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.

More on [ Crime ]

BBC News | UK | World Edition

Home repossessions rise by 41%
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:28:08 -0000
The number of properties repossessed by mortgage lenders in the UK rose by 41% in the first half of 2008, to 18,900.
Knife killer, 16, jailed for life
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:32:16 -0000
A 16-year-old is given a life sentence for stabbing to death a schoolboy he felt had given him a "dirty look".
Apology over prince cancer story
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:57:22 -0000
A newspaper issues an unreserved apology over a story that Prince Philip had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
RBS hit by £691m half-year loss
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:11:15 -0000
Royal Bank of Scotland posts a six-month pre-tax loss of £691m, the second-biggest loss in UK banking history.
CCTV setback in rail attack hunt
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:15:25 -0000
Police say CCTV images of a woman being pushed onto a rail track at a station in Kent do not show her attackers.
UK scouts hurt in Canada accident
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:29:38 -0000
A tour bus carrying a British Scouts group on a tour of Canada is involved in a road crash in Eastern Ontario.

The Economist: Britain

Energy dilemma: Cheap or green?
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
When poverty and greenery collideTHE Camp for Climate Action--an annual gathering of anarchists and environmentalists--is fast becoming a summer fixture. Having protested outside Drax (a big coal-fired power plant) in 2006 and Heathrow airport in 2007, this year they are pitching tents in Kingsnorth, an industrial bit of Kent that is the proposed site of what would be the first new coal power station to be built in Britain for two decades. The protesters point out that coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel and argue that, given official pledges to cut carbon emissions, building new plants using it would be "stupid". Their ambition is to shut down the existing Kingsnorth station, which is also coal-fired, for a day. There have already been several arrests and clashes with the police (whom protesters accuse of harassment); more seem likely on August 9th, their officially designated "day of mass action". ...
Catholics and Anglicans: Anyone for Schadenfreude?
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
What Roman Catholics fear from an Anglican splitTHE Archbishop of Canterbury was not the only church leader to be thankful that the Lambeth conference ended with the Anglican Communion still in one piece. An almost audible sigh of relief could be heard from the Vatican."The last thing the pope would wish to do is support any kind of division," said Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit professor of Liturgy at the Gregorian University in Rome. That may seem odd. If the Church of England splits, Catholicism stands to gain new adherents. Traditionally minded Anglican priests and bishops--and, in some cases, most of their flocks--can be expected to defect to Rome. ...
Northern Rock: Of banks and men
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
The mortgage lender's cash call is an ominous sign for all British banksSTUDENTS of politics (and more than a few politicians) know only too well the old dictum about lies that are repeated often enough becoming truth. Those foolish enough to believe it should take a look at the sorry tale of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender that failed last September when it ran out of cash. For almost a year afterwards Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, repeated, mantra-like, that this was a sound bank brought low by events from afar, and that taxpayers would get back every one of the billions of pounds they lent it. On August 5th Mr Darling was mugged by reality when Northern Rock came to him, cap in hand, again. This time the bank wanted help in shoring up its balance-sheet, which is crumbling thanks to a mortgage book that looks worse by the day. The government, which is still owed some GBP21 billion ($41 billion) by the hapless bank, has agreed to convert as much as GBP3 billion of the debt (as well as some GBP400m in preference shares) into ordinary shares. This urgent need for capital should make those who still think taxpayers will get all their money back think twice. So should those who dare to hope that Britain's banks have seen the worst of the credit crisis. ...
Crossing the Thames: Flying cars
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
Trouble over bridging watersYOU would not expect Boris Johnson, London's newly elected Conservative mayor, to be popular in Newham, a poor east London borough and Labour stronghold that has become a byword for deprivation and poverty. Yet the shock-haired Mr Johnson will have won at least a few grudging admirers with his opposition to the Thames Gateway Bridge, a GBP455m ($890m), six-lane road bridge across the Thames that was championed by Ken Livingstone, his predecessor.East London has traditionally been poorly served by transport infrastructure. The prospect of hosting the Olympic games in 2012 (see article), and a wider plan to build tens of thousands of new homes on semi-derelict land around them, has finally focused minds on the problem. The bridge nearest the site--Tower Bridge--is several hundred metres upstream and unsuited to the new traffic that redevelopment will bring. Yet Mr Livingstone's big new bridge was unpopular with some residents, who complained that it would send more traffic thundering through their borough. Green groups, too, fretted that extra traffic would mean extra greenhouse gases. ...
Pensions accounting: Choose a number
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
Silly accounting may be obscuring a black hole in pension fundsUNITED UTILITIES and Scottish and Southern Energy are similar in many respects. Both are energy utilities that supply electricity and gas. Both employ thousands and run huge pension funds. Yet when calculating the cost of those pensions, the similarities end. The two companies have chosen to use very different assumptions--and these choices have a big impact on the pension surplus or deficit on their balance-sheets. When discounting their eventual obligations (figuring out the cost today of paying pensions years in the future), United Utilities has used a rate of 6%, Scottish and Southern one of 6.9%. The difference may not seem much, but Lane Clark & Peacock, a firm of actuaries, reckons that Scottish and Southern's pension liabilities come out about GBP350m lower than if it had used United's rate--a material difference for a fund that in 2007 was GBP92m in the red. ...
The Anglican Communion: The high price of togetherness
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
The bishops got on fine for a while--but was it only a holiday romance? BY ITS own unusual lights, the Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops was a great success. Its self-imposed task was to avoid any nasty rows between 650 purple-clad gentlemen (and a few purple-clad ladies) who hold widely diverging views on issues which they see as matters of principle, not detail. And a "surprising level of sheer willingness to stay together" was finally reported, on August 3rd, by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury--after nearly three weeks of well-choreographed confraternity in which participants took no votes and made no firm decisions. (Such a luxury would hardly be possible for a body like, say, the International Telecommunication Union, where success is judged by earthly yardsticks.) Still, the Anglican leader's own standing as a mediator, doing his best to hold together the almost irreconcilable, rose as a result of the gathering. And in a very Anglican way, the thorny issues facing the church were artfully concealed by euphemism and arcane procedures that will unfold over several years. Minds were distracted from trickier subjects by a hyper-inclusive march against poverty. ...

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