 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 a high rate of recidivism, with the current approach that supposedly serves society. Our centers of incarceration where public punishment is applied seem also to serve as educational facilities for more effective criminals. That separation of purpose and result is just a tip of the iceberg. We have challenges that go all the way back to the American Revolution from 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, the public as represented by a sovereign government, or to serve we the people as self-governing sovereigns. 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 feudal times upon the use of punishment by parents in a household where it does seem to achieve a desired result. What parents forbid to their child children on pain of punishment is generally avoided by their children. In feudal times with the aristocracy caring for their common people as a source of their wealth and power, there was that same family-like sense of protection and care for commoners. But then if a parent sees a child wandering into traffic and in fear applies punishment with strict admonition never to do that again, does a child learn from the punishment? Is it more likely that they fear the parent's voice and the sense of panic in reaction to their taking on such a threat? Is that what teaches the lesson? It is a threat of causing that most unwanted attention from someone who is a source of much of what the child receives that is the real drive to that. Such lessons almost never have 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 established behaviors. It gives rise to new behaviors to continue the past actions while avoiding further punishment. Punishment also does not work upon those who did not have an inclination to criminal behavior to start with as they have no established behavior to interrupt. So who does 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 had no prior inclination to crime. It is not some benefit for the judge or prosecutor who authorized the punishment. This has been a matter of discussion for a long time, but only in terms of recidivism and 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. Locking criminals away from the rest of the public they would harm has been effective during the time of their 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 laws and punishing those who offend these 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 it till 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 protections 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 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 the wealth privileged. The sovereign protects the source of wealth and this is also how much of our criminal law has been addressed in the United States. Then 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 the one citizen end only where the rights of others begin and acts that upset this are an offense to we the people. Acts against government laws that protect and benefit the public are acts against we the people in whose name these protections were set in place. Offenses against the people and offenses against the state are competing approaches to criminal law. The modern approach has largely favored the sovereignty and government which serves 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 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. This source of common law crimes was feudalism, a means of keeping the peace and prosperity of common people who were the source of privilege. It was the benefit to all people recognizing and banning acts that caused public damage and avoiding personal responsibilities that could not be avoided without threatening public welfare of common people. There is no uniform classification of crimes and many of the individual states have attempted to codify it and replace the common law crime definitions with legislated legal codes. These have effect especially in recognition that representative government is to serve the people who are represented and the codification quiets 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 handled properly, where used to punish unwanted behaviors by some people that might be engaged in by many others, this approach to criminal law has become a 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 protection 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. Could you imagine banning the unlicensed raising of corn and wheat because others might use it to manufacture intoxicating liquor without a license? The plant banned by these laws is also the basic material for hemp rope and canvas. In the common law, the offense was government notice of a wrong accomplished through a personal action. Crime went to the individual, not to the corporate or created beings. Crimes would refer to the office holder rather than the government or corporate organization which contained the office. In the United States, criminal prosecution is always and only in the name of the people and the actions are taken on behalf of the people. Criminal prosecution has always been a tool of regulation of people and is necessarily subject to abuse. It allows some people to ban the behaviors of other people. Where there is a general support as in banning sexual behavior with non-humans, even general offense has been used to authorize criminal prosecution. A criminal law crime of buggery is an example. By this, common law offense has also been used for enforcing moral law, a questionable application which is only appropriate. When the public is agreed to support of the morality being enforced, this might be seen in laws that would punish polygamy or underage marriages. Prosecution addresses the official recognition of wrongdoing. Official recognition of crime is a government action with intent to prevent further offense, even to the point of assessing fines and punishment upon a perpetrator. American prosecution 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 the official accusation of 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 a crime or subject to prosecution. These rights are commonly raised to prevent or resist prosecution. In addressing crime, we have the concept of mens re or guilty mind. The concept is built on the capacity of a citizen who engages in a crime to understand or prevent the results of actions they take or duties they would avoid. Infants, for example, cannot be prosecuted for criminal offense. 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 the capacity to decide on their actions. It is not some excuse for engaging in the crime, as the crime is the same in any case. The excuse of incompetence in mental state is a protection for the perpetrator of the crime from criminal punishment. Even where there is a 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 is the basis for prosecution. We have a foundation for criminal law in recognition of the common law system, but crimes were more a matter of government authority over the person than right or wrong. With the rejection of government sovereignty, we had the challenge of personal sovereignty over the law and how to apply the criminal concepts of we the people acting as sovereign toward a sovereign citizen. The change was never really made in the courts and they continue enforcing legislation as a basis for criminal law, but accepting the enhancements to juries and jury application as a matter of process rather than a legal necessity. Over the many decades, this allowed the government to declare that the 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 the bottle that arose from good legislation. The courts, with their disrespect for the sovereignty of citizens, just implement it.