Week 2: What is crime?

This week we looked at ideas about crime, and the way that our ideas have changed over the years.

Crime in popular culture is a good place to start. Right from the earliest days of crime fiction, people have been telling stories about horrible and unusual crimes; about criminal masterminds who commit whole strings of crimes and outwit the police; and about the dogged, sometimes tedious reality of police work.

It's not a coincidence that these stories started becoming popular at a time - the middle of the 19th century - when British society was changing rapidly: with the expansion of the cities, life seemed to be getting more complex, harder to understand and more risky. Crime fiction enabled the Victorians to indulge in a sense that society was out of control and made no sense, safe in the knowledge that the detective would come along and set things right by the end of the story.

Perhaps that's still what we want from crime fiction - what do you think?

What has changed, fairly dramatically, is the kind of crime that gets written about - from the forged wills and blackmailers of the original Sherlock Holmes stories to the serial killers and paedophiles of Luther. This change can be related to the question of why we call some things crimes and not others. As you'll remember, we looked at three main perspectives on "what makes a crime a crime":

1. Legal: a crime is a crime if it's against the law and people are put on trial for doing it
2. Moral: a crime is a crime if it's morally repugnant, even if it's not against the law
3. Radical: social injustices should be criminalised, and crimes committed by victims of social injustice should be excused

The 'legal' perspective seems very straightforward, but ends up with some very counter-intuitive conclusions: for example, breaking the speed limit and getting points for it would be a crime, but getting beaten up by your partner would only be a crime if you went to the police and your partner ended up being taken to court. The 'moral' perspective is much more in line with our normal ways of thinking. The 'radical' perspective is distinct from the other two, as it's critical of the criminal justice system itself.

All these perspectives on crime are valid: if you lean towards the legal view you'll take an interest in the details of how crimes are defined; if you sympathise with the radical view you'll be interested in 'crimes' which aren't necessarily against the law, e.g. white-collar crime. The moral perspective explains the huge differences in crime fiction over the years. It also tells us a lot about the way the law changes over time: new laws are passed to criminalise actions that society has started to worry about, while laws against behaviours that we no longer worry about fall into disuse.

Can you think of any examples?