 Ten-year-olds Mark and Peter were camping out in their yard with just sleeping bags when it started to rain. They moved over to the shelter of Mr. Hopkins' house trailer that was propped up on one side to make it level. They had made a little fire to cook their breakfast when Mr. Hopkins came out, searching for the source of the smoke he smelled. Have these youngsters committed the crime of attempted arson? We recognize two classes of property and law, real and personal. Real property addresses land and appurtences or improvements to the land such as buildings or trees. Personal property addresses everything else where there is a property right and ownership of something that has value. There are borderline properties that can be seen as either depending upon the law. This would include a house trailer. It might be fixed in place or it might be purposed in support of having a traveling home, not really a fixture on the land. Other property is not just in things. A man has property rights in the wages that he earns, in patents granted for as inventions and even in personal reputation among others. Crimes against property are generally actions that destroy the property or deny the rights of ownership of others. Are those offenses to property which interfere with a person's quiet and peaceful enjoyment of what they own or that interfere with a government's interest in property? The basis for property crimes is often found in assaults, in threats to the property of other people. Arson, for example, addresses the intentional and open burning. It puts lives of firemen in danger and containment may be necessary to keep the fire from spreading. Other crimes are offenses against the peace, as in someone breaking and entering a home. Property law can be very complicated due to the amount of regulation being applied through legislative and judicial actions. Government leaders have harvested the ownership of property as a source of government income. Real property is taxed to fund public schools, assure public services, and maintain public land and buildings. The complications include a public interest in the real property. Damage to property is also damage to the public tax base. Misuse of property can be a threat to the health and welfare of citizens. We therefore have some recognized property crimes that are in place to protect people from known hazards. Most such criminal assaults on property deal with the ownership and possession of land rather than the land itself. The worst of crimes against property involves destruction of the property, or at least destruction to the point where it has reduced value to its owner. In development of common law, the primary property crime was arson, the use of fire to destroy property. Originally, arson only applied to someone's home, and the crime was for someone else to set it on fire, or at least to try to do so. Burning down someone's place of business was not arson, nor was setting fire to a field acreage destroying the crops. It was not arson that someone burned down his own home, as common law considered it to be his property and his to dispose of. This crime has been greatly expanded in U.S. law to address almost any burning of real property. It also includes someone burning his own property for a criminal purpose, as in trying to collect on fire insurance policies. It has also been applied to the burning of specific high-valued personal property, as in setting a fire to an automobile. Arson is now just the most aggravated form of the crime of willful destruction of property. It is a public threat, as large fires are difficult to contain, and a threat to both the peace and enjoyment of others' property and the lives and health of firemen or neighbors who work to distinguish and contain the burning. There is an intent requirement for all such acts to be considered crimes. The person who intentionally makes a deep scratch on someone else's car is engaged in causing willful damage. It is a crime to treat someone else's property in this way, taking value from the owner. Theft. The crime of theft is also a crime of intent. It addresses an act to effectively deny the owner or possessor of property or other benefits of ownership or possession. It often involves removal of property from a place where the owner or possessor has placed it, so that it is no longer available to the owner or possessor. It is not the intent to own or control someone else's property, that is, the public offense, but the intent to interrupt the ownership or possession of another citizen. The crime is in the threat to the public, rather than the damage suffered by a specific victim. We shall address personal wrongs when we study tort law. In terms of the U.S. Constitution, it keys back to a person being secure in his or her possessions. The Constitution, being focused on what government does, simply denies government any authority to commit theft from citizens through issuance of a warrant. Even where land is taken for a public purpose, there is a requirement to provide just compensation for what is taken. Possessor rights are recognized in the supreme law of the land, even as it is in the common law. Theft can also address intellectual property or financial interests that have no physical being beyond a piece of paper attesting to ownership. Interruption of these is a form of theft. Most other crimes involve unlawful or forced change in possession of the property or stealing away its value. Some of the more disruptive interferences have been given their own name as crimes. For example, robbery is a form of theft that involves criminal assault. The theft, being a lesser crime, is not addressed as a basis for prosecution. Conversion is another example of theft, but one that is not a public threat to other persons so much as a violation of trust. If the criminal is rightfully given charge over someone else's property and intentionally takes action beyond the reason for their legal possession, they are guilty of conversion. The crime of conversion is punished more as a violation of trust than a violation of the property, though both elements are part of the same conversion action. For conversion, the criminal must have been in legal possession of someone else's property and owe some duty to the real owner. If they take action to use that property for their own purposes or to gain from its use without compensation to the real owner, they have engaged in conversion. The person who borrows a friend's car to drive to work and back, but takes it on a trip as part of his vacation, would have converted the car. The patron who borrows a book from the library and then burns it to keep warm would have converted the book. A person who leases an apartment but removes the furniture that belonged to the landlord when the lease is up would have converted the furniture. The crime of conversion is not commonly prosecuted as it is simpler and more effective to seek justice on such matters under tort law, where the one whose ownership is abused gains personal restitution. Even more serious cases of conversion commonly involve other crimes that are punished more intensively than conversion. An example would be treating the conversion of someone's vehicle as vehicular theft or setting a leased building on fire would be handled as arson. Fraud. In general, fraud is taking someone's property through trickery, through lies or misrepresentations with intent of depriving that person of ownership or possession. It addresses intentionally unfair dealings. As with other crimes, intent to commit the crime through trickery is an essential for the crime. The person who sprinkles flakes of gold on a property he sells to another in order to falsely inflate its value has engaged in fraud. The person who was defrauded sells that same property to a third person to make a profit from having gold found on the property would not be engaged in fraud as he had no intent on tricking the buyer. The one who publishes a number of articles locally indicating a government interest in building a road through his property so that he ups the price in selling lots would be committing fraud. For personal property it might be a used car dealer who manages to stern back the odometer on a car misrepresenting the amount of use it has had by past owners and accordingly the wear of parts and future life of the vehicle. The huckstool sells his medicine and beauty products to the public without any real basis for their effectiveness would be engaged in fraud knowingly misleading the public with claims that he had no reason to believe were true. Again, fraud usually goes unprosecuted due to the fraud having also involved committing more serious crimes as defined through legislation. There are also special crimes within the general definition of fraud as in an employee doctoring a time card to indicate he was working overtime when he did not. The crime is gaining by false tokens and addressing a fraud accomplished through delivering false evidence as a way to gain value at the expense of others. Forgery is a special crime within fraud dealing with creating a fake property or personal record. If a painting is created to imitate one of greater value and then sold as the original it is a case of forgery. Again, the forgery is a crime of intent. The one who imitates a valuable statue and sells it as a copy is not guilty of forgery. The one who buys the imitation and then resells it as the original is engaged in the crime of forgery. Forgery has been largely limited to false documents that have legal effect. Forgery often includes producing a false signature and presenting it as a basis for the authenticity of the document. Forgery also includes altering otherwise legitimate documents to increase the value of the document to others or otherwise gain advantage over others through trickery. Forgery is always a fraudulent crime. The final property crime is trespass. Entering upon the property of another with the most aggravated trespass being breaking and entering. Breaking and entering is a crime of breaching and intentional security applied to the property to address entering the property such as a home which has been intentionally restricted as to access. Defeating the action of the owner and securing his or her property is breaking and entering. If there has been no special precaution or possessory protection then entering upon that property is just trespass. Without the effort to secure the property the entry of someone on it without permission is a tort rather than a crime. A personal wrong instead of a public wrong. For the crime of trespass there must normally be damage to the property or a positive action to defeat the owner's attempt at security. If a farmer posts signs on his woodlot forbidding entry by strangers then he has taken acts to secure his property and any entry by someone who can see and understand the sign is criminal trespass. If a farmer also puts a fence around the woodlot then he has set a barrier in place and climbing over that fence is breaking and entering. A no trespassing sign is sufficient security for all but children who cannot read and understand the limitation. The trespasser becomes responsible for any and all damages that occur due to his uninvited entry. Climbing over a fence is breaking and entering. Pushing open a partly open door to a house with intent to enter is breaking and entering. A criminal offense against the owner's peaceful enjoyment of that property. The one major limitation is that the owner or possessor cannot set a trap for those who trespass without taking some level of personal responsibility for any who might suffer personal damage from activating the trap. In summation crimes against the property are considered far less threatening to we the people or the government than crimes against the person. Lesser violations often go unpunished as crimes as there is restitution through tort law where the victim of the property crime is satisfied to the point that they do not pursue the act through prosecution. The courts generally support such accommodations as achieving less disturbance of the peace than would be accomplished through prosecuting the action as a crime. This also discourages the use of criminal law as a tool of retribution. The cost and time and effort to pursue and act as a crime is an intentional barrier to its use to harm someone else. Still, there are property based crimes to be pursued and they are available to those who cannot get satisfaction through demanding the behavior of others through the other means.