A Criminal Mind
May 31, 2025
Types of Crimes
June 1, 2025
Crime: Definition
Part1
Popular media, newspapers and television news programmes often
focus on recurring fears of escalating levels of insecurity, violence,
knife crime, internet fraud, children out of control, new forms of
terrorism, sex offending, domestic violence and a growth in all manner
of so-called ‘anti-social behaviours’.
This is also coupled with growing concerns about police malpractice, corruption, racism, prison overcrowding and deteriorating conditions, lenient sentencing, lack of victim confidence in achieving a desired outcome, court delays and lack of resources.
Systems of justice are sometimes accused in the news media of being ‘at breaking point’ and simply ‘not working’, suggesting that the public has little faith in criminal justice processes.
Indeed, the ideas about how to maintain ‘law and order’ have been high on the agenda for all major political parties in the UK, particularly since the 1970s.
The equation is simple enough. Criminal behaviour is inescapable. The police should be given more powers of surveillance and arrest to stop criminals. The criminal courts should be given the power to hand down tougher punishments.
Only then will the public have their faith restored. But this assumed taken-for-granted relationship between crime, criminal law and criminal justice is not straightforward.
Part2
This chapter suggests a number of ways in which definitions, claims and evidence
about the nature and meaning of crime and processes of criminal
justice can be subjected to criminological inquiry.
In particular, two
fundamental sets of questions are explored:
What is a criminal offence? Which forms of behaviour are (or can be) considered criminal and which not? How does it come to be decided that a particular act of wrong-doing calls for a legal response and which acts can be otherwise dealt with or ignored?And how does the general public learn of the extent and seriousness of the ‘crime problem’?
What is crime control? Why are rules or laws there? Who created them? In whose interests? Are the agencies of criminal justice best placed to resolve social problems, disputes, harms and injuries, especially harms caused by states and corporations?
To ask such questions demands, to a certain extent, that you step back
and look at ‘crime’ from a more detached perspective. The issues that criminologists study can evoke highly charged and emotional responses.
One way of coming to understand why an action is regarded as criminal is by examining the processes by which laws are made and enforced. It requires that you critically consider how ‘crime’, ‘criminal justice’ and other concepts used in criminology are defined.
Defining crime
Part3
The most common and frequently applied definition of crime is that
which links it to criminal law. In other words, an act is only a crime
when it violates the prevailing legal code of the jurisdiction in which it
occurs.
Writing in the United States in the 1930s, philosophers Jerome
Michael and Mortimer J. Adler argued that the most precise and least
ambiguous definition of crime is: ‘behaviour which is prohibited by the
criminal code’ (Michael and Adler, 1933, p. 5).
Similarly, criminologist Katherine S. Williams re-emphasised the legal foundation of crime by arguing that: t is essential that one never forgets that no matter how immoral, reprehensible, damaging or dangerous an act is, it is not a crime unless it is made such by the authorities of the State – the legislature and, at least through interpretation, the judges. (Williams, 1994, p. 11)
Again, this appears uncontroversial, but two important consequences
flow from such formulations.
There would be no crime without criminal law (Sutherland, 1940, 1945). No behaviour can be considered criminal unless a formal rule exists to prohibit it.
Part4
Thus Michael and Adler can logically contend that: ‘if crime is merely an instance of conduct which is proscribed by the criminal code, it follows that criminal law is the formal cause of crime’ (Michael and Adler, 1933, p. 5).
No behaviour or individual can be considered criminal until
formally decided upon by the criminal justice system. Although a
dangerous act may have happened and a complaint may have been
lodged with the police, an action does not become legally
designated or defined as a crime until it is processed through the
criminal justice system.
In a similar vein, it has been widely maintained that a number of
conditions must be met before an act can be legally defined as a crime.
The act must be legally prohibited at the time it is committed.
The perpetrator must have criminal intent (often referred to by
those in the legal profession by the Latin phrase mens rea).
The perpetrator must have acted voluntarily (often referred to by
the Latin phrase actus rea).
There must be some legally prescribed punishment for committal
of the act.
Criminal law and court procedures claim to respond to crime, yet
crime is defined, and therefore created, by criminal law itself.
Changing times, changing laws
Part5
Troublesome behaviours and some forms of ‘inappropriate conduct’,
such as public drunkenness or causing a disturbance seem to have been
treated as ‘crimes’ by police (whether or not they are recognised in
law) for a long time.
This means that the concept is routinely applied in condemnations of the ‘unwanted’ and the ‘undesirable’. Think, for example, of some forms of so-called ‘anti-social behaviour’. Strictly speaking, in the United Kingdom, anti-social behaviour is not a criminal offence.
However, if a person is given an anti-social behaviour order and then breaches it, they can later be convicted through criminal proceedings.
However, criminal laws are never static or permanent features of any society. For example, the consumption of alcohol in the United States was deemed criminal in the days of Prohibition between 1920 and 1933.
Now it is considered a legal and respectable social activity in US society. Marijuana possession, long condemned as a scourge in the lives of young people, has been progressively decriminalised in manycountries, including Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, Chile and numerous US states since the 1980s.
Moreover, certain customary practices in England and Wales, such as poaching game, only became illegal through the convergence of social class and power interests in the eighteenth century.
(The concept of social class is not easily defined, but for now it is perhaps useful to define it as a means of categorising people on the basis of social, economic, cultural, political, educational or occupational status.)
From early on, social divisions along the lines of class played a role in defining the law. But class is not the only aspect of power that affects what behaviour is prohibited: gender and other dimensions can also play a role. This reflects that, historically, lawmakers have been overwhelmingly male.
Domestic violence, far from being viewed as criminal (or even deviant), was considered quite legitimate through much of Western history. It was not until 1991 that England and Wales was brought into line with France.
Part6
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland and most US and Australian states by the overturning of a 255-year-old ruling that had given husbands immunity from marital rape.
So, as you can see, changes in law are not always previously prohibited behaviours becoming acceptable and thus legalised, as in the example of marijuana use. The process can work the other way too, with behaviour that was previously deemed acceptable being made illegal.
What counts legally as crime varies from one jurisdiction to another,
even in similar historical periods. An obvious example is that, while in
England and Wales a person can be considered criminally responsible
for their actions at ten years old, in France the age of criminal responsibility is 13 years old; in Germany 14 years old; and in Portugal 16 years old. Homosexuality is punishable by death in some countries and openly embraced in many others.
Assisted suicide is illegal in some countries and open practice in others. The death penalty is legal in some countries but not in others. In all these examples, crime appears neither fixed, nor the same for all societies and for all times. Rather, it is a historically and socially specific concept (Durkheim, 1895; Hulsman, 1986).
An understanding of crime that relies solely on notions of criminal law
violation reveals that crime is not that which a society collectively
agrees is harmful, but only that which the state defines as prohibited.
This opens up questions around who has chosen which activities to
prohibit and why.
Moreover, definitions of crime that rely only on criminal law also underplay the variable ways in which it is enforced(Sutherland, 1940). Are theft, graffiti and ‘criminal damage’ more serious than violations of health and safety codes in the work place?
Both may be dealt with by criminal law, but the tendency to view the
former as ‘real crime’ and the latter as ‘regulatory offences’ may lead
people to exclude these latter behaviours from what they tend to think
of as crime.
Divorcing the criminal process from its social context masks the issue of who makes the law. In turn, this may have important consequences for what kinds of behaviour are regarded as truly criminal.
Constructing crime
Part7
As you have seen, defining crime with reference to actions that violate
criminal law is limited. Society ‘creates’ crime because it (or at least
those in positions of authority) makes the rules, the infraction of
which constitutes crime (Christie, 2004).
Likewise, what constitutes ‘criminal behaviour’ can be equally difficult to determine. The core concern, then, is to explore the complex processes by which agencies of social control (such as the police, courts, and prisons) define certain
people as criminal.
Determining ‘what crime is’, ‘who the criminal is’ and ‘what criminal justice is’ are questions that are open to debate and their answers are always changing.
How are ‘criminals’ made?
Criminalisation is not only dependent on how certain acts are labelled
and on who has the power to label, but is directly related to social
exclusion and social inequality (Scraton and Chadwick, 1991). What
this means is that criminal law is ‘made’ by people with the authority
and the means to criminalise the behaviour of others. The argument
that law creation and enforcement are selective and partial is
underlined by criminologist Stanley Cohen’s insistence that: ‘damage,
victimisation, exploitation, theft and destruction when carried out by
the powerful are not only not punished, but are not called “crime”’
(Cohen, 1973, p. 624). Nineteenth-century US entrepreneur Daniel
Drew poetically stated that the ‘law is like a cobweb. It’s made for flies
and the smaller kind of insects but lets the big bumblebees break
through’ (Drew, cited in Sutherland, 1940, pp. 8–9). In such analysis,
the concept of crime is viewed not as a neutral, ‘value free’ concept,
but rather as a political and state-constructed one: it has no ‘objective’
reality. For example, until the early 1990s, activities of the African
National Congress (ANC) – the black liberation political movement in
South Africa – were defined as criminal. Their involvement with
helping to challenge the policy of apartheid (the segregation of people
on the basis of their race) and the social and political changes that also
helped to bring about the end of this policy, meant that the ANC
began to be viewed differently in South African society. The ANC have
been the party of government since the end of apartheid to 2018, thus
demonstrating the role power and social-change movements can play in
defining what is and is not ‘criminal’ When considering the role politics and social inequality play in shaping
what is defined as crime, it is helpful to consider the work of political
theorist Karl Marx. In Section 1, the concept of social class was
introduced and defined as ‘a means of categorising people on the basis
of social, economic, cultural, political or educational status’. The
concept can also be thought about as relating to property ownership,
financial means and social status. For example, Marx differentiated
between the ruling classes (essentially, those with money, property and/
or power, including political power) and the working classes (those
who must work for a living, or ‘sell their labour’, probably do not own
property and are, relatively, less powerful) (Marx and Engels, 1932).
Sociologist and criminologist William Chambliss (1975) developed a
Marxist theory of crime and criminal law, which argued that acts are
defined as criminal only when it is in the interests of the ruling class to
define them as such. An action only becomes prohibited by criminal
law when those who hold power in society decide that it should be
illegal. Chambliss argued that it is important to question whether those
who make the laws have a vested interest in them. That is, if some
behaviours are prohibited in order to maintain political or social
control and to counter any perceived threat to ruling-class authority.
Chambliss’ arguments may appear extreme, and it might be argued that
his analysis of the law is too broad and not sufficiently nuanced.
However, his arguments underscore the importance of the concept of power. Thinking about who has the power to make the law is part of a
deeper understanding of how criminals are ‘made’.
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Crime as an ideological concept
Part9
One example of laws that can be seen as maintaining social divisions
and the power of the ruling class are public order offences. These
include such activities as rioting and disorderly conduct. Although it
can be argued that these activities can sometimes result in dangerous
or damaging outcomes, they can sometimes also to be a sign of civil
unrest or protest against the way society is structured. In addition,
there are also other public order offences, such as doing graffiti, public
drunkenness and begging, that might be seen as more subtly aimed at
maintaining existing social and political power structures.
As you saw in Chapter 1, graffiti is a sort of crime that can be thought
about in various ways. That is, it may be a crime (graffiti is legally
defined as criminal damage), but it is also always something else, such
as art, political protest, an expression of free speech and so on
(Brighenti, 2010). In a similar way, consider the ‘problems’ of public
drunkenness or begging. On the one hand, you could argue that these
are simply individual problems, and that the person who is drunk or is
begging must simply find the resources to sort them out themselves.
On the other hand, these activities could be viewed as symptoms of
social ‘illness’ (sometimes also referred to in criminology as ‘social
pathology’). That is, you could argue that something about the way
society is organised is working against these people in some way, to the
point that they are not able to manage so well and need help. This
latter suggestion, then, can be seen as a critique of the social,economic and political structure of a society. It calls into question the
organisation of society, potentially suggesting that things ought to be
organised differently so that social resources are more equally
distributed (Taylor et al., 1973).
Such analyses argue that defining a particular behaviour as crime
transforms how that behaviour is understood. It becomes ‘human
conduct that is created by authorised agents in a politically organised
society’ and used to describe ‘behaviours that conflict with the interests
of the segments of the society that have the power to shape public
policy’ (Quinney, 1970, pp. 15–16). The act of defining a crime is, in
part, a political act. That is, the political neutrality of criminal law is a
myth. Dutch criminologist Willem de Haan has labelled crime an
‘ideological concept’. For those writers influenced by Marx, ‘ideological
concepts’ and the term ‘ideology’ can be thought about as ideas that,
whether intentionally or ‘unintentionally, distort reality in a way that
justifies the prevailing distribution of power and wealth, hides society’s
injustices, and thus secures uncritical allegiance to the existing social
order’ (Reiman and Leighton, 2010, p. 191). While governments from
anywhere on the political spectrum can make policy and laws on the
basis of ideology, criminal law and ‘how to define and respond to
crime’ tend to be issues that most political parties share a consensus
about. As an ideological concept, then, de Haan argued that crime
‘justifies inequality and serves to distract public attention from more
serious problems and injustices’ (de Haan, 1991, p. 207).In this context, it is worth reflecting on how many incidents (such as
petty theft, shoplifting, recreational drug use, vandalism, brawls, so-
called ‘anti-social behaviour’) that are commonly accepted as criminal
would not seem to score particularly high on a scale of serious harm.
And yet it is these ‘minor’ events that often take up much of the time
and preoccupation of law-enforcement agencies and the criminal justice
system (Hulsman, 1986). Conversely, the risk of suffering the crimes
defined by the state as ‘serious’, such as murder (often referred to as
intentional homicide) and armed robbery, are negligible compared to
such everyday risks as workplace injury and avoidable disease (Tifft,
1994/5). Just as the risk of intentional homicide is far less than that of
terminal disease or of being struck by lightning, so people are more
likely to suffer accidental injury than theft (Tombs and Whyte, 2015).
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Part11
When harms are not defined as
crimes
The study of criminology involves questioning whether criminal law is
working as an effective protection against the events and activities that
are most harmful to individual and human flourishing.
Since the 1940s, criminologists have been considering whether a
serious harm should be considered ‘criminal’ – that is, viewed with the
same level of seriousness as those actions defined as crime – when it is
not actually included as a criminal offence in the existing legal code
(Sutherland, 1940, 1945). Before this time, it was largely taken for
granted in academic debates that a crime had to breach criminal law,
for it was assumed that criminal law would identify and categorise the
most serious harms in society. For sociologist Edwin Sutherland
(1940, 1945), however, the difference between harms defined as
‘criminal harms’ and then processed and enforced through criminal law
and other harms dealt with through administrative law and other forms
of regulation, was not so clear cut. Sutherland (1945) observed that the
difference between those actions deemed as criminal harms and those
not categorised in this way in the legal code was not necessarily related
to the seriousness and harmfulness of the action or event. That is,
there are serious harms in society that should, by virtue of their
seriousness, be regulated by criminal law, but simply are not.
3.1 Corporate harms: lethal, but legal
A corporation is a business organisation that is registered separately
from its owners. Corporations, as businesses, tend to be focused on
financial balance sheets: the only costs they consider important when
making decisions are economic costs (Tombs and Whyte, 2015). As a
consequence, any potential social and environmental costs (or harms)
that result from the operation of the corporation do not tend to be
considered relevant to the owners of the corporation. Economic logic
dictates that if a product sells well and makes a good profit then it
should continue to be made and promoted irrespective of other
considerations. One way of getting ahead in the market is to cut
corners in the manufacture of products, which can mean violating
basic health and safety regulations and procedures for workers or using
inferior materials when making consumer goods. Due to thisorientation towards profit over all other considerations, the creation of
harm can be an inevitable, everyday and routine practice of the
corporation (Tombs, 2015; Tombs and Whyte, 2015).
Negligence and failure to undertake rigorous testing of products or
working practices because of time constraints or associated financial
costs with rigorous safeguards can also generate enormous harms
(Tombs and Whyte, 2015). Misrepresentation and the rushing of
medical products into the market place are fuelled by the interests of
making a profit. Drugs prescribed by doctors can lead to adverse
reactions from patients and it is estimated that there are ‘hundreds of
thousands of injuries and deaths’ (Freudenberg, 2016, p. 54) as a result
of poorly prescribed or tested drugs. For example, in 2004 the anti-
arthritis drug Vioxx was withdrawn from public consumption in the
United States after evidence was released that showed that it increased
the users’ likelihood of having a stroke or heart attack by 50 per cent
(Knox, 2004). Similar problems plagued the GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes
drug Avandia, which was also withdrawn after studies found that it
‘increased risk of heart attack by 43 per cent and cardiac related death
by 64 per cent’ (Freudenberg, 2016, p. 55). Alongside this, the
pharmaceutical industry often hold patients and health services to
ransom by charging high prices for drugs, or preventing the release of
cheaper drugs that would be just as effective as their more expensive
alternatives.
Inappropriate safeguards and cutting corners to maximise profits in the
production of food can also lead to widespread social harms and
health scares. Food poisoning – whether in restaurants with poor
cooking practices or inexperienced, undertrained and under-pressure
staff, or unhealthy animal husbandry that introduces new diseases
through the food chain – can be profoundly harmful if not deadly. For
public health practitioner Nicholas Freudenberg, the food, alcohol and
pharmaceutical industry all:
… use modern science and technology to seek profits in ways
that harm health. They design and aggressively promote products
without adequately testing their impact on health. They make false
or misleading claims about the health benefits of their products
and minimise the known harms or seek to obfuscate the science that demonstrates this harm. They price unhealthy products
cheaply to maximise their market penetration, but charge high
prices that put healthy products out of reach of many who need
them.
(2016, p. 63)
Another harm caused by corporations is air pollution (Tombs and
Whyte, 2015). Airborne pollutants are linked to around 40,000
premature deaths in the UK each year (Harvey, 2018). The vast
majority of air pollutants (about 70 per cent) are created through the
manufacturing practices of corporate industries (Tombs and
Whyte, 2015), but ‘fine particulate’ pollution also arises from cars and
other motor vehicles. Indeed, in 2010, more people died as a result of
air pollution than were killed in motor vehicle crashes (Yim and
Barrett, 2012).
These lethal but legal harms of leading corporations have very serious
human consequences. It is evident that the idea of what a crime is, and
what is criminal, can become quite murky when wider harms and
wrong-doing are also considered. Perhaps it is now becoming clearer
why considering the roles power and the state play are central to
thinking about ‘what is crime’. They are also central to critically
thinking about whether criminal law really does serve the interests of
everyone in society equally
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Part13
The Grenfell Tower fire
On 14 June 2017, a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower
block in North Kensington, West London and burned for over 60
hours. The 2018 official number of recorded deaths of the tower-block
residents was 72 (Inquest, 2018). It started after a Hotpoint fridge-
freezer caught fire in one of the 127 flats in the building (BBC, 2017b)Grenfell Tower underwent a £10 million refurbishment in 2014–16,
which included extensive renovations of the bottom four floors of the
building, a new heating system and major work on its exterior. The
exterior modernisation largely entailed the fitting of rain-screen
cladding and insulation. It is believed that around eight tonnes of
cladding panels and 18 tonnes of insulation foam were attached to the
tower during refurbishments (Reed and Clare, 2017). Before its
refurbishment, Grenfell was constructed of ‘virtually incombustible
concrete’ (Bowcott, 2018).
When it caught fire, it is estimated that the tower would have released
‘14 times more heat than a key government test allows’ (Reed and
Clare, 2017). The cladding’s plastic core would have burned ‘as quickly
as petrol’ (Reed and Clare, 2017), and the fire ‘rose 19 storeys through
the cladding in just 12 minutes’ (Booth, 2018). For just an extra £5000
(safer cladding was just £2 per square metre more expensive that the
sheets used), much more fire-resistant materials could have been fitted
(Knapton, 2017). Grenfell Tower residents had raised concerns around
the risk of fire at the tower for a number of years, but their concerns
had not been addressed (BBC, 2017a).
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How did so many die in the Grenfell Tower fire?
The victims of Grenfell Tower were let down on eight occasions.
A change in the law: Building regulations in London were relaxed
in 1986, removing the stipulation that all external walls must have
at least one hour of fire resistance to prevent flames from
spreading between flats or entering inside.
Dangerous cladding: The government were warned in 2014 by
fire-safety expert Arnold Turling that the gaps between the panels
in the kind of cladding that was used to refurbish Grenfell Tower
could become a ‘wind tunnel’, fanning the flames, and ‘act as its
own chimney’, allowing the fire to spread to upper levels.
No government review: Following the deaths of six people at a
similar housing block fire at Lakanal House in south London in
2009, the coroner at the inquests called for changes in regulations.
There were also calls for a comprehensive inquiry into the deaths.
A single staircase: The only means of escape was from a single
staircase. This also hindered firefighters. There was no legal
requirement for a second staircase.
Missing sprinklers: There was no central sprinkler system at
Grenfell, which members of the Fire Protection Association said
would have ‘undoubtedly’ saved lives. Currently, sprinklers only
need to be fitted up to 30 metres. However, in tall buildings, such
as Grenfell Tower, it is impossible for fire hoses to reach the upper
heights, leaving the top floors without any protection.
Missing fire doors: A number of doors on the 127 flats were not
fire-proofed. This is in breach of existing regulations.
Inspections: The last time that Grenfell Tower was subject to a full
Fire Risk Assessment was December 2015, before the changes of
the refurbishments had been completed. Risk assessments should
take place at least every 12 months.
Firebreaks: Under 1991 building regulations, all cladded buildings
should have been controlled by ‘firebreaks’ – gaps in the cladding
to prevent the continual burning of material – but these were
absent from Grenfell Tower.
(Adapted from Knapton and Dixon, 2017
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This chapter has looked at the nature and meaning of crime and
processes of criminal justice, and how these can be subjected to
criminological inquiry. You have investigated the definition of crime
and how it relates to criminal law. You have also considered the ways
in which this definition is linked to power relations and social class.
The chapter also began to introduce considerations of ‘harm’
(specifically corporate harm), calling into question whether criminal law
and criminal justice really are set up to protect the whole of society
equally.
You have explored why it is important to critically question both what
is included and excluded in the legal definition of crime. What the state
defines as a crime does not necessarily reflect the most serious or
harmful events, behaviours and actions in society but rather, can often
reflect the interests of power, privilege and status. Definitions of crime
are not universal and unchanging but rather alter over time, place and
with regards to the people involved. Definitions of crime change as
ideas about what is right and wrong in a given society change. It is
essential that when thinking about what crime is that you locate your
discussion within social, economic and political contexts. This is what
it means to use your ‘criminological imagination’.
Defining an act as a crime allows this behaviour to be dealt with by
the criminal justice process. Definitions are important, then, not just in
terms of how people understand something and attribute meaning, but
also with regard to what people think is an appropriate and justified
reaction
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