The meaning of crime
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# 4.7 Summary

- The social sciences have generated a range of explanations of criminal behaviour, running on a spectrum from overwhelmingly structural causes to overwhelmingly agency-driven causes.

- Structural explanations locate the causes of criminality in abnormal or deviant biologies, pathological or problem families and deviant sub-cultures.

- Agency-driven explanations, like rational choice theory, argue that crimes are an every-day experience whose origins begin and end with actors’ conscious choices, judgements and calculations in specific situations.

- Given the range of crimes which exists it is unlikely that any one theory can deliver explanations of all criminal behaviour.

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