Essentials of Criminal Justice in Nigeria

Generally speaking, there is no single definition of the word "Crime" that would satisfy all shades of opinion due to the obvious fact that there are as many definitions of "Crime" as there are persons who have one dealing or the other with morality, crime, criminal law and the criminal process. These people include the criminal law teacher, the criminologist, the penologist, the sociologist, the anthropologist, the judge, the police, the practitioner of criminal law and even the clergy and atheist. Attempts at a working definition of criminal law have been faced with problems of acceptability. The learned authors Smith and Hogan warned us in their book1 of the frustration and futility attendant with an exercise to define the subject-matter of any particular branch of the law. The magnitude of this frustration is even more manifest and pronounced in attempts to define 'Crime'. Hence, Prof. A.A. Adeyemi has pointed out that: "Even though criminal law has been in operation in human communities for several centuries, yet lawyers have so far never agreed on any satisfactory definition of the world crime."