offender characteristics and social roles were relatively weak. Robert Leger studied inmate social categories as well. Using Garabedian's attitude questionnaire to identify inmate role types, Leger asked prisoners to indicate their own type. Additionally, he queried guards concerning prisoner roles, and included social background information on inmates as another measure of role. These techniques did not consistently assign particular individuals to a single type, nor did they agree on the total number of prisoners within each role. FEMALE OFFENDERS Until relatively recently, criminologists paid relatively little attention to types of juvenile or adult female offenders. An implicit assumption has been that most female delinquents come to the attention of the police or the juvenile court, either because of minor misbehavior or sexual promiscuity. Similarly, a common presumption has been that many adult women offenders are petty thieves such as shoplifters while others have been involved in domestic violence, often directed at their common law or legal spouses. However, in recent years, investigators have begun to examine female lawbreaking in more detail. In particular, considerable attention has focused on the different routes or pathways through which women enter into lawbreaking. One case in point is Eleanor Miller's research on women who have been involved in "street hustling," that is, a pattern of property crimes, drug use, and prostitution. She reported that there are four pathways that lead to street hustling. Mary Gilfus has provided parallel findings regarding women who have been involved in street crime. Similarly, Kathleen Daly has sorted female felons into several types, based on the kinds of offenses they have committed and their relationships' with spouses, boyfriends, and other associates. Then, too, investigators have directed attention at females who have been involved in homicides. Taken together, these studies indicate that there are a number of patterns or types that are involved in female criminality.4

4 Available at https://law.jrank.org/pages/2214/Typologies-Criminal-Behavior-Offender-typologies.html Accessed on 7 April, 2019

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THE FBI TYPOLOGIES OF OFFENDERS AND THEIR SEVEN SUBGROUPS The types of people who have sexual contact with children can be grouped into two basic categories: Situational Offenders and Preferential offenders. Situational Offenders - Situational Offenders become emotionally attached to their victims and, because of some situation event, they cross a boundary. Characteristics of the Four types of a Situational Offenders 1. REGRESSED - Offenders have poor coping skills, target victims who are easily accessible and abuse children as a substitute for adult relationships Indiscriminant Offenders are divided into two types – for indiscriminate offenders, love and romantic attraction is not a major motivator. 2. MORALLY INDISCRIMINANT - Offenders do not prefer children over adults and tend to use children (or anyone else accessible) for their own interests (sexual and otherwise). 3. SEXUALLY INDISCRIMINANT -

Offenders are mainly interested in sexual

experimentation, and abuse children out of boredom 4. INDEQUATE – Offenders are social misfits who are insecure, have low self-esteem, and see relationships with children as their only sexual outlet. Characteristics of the Four types of a Preferential Offenders Preferential Offenders – Of the two major categories of offenders, Preferential Offenders are the ones most likely to actually believe that he or she “loves” their child victim in a romantic way and, therefore, doesn’t see anything wrong with the adult-child sexual contact. 1. SEDUCTIVE – Offenders “court” children and give them much affection, love, gifts, and enticements in order to carry on a “relationship” 2. FIXATED - Offenders have poor psychosexual development, desire affection from children, and are compulsively attracted to children. 3. SADISTIC – Offenders are aggressive, sexually excited by violence, target stranger victims, and are extremely dangerous.5

5 Available at http://dosp.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/FBI-Typologies-of-Offenders.doc. Accessed on 7 April, 2019

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CLASSIFICATION OF CRIME Crimes can be classified in many ways. Crimes also can be grouped by subject matter. For example, a crime like assault, battery, or rape tends to injure another person’s body, so it can be classified as a “crime against the person.” If a crime tends to injure a person by depriving him or her of property or by damaging property, it can be classified as a “crime against property.” These classifications are basically for convenience and are not imperative to the study of criminal law. CLASSIFICATION BY CRIMINOLOGISTS a. Bonger’s Classification on the Basis of Motive Bonger has classified crimes into four groups on the basis of their motives: 1. Economic 2. Sexual 3. Political And 4. Miscellaneous (With vengeance as chief motive). But it cannot be maintained that all crimes are committed only with one motive. A politician who gets his politician father-in-law killed may have a political motive, vengeance motive, as well as an economic motive of getting his (father-in-law’s) property through his wife who may be the only daughter of the politician killed. The classification is thus clearly inadequate. b. Lemert’s Classification Lemert has classified crimes as situational and systematic. The former are those which are committed because of the pressure of situation while the latter are those which are committed in a planned and systematic way. This classification is important in the treatment of criminals. c. Clinard and Quinney’s Classification Clinard and Quinney have given six types of crimes: 1. Violent personal crime: This crime is based on the use of violence and is committed by a person who does not have earlier record of crime against him. Murder, rape, assault are 9

some examples of this crime. The reaction of society against those who commit this crime is very harsh. 2. Occasional property crime: This crime is violation of individual property rules. Shoplifting is one example of this crime. 3. Occupational crime: This crime is committed, during the course of one’s occupation, with an economic motive. The criminals Who commit this crime accept the traditional norms of society except that of honesty. Embezzlement, blackmarketing, misleading advertisements are some examples of this crime. 4. Political crime: This is committed by an individual with vested political and economic interests. Treason, spying, passing secrets to enemy country are examples of this crime. 5. Public order crime: This crime is one in which an individual violates the rules of conduct in society. Some examples of this crime are alcoholism, vandalism, prostitution, homosexuality and Violation of traffic rules. 6. Conventional crime: This is a crime in which an individual violates the sacred norms of individual property. Theft, robbery, dacoity, kidnapping, and riot are some examples of this crime. Individuals commit these Crimes on a part-time basis, and these crimes are not the main source of their income. However, these criminals are more committed to criminal subculture. Besides the above kinds of classification, crimes are also classified as white-...