Читать книгу Criminal Law - Mark Thomas - Страница 62

Criminal offences can, rather helpfully, be divided into two types:

•conduct crimes; and

•result crimes.

The distinction between these two types of crimes is essential when one has to consider causation. Causation is an element of the actus reus of an offence and requires the arbiters of fact to be sure that the defendant ‘caused’ the end result. Note those last two words, however – end result.

In brief, conduct crimes require no proof of causation (ie no proof of the ‘consequences’ element); whereas result crimes do require such proof. It is always necessary to identify the elements of an offence in order to be certain as to what the defendant must ‘do’ in order to be liable for an offence. It is an essential classification.