If we were to ask 100 people randomly to describe a criminal, most like they will describe the most recent experience they had of a crime or criminal. Most recent experiences could be what they read on the news on the way to work, in another word what they read or watched on the most recent media exposure they had, or it could also be a personal criminal experience they had. Some people live in neighborhoods that are dangerous so they have more experience with gangs, while others might have been robbed recently, either pickpockets or online fraud, etc. Overall, most people will probably describe a criminal with the image or idea they got from their experience, that means, an entirely subjective idea of what a criminal is. Furthermore, we must agree in that the media today is not exactly a perfect way in which the truth is portrayed, rather the best way in which a piece of information can be manipulated so that it can be more viral and get more attention. Criminal topics would probably about, gangster’s crimes such as robbery, drug dealers, prostitution, selling illegal items. Parents probably would be more drawn towards minor offender’s criminals, while businesspeople would be more concern with political crimes which can affect taxpayers. However, there are many other topics that could arise, such as ethical crimes: animal rights, women’s rights, racial issues, war crimes, etc. There is an arrow of topics that fall into people’s ideas of crimes today. Any of those topics could be considered as part of the description of a crime of a random person on the street. We live in a society that is very conscious about rights and offences, and everything falls into a crime, including pet hygiene on public places, or not recycling.
People grow up knowing what crime is because from an early age we develop social constructions for a different type of criminals from robbers to those who cannot live according to the social rules of the world. Dorling et.al (2008), explain it in this way: "crime has no ontological reality; it is a 'myth' of everyday life”. What he says it that people do an action and only once it is done they are considered as crimes, and people are considered criminals; which means that they must be constructed prior existing. For this reason, there are many actions may be regarded as crimes and people who commit them criminals. Criminals are then immediately considered as people who should be punished because crimes are directly related to an action that harms someone or something. For that reason, criminology is divided between harm to people or damage to property (Dorling, et al., 2008). In this way, society understands or defines crime as those actions that harm people or property, including antisocial behaviors that have a harmful effect, and due to the harmful consequences, a law needs to be created to regulate them and punish the criminal accordingly. However, until recent years, crime was related to petty crimes such as robberies, or selling illegal items. Only recently more serious crimes began to be highlighted such as corporate crime and domestic violence (Dorling, et al., 2008).
The public which conforms our society has a voice in how to define a crime. We mentioned that crimes are actions that disturb or harm social order whether it is a person or property. From this perspective, we can say that it does not respect a right of either an individual or a person’s property. Freedom is violated in one way or another. People have always fought for freedom. Today we have legislations to protect people from discrimination; we have women’s rights, children rights, animal rights, etc. But social groups had to fight to earn these rights. It can be said that rights were achieved once a legislation was in place to protect them (Jackson & Bradford, 2009). Once any of these rights is being violated, that is a crime. But as we said at the beginning, crime is a myth; it is not a crime until it has been constructed. Today abandoning a dog on the streets is a crime in some places of the world, thanks to many people who fought to get animal rights.
One of the most famous examples is the well-known mercy killing or euthanasia. While this procedure was considered a crime for being an action that terminated a life, thus it was considered murder. Today, people lobbied for that action to become a right, a right of some sort (it is not the purpose of this paper), and it is not a crime anymore in some places. However, the opposite also applies such as in the case of animal rights. As society changes, which is very much affected by the media, politicians, and other corporations, different rights are claimed or disregarded, and the crime myth created. Ultimately, the definition of crime is decided by the society claiming either by lobbying, marching, striking, or voting democratically to get a right they want or do not want. Once the bill is passed, breaking that legislation becomes a crime.
A particular case of a crime where we can be sure that it has been a crime is, for example, an armed robbery, and murder that has been captured on CCTV camera. We can be confident that this is an accurate statement because we have clear evidence of it. Not because it is on the news, not because people say it is a crime, but because there is evidence that it is true. Moreover, the reason why we can say this is true is that there is a harm to an individual (death) and violation of property. Both are wrong behaviors. Even though the property can be restored, the life of the person cannot be restored. As we said before, people have the right to demand from the government to be protected from harmful actions. Crimes are actions that do not follow rules of common living in the Social World.
There are other examples that can be considered as crimes; however, they are myths or misconceptions. There are legislations that exist to provide a structure to help society so that people can live better between each other. We can use as an example a legislation in some parts of the world that say that people should pick up the waste from their pets when they are taken out for a walk. A similar example is a person who troughs away the wrong type of trash in the wrong type of bin for recycling. Those kinds of rules are there to help people live better with each other, for agreement and respect, as well as to help all people to take care of the place where they live, either locally or the whole Planet. We can say that those individuals who do not respect such rules or legislations are behaving antisocially, or against social rules, and as such these are criminals committing crimes. There are many groups in our society that complain and march on the streets to claim for rights for the planet, or for the future generations, and so they demand new rules to achieve these. All actions that are against this cause are seen as criminal. A similar example is the testing with animals. For many years, we could have medicines thanks to experiments that have been done on animals and which caused them pain. Today that would be seen as a crime. But in our example, we must say that it is a social myth. Some legislations exist to help people get along better; some others are there to protect from harm either property or personal harm. But the examples we provided do not enter in either case.
People who do not clean after their dog, are indeed people who do not respect social rules, but that does not make the action a criminal act nor a criminal. But there are too many people who demand legislations, and they get to achieve what they want in most cases, but just because they are many people seeking that legislation does not make it a crime when it is broken. There is no harm done to a person; there is no harm done to property. It could be argued that it is a public place, it belongs to everyone, and then there is damage to a public property because the place is dirty. In any case, crime does not have an entity, and it becomes a myth difficult to get rid of because we already have it in our society, we have definitions which tie us to call crimes everything that is deviant to social rules and legislations. And we then fall into cases such as the example given, that causes no objective and severe damage, but it according to the social standards in which we live in, it falls into what could be considered a crime. However, it is simply a myth.
References
Dorling, D., Gordon, D., Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Pemberton, S. & Tombs, S. (2008). Criminal obsessions: Why harm matters more than crime. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 2nd Ed. Retrieved from http://www.dannydorling.org/wp-content/files/dannydorling_publication_id1047.pdf
Jackson, J. & Bradford, B. (2009).Crime, Policing and Social Order: On the Expressive Nature of Public Confidence in Policing. British Journal of Sociology. Pages 493-521.
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