Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender Office

Abstract

school, has it that the categories of the criminal law, e.g., burglary, petty theft, homicide, etc., are not homogeneous in respect to causation.1 From an inspection of penal code descriptions of crimes, it is argued that the way persons seem to be assembled under the auspices of criminal law procedure is such as to produce classes of criminals who are, at least on theoretical grounds, as dissimilar in their social backgrounds and styles of activity as they are similar. The entries in the penal code, this school argues, require revision if sociological use is to be made of categories of crime and a classificatory scheme of etiological relevance is to be developed. Common attempts at such revision have included notions such as