The term criminality It has two uses, on the one hand, it is called this way set of characteristics that make an action be considered criminal. For example, if an individual carried a weapon beforehand because he knew that he was going to use it to kill the person he was going to meet and in fact murders him, when the moment of trial arrives and such a question is proven, there will be no doubts about the criminality of the act.
In other words, putting it in simpler terms, criminality always implies the intention of perpetrating damage against another.
Characteristics that coincide in making an action as a criminal
And on the other hand the word is also used to talk about the number of crimes committed in a territory during a given period of time.
Number of crimes committed in an area
It is quite recurrent and common to hear in the mass media that crime in that town or town or province has been greatly increased, or failing that, decreased.
Most of the time, this issue, especially when it is an increase, is linked to some extraordinary event or situation, that is, if there has been an economic crisis and for example many people lost their jobs, it is common for crime to increase However, if, on the contrary, there was a reduction in crime, it would surely be due to some policy applied in order to reduce it, such as the toughening of penalties for crimes.
The statistics, the surveys that are carried out regarding how many crimes have been committed over the course of a year in a given place, allow us to know those numbers.
They are specialized agencies that may or may not depend on the state, but are dedicated to such a task, who carry out these analyzes and publish the figures that later allow us to know if the crime rate has increased or decreased in an area.
Crime a universal and ancient phenomenon
Crime is unfortunately a universal phenomenon and as old as humanity itself.
People perpetrate various illegal acts, typified in this way by the laws, and are then persecuted by the police authorities after committing them in order to be punished in this regard.
Then justice intervenes, which is the area in charge of precisely punishing those deviant and illegal behaviors.
The crimes that constitute voluntary actions carried out by a person and that have the intention of seriously injuring or murdering someone, are within the criminality, the most serious illegal acts.
We can also add armed robberies, rapes, torture, among others.
The importance of safety
Security is one of the basic human needs and most valued by people because if it is not available, it is impossible to develop a normal and calm life.
For example, the states must allocate resources and policies to ensure the safety of their citizens and therefore combat the crime that causes so much damage.
Meanwhile, when the security indexes of a nation are low and positive, this will speak to us of an advanced society that can develop accordingly.
Security is so important that there is a discipline that precisely has the mission of studying all the inherent aspects of crime. Criminology deals with understanding and explaining criminal acts in order to develop solutions or proposals that reduce their impact on society.
Other sciences such as sociology, law and psychology intervene in it.
Biological and social causes in the development of crime
There are several theories that since time immemorial have sought to explain and find the causes of why crime exists in the world and they have mostly been summarized into two types: biological and social.
Biologicals argue that the factors that contribute to crime are found in the individual and the environment in which it develops and lives, then, the social will only affect the form and frequency of the crime.
And social theories, for their part, give absolute responsibility to external or social factors to the individual in question, attributing to the individual, practically zero incidence.
