Criminal Mental Attitude And Criminal Responsibility

An old English saying,’actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea’. It show that sin is a prerequisite of crime. A behaviour does not exist sin mean that it’s not a crime, which meaning no criminal responsibilities and punishments. Sin is a subjective mental attitude of people, which is feason’s criminal mental attitude. A criminal mental attitude is a mental fact that people want to do illegal action. However, because people have different cognition/emotion/will at psychological process, which make people have different mental attitude. So criminal mental attitude does. Thus, following the different cognition/emotion/will, a criminal mental attitude can be divide normal criminal mental attitude and special criminal mental attitude. A normal criminal mental attitude means that inner fact that people carry out crime, such as intent/negligence/criminal motion and purpose. A special criminal mental attitude means that people distorting cognition/emotion/will make them emerge to do criminal action, for example, crime of passion/Metamorphosis crime and so on. A criminal responsibility is not only Legal evaluation but also legal consequences. It evaluates people’s illegal fact whether crime or not. If the illegal fact becomes crime, people need to bear legal consequence. Criminal mental attitude is subjective basis of criminal responsibility, so a different criminal mental attitude have a different criminal responsibility.Analysing criminal mental attitude, in order to expose value of criminal mental attitude which can cognizant crime and criminal responsibility and punishment fits the crime. So, criminal mental attitude is a essential factor of crime and a subjective basis of criminal responsibility. But in our country, owing to existing defect, criminal mental attitude appear a few problems which need to pay more attention and take measures. It is helpful to prevent crime, protect the perpetrator of human rights and make criminal law’s fairness and justice.