There is no real answer to the question, what is crime? There are popular ideas about crime: crime is bad behavior, antisocial behavior, blameworthy acts, and the like. But in a very basic sense, crime is a legal concept: what makes some conduct criminal, and other conduct not, is the fact that some, but not others, are "against the law."
All sorts of nasty acts and evil deeds are not against the law, and thus not crimes. These include most of the daily events that anger or irritate us, even those we might consider totally outrageous. Ordinary lying is not a crime; cheating on a wife or husband is not a crime; charging a huge markup at a restaurant or store is not, in general, a crime; psychological abuse is (mostly) not a crime. [As government grows and acquires more influence in our daily lives, more and more types of bad behavior become crimes. If the trend continues, you could be arrested for a dirty look.]
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, 1993
All sorts of nasty acts and evil deeds are not against the law, and thus not crimes. These include most of the daily events that anger or irritate us, even those we might consider totally outrageous. Ordinary lying is not a crime; cheating on a wife or husband is not a crime; charging a huge markup at a restaurant or store is not, in general, a crime; psychological abuse is (mostly) not a crime. [As government grows and acquires more influence in our daily lives, more and more types of bad behavior become crimes. If the trend continues, you could be arrested for a dirty look.]
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, 1993
No comments:
Post a Comment