Kim Fisher
Week 1
Individual Paper Criminal Justice System Crime is an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by the law. Committing any action that is forbidden by the law can be considered a crime. There are some actions that can result in punishment that can be considered criminal. Knowing and understanding what is forbidden by law can be confusing. There are so many things that an individual can commit every day that can be seen as a criminal act.

Crime is internal to the law, and thus cannot be adequately analyzed separately. Crime breaks the law and law repairs the crime. Law and crime assume and require each other. “Law has as one of its main purposes to make men go around in more or less clear ways. Law purposes to channel behavior in such manner as to prevent or avoid conflict; and law does in important degree so channel behavior. Without the purpose attribute, law is unthinkable, without the effect attribute, law cannot be said to prevail in a culture. “(The Cheyanne Way, pg.20) Crime is not only theorized as an aspect of law, it is professionally managed through law, and specifically managed on the basis of this normal and conventional character.

The two most common ways society determines which acts are criminal are consensus and conflict model. Consensus model defines the criminal behavior as those acts conflict with the values and beliefs of society as a whole, assumes that diverse group of people can have similar morals. Consensus model also argues that the majority of citizens will agree on which activities should be outlawed and punished as crimes. In contrast the conflict model argues that in diverse society, the dominant groups exercise power by codifying their