There are a few things to consider here.
First, we need to ask ourselves why we do not attribute crimes to animals now. Is it because we don’t believe they have the capacity to act with motive and intent? Is it because we don’t think they can differentiate between right and wrong? Or is it simply because we know the huge “cultural” influences will likely define “crime” differently from species to species?
@LuckyGuy brought up a good point. Many humans do accuse animals of crimes, and punish them accordingly. This is a bit of a hypocritical thing to do, when we look at the way we treat our pets. They have very little freedom to choose, most of them are caged/crated/leashed for a large amount of time. We rationalize this by telling ourselves we are keeping them safe. Yet, when we want to scold them, we imagine our pets to know all sorts of things. We think the puppy “knows” not to pee in the house. Why should it? Does this young animal have any idea what a “house” is? Does it get that we humans like our carpets clean and will have to mop up its mess? Does it understand why we, ourselves, go to the special white room when we need to pee? Considering its highly functional nose, do our attempts at cleaning even convince him that we have, actually, cleaned?
We can’t expect our pets to understand our human world, and we should be just as critical of our ability to understand theirs. The dog stealing food is not really stealing. He is a scavenger, evolved to find food and eat it. No dog would punish another dog upon finding his bone gone – what’s left out is fair game.
Here is some research on dogs with a “guilty” look. It’s interesting, and reinforces the idea of a dog’s strengths and weaknesses: They don’t magically know what humans consider a crime, but they do “magically” know what their humans will do next. They are skilled predictors of our actions, because they watch us and pay attention. Which is what makes us love them.