Definition
Crimen furti is a Latin phrase meaning, literally, "the crime of theft." In legal usage, it denotes the offense of theft considered as a formal criminal charge or category of wrongdoing — particularly in the civil law tradition, where it carried significance both as a criminal matter and as a basis for civil liability. The term appears most prominently in Roman law, where furtum encompassed not only the taking of another's property but also the fraudulent handling or use of property belonging to another, making it broader in some respects than common law theft.
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Common Confusion
CRIMEN FURTI should not be conflated with crimen falsi, a distinct Latin legal category referring to crimes involving dishonesty, fraud, or falsification. The two terms occupy different conceptual spaces: crimen furti concerns the taking or misappropriation of property, while crimen falsi concerns deception or falsification of records. In practice, both terms surface in discussions of witness competency and impeachment, and researchers who encounter one in historical sources should be careful not to read it as the other.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily encountered in two research contexts: Roman and civil law sources, and common law writings that borrow Roman terminology either for precision or rhetorical effect.
In Roman law materials, crimen furti had substantive content beyond a label. Furtum under Roman law was classified into furtum manifestum (theft caught in the act) and furtum nec manifestum (theft not caught in the act), each carrying different consequences. A researcher working in civil law jurisdictions or in historical common law treatises that draw on Roman authorities — such as Bracton or Justinian's Institutes — will need to understand this internal structure rather than simply reading the phrase as a synonym for modern theft.
In common law sources, the term appears most often in discussions of moral turpitude, competency of witnesses, or the impeachment of testimony. Historically, conviction of crimen furti could render a person infamous and therefore incompetent to testify. Researchers tracing the history of witness competency rules or character evidence will encounter the Latin phrase in older cases and treatises as part of the broader category of crimen infamans — crimes that attached infamy to the convicted person. This connection to infamy is largely absent from modern usage, where the phrase has contracted to a simple synonym for theft.
Corpus researchers should note that the term appears with uneven frequency: it is common in nineteenth-century treatises and law review discussions of Roman law influences, sparse in purely common law case reporters, and more frequent again in ecclesiastical and admiralty law contexts where civil law traditions persisted longer than in common law courts generally.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence offer identical minimal entries — both define crimen furti as simply "the offense of theft." This brevity is notable. Neither source signals the civil law genealogy of the term, its internal Roman law structure, or its historical role in discussions of infamy and testimonial competency. For a term that carries substantive doctrinal weight in its home tradition, these entries function only as translation glosses.
The agreement between sources on the bare definition is reliable as far as it goes. Both reflect the common law tendency to absorb Roman terminology while stripping its structural context. Researchers who stop at these definitions will not be misled, but they will miss the richer analytical content available in civilian sources and in treatises engaging directly with Roman law, such as Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis and its commentators.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term carries the most substantive legal content in jurisdictions with civil law traditions — Louisiana in the United States, Quebec in Canada, and throughout continental Europe and Latin America. In common law jurisdictions, it functions primarily as a learned synonym for theft and as a historical marker in discussions of witness incompetency, a doctrine that has been largely abolished by evidence reform in most American and English courts.
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