Committing offense

A commission offense is a criminal offense that criminalizes active doing or failing to act.

The widespread view that a commission of an offense can only include an active act has at least become obsolete with the introduction of official headings on January 1, 1975 in the Criminal Code. Section 13 of the Criminal Code now speaks of "committing by omission" . If, in particular, committing offenses cannot contain an omission, participation in omission offenses according to the wording of § 25 , § 26 , § 27 StGB would not be possible, since these speak of committed acts.

The omission offense is therefore to be regarded as a subcategory of the commission offense. It is not possible to distinguish it from other types of crime, i. H. all possible forms of crime are also criminal offenses. In order to distinguish between offenses by omission, it is therefore appropriate to use the term criminal offense according to the terminology of Section 13 , Paragraph 1, last half-sentence of the StGB .