What is crime?

Mini lecture

What is crime?

David Scott:

A crime is an essentially contested concept. So it’s something where there is no universally agreed definition of what a crime is. However, the most straightforward way of thinking about crime is to look at it in terms of a legalistic perspective and that is, is that a crime is something which is illegal. It’s against the law. It’s against the criminal law and also it will have certain aspects to it. So it will have an aspect of criminal harm and it will have an aspect of criminal blame. Interestingly though, many people have actually questioned this legalistic definition. First of all, because it’s always going to be partial and determined within a very small kind of idea of what is crime. If something isn’t illegal, then albeit we might see it as wrong, or problematic or harmful but it’s not going to actually be something which we can define as a crime. So many people have looked to unpack that legal definition, have questioned the very notions of what is and what isn’t criminal harm and have also questioned notions around criminal blame and both the strengths and weaknesses of that side of things. Some people have even gone as far to say that a crime is a statist category, i.e. that it’s defined by the state and it’s infused with certain interests, ideas and power relations which reflect the interests of the powerful. It reflects the interests of those who have something to lose in society where it does not necessarily reflect the interests of those who are powerless or those at the bottom end of society. Hence, the crime logic is seen as imposed. It’s something which is placed as a category, as a way of generating meanings and understandings and some have argued that that actually is a problem in itself and that we shouldn’t necessarily even think about the logic of crime because actually crime will lead us to certain pathways of solutions, such as punishment.

-End of opinion piece-