A crime in a nontechnical sense is an act that violates a political or moral rule. In many nations, informal sanctions have been found to be ineffective for controlling some types of antisocial behaviour, so the system of social control has had to be formalised by the government. Laws are designed to regulate human behaviour and the state provides remedies and sanctions to protect its citizens if the laws are broken. Not all breaches of the law are considered crimes, however, for example breaches of contract. The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma are usually reserved for those activities causing more serious loss and damage to the citizens of the state. Its use is intended to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behaviour and, in the event that an accused is convicted following a trial applying principles of due process, to justify the state imposing punishment, although the term is used technically also when criminal law is used to regulate minor infractions, e.g. traffic violations. Usually, the perpetrator of the crime is a natural person, but in some jurisdictions and in some moral environments, also legal persons are considered to have the capability of committing crimes. In figurative sense, even the state can be said to commit a crime, although in judicial sense this is often not the case.

Definition of crime in general

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The systematic study of the causes (aetiology), prevention, control, and penal responses to crime is called criminology. For these purposes, the definition of crime depends on the theoretical stance taken. The nature of crime could be viewed from either a legal or normative perspective. A legalistic definition takes as its starting point the common law or the statutory/codified definitions contained in the laws enacted by the sovereign government. Thus, a crime is any culpable action or omission prohibited by law and punished by the state. This is an uncomplicated view: a crime is a crime because the law defines it as such.

A normative definition views crime as deviant behaviour that violates prevailing norms, i.e. cultural standards specifying how humans ought to behave. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect the current definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law enforcement, and penal responses made by the state. These structural realities are fluid and often contentious. For example, as cultures change and the political environment shifts, behaviour may be criminalised or decriminalised which will directly affect the statistical crime rates, determine the allocation of resources for the enforcement of such laws, and influence public opinion. Similarly, changes in the way that crime data are collected and/or calculated may affect the public perceptions of the extent of any given "crime problem". All such adjustments to crime statistics, allied with the experience of people in their everyday lives, shape attitudes on the extent to which law should be used to enforce any particular social norm. There are many ways in which behaviour can be controlled without having to resort to using the criminal law. Indeed, in those cases where there is no clear consensus on the given norm, the use of the criminal law by the group in power to prohibit the behaviour of another group may be considered an improper limitation of the second group's freedom, and the ordinary members of society may lose some of their respect for the law in general whether the disputed law is actively enforced or not.

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