Crimes by Severity

Crime classification, indeed this manual, underlines the oft-overlooked reality that each murder, rape, arson, and other criminal act distinguishes itself. Contract killing is quite obviously different from sexual homicide, for example. Crime-solving considerations force investigators to appreciate the differences between offenses according to the perpetrator’s background, crime scene evidence, victimology, and forensic findings. Distinguishing subtypes of crime enables various organs of law enforcement to effect justice. “Justice.” What does that word truly signify? To be involved in the justice system is to be humbled by one’s discrete role in a process that extends well beyond a suspect’s arrest. Is justice served merely when a suspect is taken into custody? What if a manslaughter is charged as a murder? What if a cold-blooded killer is prosecuted as a battered woman? Is that justice? Obviously not. Nor is it “justice” to presume that even within all subtypes of offenders, each is as blameworthy as the next. Each of us who impart our experiences in this text viscerally