Participation in Crime

Abstract

This paper focuses – from a comparative and theoretical perspective – on the principles that govern the ascription of criminal responsibility to different parties involved in the commission of a crime. It has the twofold objective of introducing readers to the main doctrinal frameworks for the regulation of participation in crime in two well-known jurisdictions (England and Germany), as well as the theoretical foundations proposed for them, and of making the case for a reworked differentiated system based on separate doctrines of criminal participation formulated for three different participatory paradigms: acting through another, acting with another, and acting alongside another. It argues that the main flaws in existing doctrines of participation arise from a failure to recognise that it is inappropriate to apply them across the entire range of multi-party scenarios to which they are currently applied. However, the counsel of some defenders of unitary perpetrator systems – that we should give up on the very project of distinguishing between different modes of liability-ascription for parties to crime on account of the practical difficulties to which they all give rise – is a counsel of despair. Once the areas of application for the different participatory paradigms are appropriately demarcated, distinct sets of rules and principles for each of these paradigms enable the resolution of various disputed issues and seemingly intractable difficulties that beset this area of law.