Foresic psychology

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Definition of crime

Crime is behaviour that is classed wrong by the law. However, there are 2 factors that are problematic when defining the word crime. Culture is one of them, this is because laws vary between cultures. For example in the UK it is illegal from a man to have more than one wife but in Zambia it is legal. This demonstrates that the definition of crime is merely a social construct (agreement among members of society), there isn't one universal definition of crime as it varies between cultures. Context is also problematic when it comes to defining crime because depending on the period of time a behaviour was carried out it could be classed as criminal or non criminal. This is an example of era dependency. For example, being homosexual in the UK was illegal up until 1969. Moreover, being homosexual is illegal in Saudi Arabia. So when defining crime it depends on the time which it was committed and where it was committed. In other words it has to be in the correct context for it to be classed as a crime.

A strength of this explanation into definitions of crime is that some behaviours are universally accepted as crimes. For example, murder and rape are classed as crimes in the majority of cultures. This allows us to compare trends between cultures as the same definition of crime is used in different cultures. However a weakness is that we cannot compare sentencing, this is demonstrated in France as crimes of passion are let off with more lenient sentences that there would be in other cultures. This is a weakness because we cannot compare sentencing between cultures.