Social Construction of Crime
Definition
The view that what counts as criminal is not fixed by nature but produced through social, political and historical processes, so the same act can be legal in one era or place and criminal in another.
Related terms
- Criminalisation
- The formal process by which a legislature converts a previously lawful or merely deviant act into a criminal offence, typically by enacting...
- Legalistic Definition of Crime
- Sutherland's definition: crime is behaviour prohibited by the state as injurious to the state, punishable by law. It ties the concept of...
- Mala in Se
- An act treated as inherently wrong in itself, such as murder or rape, independent of whether a statute names it. The wrongness...
- Mala Prohibita
- An act that is wrong only because a statute prohibits it, such as jaywalking or unlicensed fishing. Remove the statute and the...
- Moral Panic
- A period of intense, media-driven public anxiety about a group or behaviour perceived as an exceptional threat to social order. Coined by...