Introduction to Crime

Crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state. It does not have any simple and universally accepted definition in criminal law. It differs from society to society. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law.

In other words, it is an act harmful not only to an individual but also to a family, community, and the state. Murdering, theft, rape, abduction, and terrorism are some illustrations of crime that are to be prohibited worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offense is defined by the criminal law of each country according to the nature of society.

In the Muslim community, there is a provision of execution unlike ours. The state has the power to severely restrict one’s liberty for committing a crime.

In modern societies, there are procedures to which investigations and trials must adhere. If found guilty, an offender may be sentenced to a form of reparation such as a community sentence depending on the nature of their offense. It can undergo imprisonment, life imprisonment, or in some jurisdictions and eventually to execution if the offense is very high. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime.

Actions taken against Crime are:

• Breaches of crimes are not automatically punished by the state but can be enforced through civil procedures. When informal relationships and sanctions prove insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a government or a state may impose more formalized or stricter systems of social control.
• With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the state can compel populations to conform to codes and can opt to punish or attempt to reform those who do not conform.
• State agencies employ various mechanisms to regulate (encouraging or discouraging) certain behaviors in general.
• Governing or administering agencies may, for example, codify rules into laws, police citizens, and visitors to ensure that they comply with those laws with the aim of discouraging or preventing.

In addition, concerned authorities provide discouraging or preventing sanctions and collectively these constitute criminal justice remedies and throughout the world.

The sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationships between crime and society. He argues that crime is a social phenomenon. He believes that how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms.

Approaches:

• Normative definition sees it as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms or cultural standards.
• Structural Approach considers the complex realities and seeks to understand changing social-political, psychological and economic conditions that may affect changing definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law enforcement, and penal responses made by society.

Differences between Crime and Deviance

Crime	Deviance
It is the Legal term that refers to the violation of a law	Deviance is a violation of social norms.
It is the breaking of the formal norms	Deviance is the breaking of both formal and informal norms
It has an added characteristic in that a law has been passed against it, making it a crime or criminal offense.	It could be something like a minor as wearing the wrong kind of clothes to a party or, major as killing someone. Also, it is a behavior that is not seen as acceptable or normal.

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