 Criminal law is the negative regulation of society and operates on the application of punishment to prevent unwanted behaviors. One question that provides immediate contention among people is, who is benefited by criminal law? The challenge is inherent in the high rate of recidivism with the current approach that supposedly serves society. Our centers of incarceration, where public punishment is applied, seem to serve as educational facilities for the more effective criminal. That separation of purpose and result is just the tip of the iceberg. We have challenges that go all the way back to the American Revolution from the English rule. It goes back to that great American experiment in self-governance. It is a question of whether criminal law is to serve the nation as an operating entity, or the public as represented by a sovereign government, or to serve we the people as a self-governing sovereign. We do not have ready answers. Only the vague understanding that we have a historical system that does seem to work with many limitations and exceptions. Agreement among we the people on how criminal law and punishment should work is just not there. Application of punishment is the common law technique for addressing criminal behavior. It follows from the feudal times upon the use of punishment by parents in a household, where it does seem to affect a reasonable result. What parents forbid to their children on pain of punishment is generally avoided by their children. In feudal times, with the aristocracy caring for the common people as a source of their wealth and power, there was that same family-like sense of protection and care for the commoners. But then, if a parent sees a child wandering into traffic, and in fear of plies punishment with strict admonition never to do that again, does a child learn from the punishment? It is more likely that the fear in the parent's voice and the sense of panic and reaction to their taking on such a threat is what teaches the lesson. It is the threat of causing that most unwanted attention from someone who is the source of much of what the child receives, that is, the drive to learn. Such lessons almost never need to be repeated. A single admonition, even without punishment, is wonderfully effective in promoting learning. Punishment does not work for the career criminal. Since the early decades of the 20th century, we know that punishment does not work to extinguish an established behavior. It does give rise to new behaviors to continue past actions while avoiding further punishment. Punishment also does not work for those who have no inclination to be criminals. They have no established behavior to interrupt. So who does a criminal punishment benefit? It is not a benefit to the people who are punished. It adds no benefit to we the people who are still threatened by career criminals and not threatened by those who were not inclined to crime in the first place. It is not some benefit to the judge or a prosecutor who authorized the punishment. This has been a matter of discussion for a long time, but only in terms of recidivism, increasing the impact of applied punishment through addressing some of the causes of career criminals continuing their harmful behaviors. We do not have any ready answers, but the ancient concept of criminal punishment has proven to be of questionable value. Breaking criminals away from the rest of the public they would harm has been effective during the time of incarceration, even if quite expensive. Simply destroying people as incorrigible is effective, but any mistakes are beyond recovery. It tends to offend our sense of justice. Quite simply, the variability of people is not going to be resolved, and there will always be criminals no matter what definition is used to define crime. The level of crime we act to prevent and the way we address aberrant behaviors is not going to be settled. It is going to be a question that mankind as a society is going to have to handle as it can. A best fit solution is probably as good as we are going to get. Passing criminal punishment laws to those who offend the laws is not a solution. It is an attempt at a solution that has been accepted as a basis for government action. It will have to do until we have another and better direction upon which we can come to agreement. The very concept of criminal prosecution, the us and them approach to criminal behavior, is written into our Constitution with special protection for citizens who are threatened with prosecution for crimes. It is part of our self-government experiment. It is going to be applied as best people can apply it. The basis for British law crimes is the sovereign's right to rule over people. To murder or maim another person is to lessen their value to the sovereign. To disturb the peace is to distract the common people from the productive efforts which are the source of wealth for the privileged. The sovereign protects the source of wealth and this is how much of our criminal law has been addressed in the United States that engaging in crime is an offense against the state, a violation of sovereign directives or bans. The common law basis in the American experiment would redefine crime to be an offense against other people. The rights of one citizen end only where the rights of others begin. An act that upset this are an offense to we the people. Acts against government laws that protect the benefit to people are acts against we the people in whose name these protections were put in place. Offences against the people and offenses against the state are competing approaches to criminal law. The modern approach has largely favored sovereignty in government which serves first those who are in public authority before it serves the common person. A crime is a wrongdoing recognized by government. It can be an act or a failure to act where there is a recognized public duty to act. A crime is a public offense even if perpetrated against just another person. It can include even acts of violence against a person in the privacy of the home if engaging in the act is considered so antisocial as to rise to the level of public reaction. The source of common law was feudalism, a means of keeping the peace and prosperity of common people who were the source of privilege. It was a benefit to all people recognizing and banning acts that caused public damage and avoiding personal responsibilities that would not be avoided without threatening public welfare of the common people. These have effect especially in recognition of that representative government it is to serve the people who are represented and the codification, quiet questions of what will and will not be so antisocial as to be officially banned. Justice and public welfare are served in this where such negative regulation is not handled properly where it is used to punish unwanted behaviors by some people that might be engaged in by others. This approach to criminal law can become political regulation of the public, a violation of the sovereignty of citizens. Legislation has been used to corrupt the concept of wrongdoing defining crimes in terms of popularity or special interest supports. For example, there are corporate protections for officers and investors whose dealings with government defy the concept of representation of citizens. There are laws that criminalize acts such as growing marijuana plants because others are likely to abuse themselves by smoking it. Can you imagine banning licensed raising of corn and wheat because others might use it to manufacture liquor without a license? The plants banned by these laws is also basic material for hemp rope and canvas. In the common law, the offense was government notice and the wrong accomplished through personal action. Crimes went to the individual, not to the corporate or created beings. Crimes could refer to the office holder rather than the government or corporate organization that contained the offices. Prosecution addresses the official recognition of wrongdoing. Official recognition of crime is a government action with intent of preventing further offense even to the point of assessing fines and punishments upon the perpetrator. American prosecutions are in the name of the people and under the sovereign authority of the state. The aspect of representation is generally respected but not officially required or tested during the process of prosecution. Prosecution includes an official accusation and a court taking jurisdiction over the accused for the purpose of determining whether official punishment is appropriate. The next challenge is that criminal punishment is being applied to citizens and citizens have recognized rights. Conditional rights, rights that are actually privileges rather than rights, arise when a citizen is accused of crime or subject to prosecution. These rights are commonly raised to prevent or resist prosecution. In addressing crimes we have the concept of men's ray or guilty mind. The concept is built on the capacity of a citizen who engages in crime to understand or prevent the results of the actions they take or duties they avoid. Infants, for example, cannot be prosecuted for criminal offense as they lack capacity. A person who throws up their supper in public, potentially spreading disease, is not to be prosecuted for that threat as it was not by their own choice that they did so. Mentally deficient people may be excused for what they do as lacking capacity to decide on their own actions. It is not some excuse for engaging in crime as the crime is still the same in either case. The excuse of incompetence in mental state is a protection for the perpetrator of the crime from criminal prosecution and punishment. Even where there is recognized act or failure of duty that was intentional, prosecution and punishment can be denied due to incompetence of the accused to understand the error or to accept the duty that was the basis for prosecution. We have a foundation for criminal law in recognition of common law systems, but crimes were more a matter of governmental authority over the person than of right and wrong. With the rejection of government sovereignty, we had the challenge of personal sovereignty over the law and how to apply criminal concepts of we the people acting as sovereign towards sovereign citizens. The change was never really made in the court and they continued enforcing legislation as the basis for criminal law but accepted enhancements to jury applications as a matter of process rather than legal necessity. Over the many decades, this has allowed the government to declare that common law was no longer to be followed as it had been effectively replaced by legislated criminal codes. Instead of personal justice, the driver was justice in a bottle that arose from good legislation. The courts with their disrespect for the sovereignty of citizens just implemented.