Am I a criminal ???

To have an accurate reply, you will need to define what a crime actually is. Every citizen in this world would be able to answer this piece of cake question. The response can probably be “an action that violates the system of laws and is punishably through the conviction”[1]. Undoubtedly, there are many other definitions used to describe crime, such as an antisocial action or when there is a rejection to live up to the standard of systems of laws accounted and set up by the community.

Crime usually refers to which most of us would all agree with, bank robbery or excessive overtime fraud such as Madoff – the Wall Street’s Wizard of Oz, and even to things we deem as daily trivialities, parking too long in a restricted area or taking photos of a chef cooking for an artistic object but with no permission! We all know gambling is a crime and 2 years in the prison could be the punishment, yet how about running a lottery, the horse-racing bet or the bingo game in Mr. Bean’s movie ? In fact, the affiliation between crime and iniquity, evil or wickedness is barely our “common-sense” (or the experience of people in “common”). Theoretically, there are scores of actions performed every day by perfectly “clean” people are crimes but they are either ignored by the laws or not fit to the standard of laws.

Not all nations or communities have the identical set of laws and sometimes; a crime in a country can be committed to be not guilty in another nation! Let’s have a closer look at this illustration, we are all living in Vietnam where littering, spitting or even public urination can be seen as conventional acts. Yet, according to the Laws of San Francisco – a state in USA, part 76-9-702 has affirmed that urine publication is classified as a class C Misdemeanor (kind of not grave crime) which “interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of both life and property” and spitting to somebody’s face, as a simple assault, could sentenced yourself to 10 years of community service.

Another question I would like to pose is “Is war a crime?” A murderer killing a human would spend his life permanently in jail with immense sin; how about the military of the USA which has destroyed numerous, thousands human life? In point of fact, there is a war crime which has been applied to the Axis war criminals after the World War II. The destruction of villages, towns unverified unauthorized as a military necessity, willful damage of historical or heritage monuments could be verified as a war crime, on the word of The International Criminal Tribunal. However, it is complicated to determine whether the action is a war crime or not: Not every bombardment is considered as a crime, unless the damage to the population due to the phenomenon is enormous than the military benefits. In my opinion, war is actually a crime. No one has a right to declare who deserves to be alive and who doesn’t; in other words, every people has the autorisation to make a choice of their life. War not only causes massive destruction of the infrastructure but also injures the souls of people involving in, mostly unwilling, particularly innocent children.

Suffice it to say that, if the whole world are able to define which action is precisely, accurately and definitely a crime, why should a lawyer exist?
1] The Website of British Colombia’s Crime and Justice Reform. (http://www.criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca/)