Hi,

That’s a very interesting question!

There are many different definitions of the word ‘Crime’, as there are also many different definitions for many different kinds of crime.

The word crime is derived from the Latin word ‘Crimen’ which means charge, accuse, guilt, and the Greek word ‘κρινω’ which means to ‘Judge’.

A normative definition views crime as deviant behaviour that violates prevailing norms, specifically, cultural standards prescribing 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 the general 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 so many ways in which behaviour can be controlled without having to resort to the criminal justice system. Indeed, in those cases where there is no clear consensus on the given norm, the use of 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.

Laws that define crimes which violate social norms are set by legislatures, and are called mala prohibita. These laws vary from time to time and place to place, such as gambling laws. Other crimes, called mala in se, are nearly universally outlawed, such as murder, theft and rape.