Unit 5: Offences Related to Documents — Forgery; Fraud
1. Documents in Criminal Law
Documents are property’s and identity’s paper form: the deed, the citizenship certificate, the cheque, the academic transcript, the land register’s entry. The criminal law’s document offences punish deceiving through documents — making them false (forgery), using them false (passing), and obtaining by them (fraud). The interest protected: not the paper but the authenticity system — the world’s reliance on documents as true (the courts, the registries, the banks, the employers).
2. Forgery
Definition (the Code’s scheme, by principle): forgery is making a false document or false part of a true document, or altering a true document falsely, with intent to cause damage or injury to any person, or knowing the likelihood of such damage, or with intent to commit or facilitate fraud. The elements:
- Making/altering/circumscribing: creating a document in the name of another (real or fictitious), altering a genuine one, adding false matter to true matter (the classic statutory illustrations of the “making” concept — the document’s fabrications beyond mere imitation);
- A false document: false as to (i) the maker’s identity (who made it — the forged signature), (ii) the time/place of making (the backdated deed), (iii) the authority (the unauthorized “official” record);
- The intent: damage-intent or fraud-intent — the mens rea separating the forger from the careless draftsman; genuine-belief disputes and honest-claim mistakes negating;
- Using as genuine: the Code’s companion head — using a forged document as genuine (knowing it forged): the passer’s liability equal to the maker’s (the forgery’s market needing both).
The objects’ grading (the Code’s aggravated heads, by principle): forgery of public documents and records (the citizenship certificate, the land records, the court records, the government’s registers — the state’s authenticity system); forgery of valuable securities (the cheque, the currency-adjacent instruments; the counterfeit-currency offence family as the special statute); forgery of wills and title deeds
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