Why crime is grouped into types

1. Crime covers acts as different as spraying a wall and supplying cocaine, so psychologists group offences by the kind of harm done.
2. Grouping them this way lets you compare causes, rates and prevention across offences that otherwise look nothing alike.
3. Learn a short definition and one specific example for each type, because a vague example does not show you can tell them apart.

The five types of crime

1. Violent crime: harming another person's body, or threatening to.
   1. Assault, actual and grievous bodily harm, and robbery where force is used all count.
   2. The defining feature is force or the threat of force against a person.
2. Drug related crime: offences involving illegal drugs, which the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 sorts into Class A, B and C.
   1. Possession of cannabis, supplying cocaine and producing drugs are all drug related offences.
   2. It also covers offences committed to fund a habit, such as shoplifting to pay for drugs.
3. Acquisitive crime: taking money or property that belongs to somebody else.
   1. Theft, burglary, shoplifting, robbery and fraud are acquisitive.
   2. The defining feature is gain, so the offender ends up holding something that was not theirs.
4. Sexual offences: sexual acts carried out without the other person's consent.
   1. Sexual assault and indecent exposure are examples, and consent is the dividing line.
   2. In England and Wales nobody under 16 can legally consent, so age alone can make an act an offence.
5. Anti-social offences: behaviour that causes harassment, alarm or distress to other people.
   1. Vandalism, graffiti, street drinking, persistent noise and intimidating groups outside a shop are typical.
   2. Much of it is handled by a civil injunction or a Community Protection Notice rather than a criminal conviction.

When anti-social behaviour becomes an offence

1. Anti-social behaviour sits at the lower end of harm, so a single instance is often dealt with by a warning or a notice.
2. It becomes an offence once a court order is breached, or once the act itself is criminal, such as criminal damage.
3. Repetition is what usually tips it over, because persistent nuisance causes real distress to the same neighbours.

Overlap between the types

1. Robbery is acquisitive because property is taken and violent because force is used, so both labels are correct.
2. A burglary where the offender is disturbed and lashes out starts acquisitive and becomes violent too.
3. Stealing from a shop to buy heroin is acquisitive in method and drug related in motive.
4. So when you label an act, name the feature you are pointing at.

Turning this into marks

1. When two types of crime are asked for, make them genuinely separate rather than the same offence described twice.
2. Name the type, such as acquisitive crime, because saying that property was taken does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. Add one concrete example next to the type you name, because the example is worth a mark of its own.
4. The mark most often lost is calling behaviour anti-social when nobody was harassed, alarmed or distressed by it.