Question

Sutton breaks into a house when the owner is away and looks for valuable items to steal. However, he does not find anything worth taking and leaves. The owner returns later and does not notice anything amiss, nor even realize that the house was entered. How will Sutton's offense be recorded?

Answer 1

Answer: Sutton's offense will not be recorded because it is part of what is called the dark figure of the crime.

Explanation:

In the field of criminology or sociology, the dark figure of the crime can be defined as the number of crimes that have not been reported or discovered.

Just as many reported crimes are seen daily and investigations to find out who has committed it, there are also times where crimes cannot be proven due to lack of evidence or perhaps they happened but were never reported.

Situations have been seen where innocent people are convicted of poor evidence or people who are guilty but lack of evidence cannot ensure that the person is guilty. There are also cases where there are crimes that are not reported because the person does not trust justice or the person may feel guilty for what happened to him.

In the case of Sutton, although it is true that at the end of the day he did not steal anything and that the owner of the house could not detect anything because everything was intact, this does not mean that the crime did not happen. If the owner of the house had security cameras or found Sutton in the house, it would have been proof that he was trying to steal even if he didn't carry anything.

If Sutton had been found there would be chances of being imprisoned or other judicial actions would have been taken because entering a house without permission and that is a crime.