crime

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n.

1. An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
2. Unlawful activity: statistics relating to violent crime.
3. A serious offense, especially one in violation of morality.
4. An unjust, senseless, or disgraceful act or condition: It's a crime to squander our country's natural resources.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin crīmen.]

A wrong that the government has determined is injurious to the public and that may therefore be prosecuted in a criminal proceeding. Crimes include felonies and Misdemeanors.

noun

1. A serious breaking of the public law: illegality, misdeed, offense. Law felony. See crimes.
2. A wicked act or wicked behavior: deviltry, diablerie, evil, evildoing, immorality, iniquity, misdeed, offense, peccancy, sin, wickedness, wrong, wrongdoing. See right/wrong.
3. Something that offends one's sense of propriety, fairness, or justice: offense, outrage, sin. See right/wrong.
4. A great disappointment or regrettable fact: pity, shame. Slang bummer. Idioms: a crying shame. See good/bad.

n

Definition: offense against the law
Antonyms: good deed, kindness

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Crime is often defined as "conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, of the federal government, or of a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse" (Schmalleger 2001, p. 700). Not only is a crime the commission of an act, it can also be an omission of an act, such as the failure to assure that a child has clothing, food, or shelter. In 1999, law enforcement agencies in the United States made approximately fourteen million arrests, excluding traffic violations. The offenses most frequently committed were driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and drug abuse (approximately 1.5 million arrests for each). The second most frequently committed was simple assault (approximately 1.3 million arrests).

Fifty-five percent of all crimes in the United States are committed by people under the age of twenty-five. Individuals in this age group commit approximately 44 percent of all violent crimes and 58 percent of all property crimes. Seventy-eight percent of all people arrested are men.

Crime has many detrimental effects on society. Victims of crime can suffer fear, stress, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, personal financial costs, medical costs, and health problems. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that the cost of crime to victims is approximately $17.6 billion a year. This estimate does not include the direct cost to the criminal justice system to process and punish/rehabilitate offenders.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), approximately twenty-three million households in the United States are "touched" by crime annually. This represents approximately one-fourth of all homes, resulting in over thirty-one million victims of crime each year. Individuals who live in urban areas are two times more likely to be the victim of crime than are those who live in rural settings. Men are more likely to be the victims of a crime, and younger Americans are more likely than elderly Americans to be victimized.

Of those arrested for violent crimes and street crimes, including predatory crime, the number of African Americans arrested is roughly the same as, or higher than, the number of Caucasians. This is a major concern because African Americans make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population. Approximately 30 percent of African American males aged twenty to twenty-nine are under the control or supervision of the criminal justice system—four times as many as Caucasian men in the same age group.

Not only are African Americans overrepresented among criminal offenders, they are also overrepresented among victims of crime. While Caucasian Americans account for over 80 percent of the people living in the United States, they are the victims in less than 50 percent of the murders committed. According to the NCVS, African Americans are more likely than any other racial group to be victims of violent crimes. One out of every twenty-one African-American males is murdered.

In April 1990, President George Bush signed into law the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which requires that hate-crime data be collected and reported. Congress defines hate crimes as offenses "in which the defendant's conduct was motivated by hatred, bias, or prejudice, based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation of another individual or group of individuals." In 1998 there were approximately 8,000 hate-crime incidents; and racial hatred was the motive in 58 percent of these acts. Most hate crimes are acts of intimidation, vandalism, simple assault, or aggravated assault.

The majority of crimes in the United States occur in poor urban areas, and the majority of crime victims are poor. The NCVS reported in 1998 that violent-crime rates were greater for individuals living in lower-income families than individuals from more affluent homes. This puts a large burden on the health and medical systems in high-crime areas and strains community resources.

The types of crimes that law-enforcement agencies deal with are changing. Crimes such as cybercrimes (computer crimes) and crimes against the elderly are growing. Domestic violence, although always a criminal act, is being reported more frequently, and there are strict laws dealing with such offenses. It has been estimated that in 2001 the United States will spend over eighty billion dollars to finance its criminal justice system.

(SEE ALSO: Domestic Violence: Fraud and Misrepresentation; Gun Control; Homicide; Prostitution; Violence)

Bibliography

Brownstein, H. H. (2000). The Social Reality of Violence and Violent Crime. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (2000). Uniform Crime Reports, 1999. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice. Available at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/htm.

Klaus, P. A. (1994). The Costs of Crime to Victims. Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief. Annapolis Junction, MD: BJS Clearinghouse.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (1998). National Crime Victimization Survey. Washington, DC: BJS.

Schmalleger, F. (2001). Criminal Justice Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

— KATHY AKPOM; TAMMY A. KING

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n. 1. an action or omission that constitutes an offense and is punishable by law: shoplifting was a serious crime.

2. an action or activity that, although not illegal, is considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong: apartheid was a crime against humanity.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on crime, visit Britannica.com.

Anglo-Saxon law codes suggest a restitutive system, essentially a regulation of the feud. Post-Conquest England experienced a growing criminal justice system, the reign of Henry II (1154-89) providing the most durable elements. Interpreting the level and nature of medieval crime is difficult. There were criminal gangs who at times indulged in outright banditry, but criminal prosecutions in the 14th cent. suggest a more modern criminality in some areas, with theft as the most prominent offence.

Record survival permits more systematic work from the 1550s, which has centred mainly on the study of felony (a category which includes serious offences such as homicide, burglary, theft, rape, and arson). Prosecution of these offences reached peaks in the late 1590s (a period of bad harvests) and the 1620s, a decade which experienced severe social and economic problems. When the running of criminal courts was resumed after the civil wars, however, levels of prosecuted felonies were low, and remained so until the mid-18th cent., when a resumption of population growth and the economic dislocation which attended the arrival of the industrial revolution caused them to rise.

During the early 19th cent. levels of crime rose alarmingly. Mass demobilization of soldiers and sailors after 1815 caused a crime wave, and this continued as industrialization and urbanization burgeoned. It was in the early 19th cent. that crime was identified as a social problem in the modern sense. The period saw the origins of criminology as a discipline, the introduction of national crime statistics, the emergence of such concepts as juvenile delinquency, professional police forces, and prison as the standard punishment for serious offenders. With the emergence of improved living standards among the working classes, levels of prosecution dropped slightly in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. From the 1950s, however, levels of prosecution increased, and continued to do so alarmingly over the 1980s and 1990s.

Crime is any activity for which the law prescribes punishment, such as a monetary fine or a term of imprisonment. Many other activities are prohibited by law in a different way. For example, businesses are subject to a variety of regulations and may be fined or otherwise disciplined for violations. More generally, anyone who negligently harms a neighbor or breaches a contract violates the law and may be held to pay damages if the victim files a lawsuit. Those violations are said to be "civil" in nature in order to distinguish them from "criminal" infractions. A person who commits a crime may be charged by a public prosecutor regardless of whether any individual victim complains. Conceptually, the public at large is the victim of criminal lawbreaking.

Crimes are specified by statutes that are enacted by Congress or by state and local legislative bodies. Legislatures often change statutes according to contemporaneous attitudes about the activities that should be punished as criminal. Conduct that was criminal in one era may not be so in the next. The classic example is the Volstead Act, the short-lived federal statute in 1919 that made it a federal offense to sell or transport intoxicating liquor.

The Colonial Era

The idea that criminal law is a matter of legislative policy did not always prevail. The colonists understood deviant behavior to be a feature of divine order and acted in light of their religious beliefs. They expected individuals to misbehave and entertained no thought that they could or should determine for themselves what should be criminal and punish only that behavior. The colonists drew no clear distinction between crime and sin, and when they adopted criminal statutes they typically included religious offenses like blasphemy and witchcraft. They found it difficult to distinguish, in turn, between serious offenses and minor transgressions. All were of a piece; all were sins against God. By some accounts the colonists' sense of the unity of all crime led them to prescribe the same harsh punishments for widely divergent activities. Some offenders were fined, but many were put to death—or, if not hanged, were tortured, banished, or both. The point was neither to give offenders what they deserved nor to achieve some utilitarian objective. It was merely to vindicate God's will.

Colonial views and practices regarding crime and slavery were appalling by twenty-first-century standards. Slaveholders were permitted to whip and mutilate slaves as they saw fit, without concern that abuses would be regarded as criminal. By contrast, slaves themselves were routinely charged with crimes. Often they were punished summarily by their masters. In many instances slaves accused of crimes were brought before local boards composed of magistrates and slaveholders. The slaveholders participated to ensure that corporal punishments were not so harsh as to permanently damage their property. When states hanged slaves as punishment for crime, the slave owners were typically entitled to compensation for the loss of their assets.

The Nineteenth Century

American thinking about crime changed dramatically after the Revolution. Southern states perpetuated the harsh treatment of slaves. But apart from slavery, most states adopted new statutes specifying as criminal various activities that are still considered crimes. For example, nineteenth-century criminal statutes condemned homicide, assault, robbery, and other offenses against the person. They also identified a wide variety of property crimes such as larceny, embezzlement, and receiving stolen goods. The states did not regulate commercial affairs in the pervasive manner that later became common. But when they did regulate business, they often did it by making objectionable practices criminal. Individual states typically focused on the industries that were most important to their economies. For example, Maryland and Virginia used criminal law to regulate the production and sale of tobacco. Mississippi did the same with respect to cotton and the states in New England with respect to shellfish. Many states also used criminal sanctions to control hunting, to enforce public health regulations, and, in the last years of the nineteenth century, to limit monopoly power in the marketplace.

The growing mobility of Americans made it possible for itinerant rascals to cheat unsuspecting dupes by tricking them into surrendering cash. Schemes of that kind typically entailed gaining the victim's trust—hence the familiar term "confidence man." In some celebrated cases of the period swindlers from the lower classes represented themselves to be gentlemen and ran up extraordinary bills before they absconded. Many states responded by enacting new criminal statutes condemning rackets by which "con men" obtained money by false pretenses.

States in the nineteenth century formally recognized numerous "morals" offenses. They routinely condemned any kind of sexual activity outside the traditional monogamous, heterosexual marriage—namely, fornication, adultery, cohabitation without marriage, incest, prostitution, and bigamy. They also barred forms of sexual pleasure thought to be immoral. The "unspeakable crime against nature" (sodomy) was the chief illustration. Apart from sexual offenses, most states made gambling a crime, and some flatly barred the manufacture and sale of liquor. In the latter half of the century many states also banned obscenity (variously defined) as yet another vice threatening moral decay. Evidence regarding actual prosecutions for morals offenses is incomplete. By most accounts, however, prosecutions were (or at least became) sporadic, and the punishments upon conviction were relatively modest by comparison to the penalties meted out in the colonial period.

The criminal regulation of abortion followed its own special path. Abortion was long formally condemned as criminal. Yet abortions performed prior to quickening (when fetal motion is felt) were typically treated as misdemeanors. Moreover, the evidence suggests that anti-abortion statutes often were not enforced.

The Development of Federal Criminal Statutes

Congress established very few federal crimes prior to the modern era. One reason was a perceived lack of authority to do so. The United States Constitution did not give the federal government power to create criminal law simply as a matter of legislative judgment. State legislatures had that authority, but not Congress. If Congress enacted a criminal statute, it had to be in service of some peculiarly federal interest.

Famous early criminal statutes were easy enough to justify. The Crimes Act of 1790 made it a federal crime to commit murder, but only if the offense occurred at a site under the control of federal authorities. Similarly, the Post Office Act of 1872 made it a federal criminal offense to use the federal postal service to deliver objectionable materials (like lottery tickets or obscene literature).

In time, Congress enacted federal criminal statutes under its authority to regulate commerce among the states. That was the theory underlying the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 and the majority of federal criminal laws enacted in the twentieth century. The commercial regulatory basis of federal criminal jurisdiction was not disingenuous. As the interstate character of business activity grew, Congress's authority to use criminal law to enforce federal regulation of that activity grew in direct proportion. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 exemplified the kind of national criminal law needed to police commercial activities that no single state could manage. In addition, however, Congress exploited its authority to control the channels and instrumentalities of interstate commerce in order to advance noneconomic objectives. The chief examples were the Mann Act in 1910, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman across a state boundary for the purpose of prostitution, and the Dyer Act in 1919, which made it a federal offense to drive or deliver a stolen car across state lines. Those statutes engaged the federal government in policing activities that previously had been left to the states.

Crime Rates in the Twentieth Century

By common account, the rate of violent crime in the United States increased significantly during the early part of the twentieth century. Violent offenses include murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, robbery, forcible rape, and aggravated assault. Reliable data are unavailable for most offenses during those years, but homicides (for which data were kept) rose dramatically. The reasons for the upsurge are elusive. The immediate spur may have been the conclusion of World War I. Soldiers returning from Europe often had difficulty finding work and may have become frustrated and, in some instances, violent. Prohibition offered organized crime the opportunity to profit from distributing illicit liquor. Crime "families" contributed to violence in major cities, particularly New York and Chicago. The exigencies of the Great Depression may have driven impoverished people to property crimes ending in violence. As the depression drew to a close, by contrast, the rate of violent crime leveled off and remained comparatively stable for roughly the next twenty years, albeit with shifts downward during the three wartime periods of World War I, World War II, and Vietnam and upward again when each group of troops came home.

There was, however, another significant increase in the rate of violent crime during the 1960s and 1970s. The homicide rate reached an all-time high in 1980, when there were more than ten homicidal deaths per 100,000 residents. Again, the underlying reasons for the increase are debatable. Certainly the acceleration of violence tracked the sharp increase in the number of young people. In the fifteen-year period from 1960 to 1975, the population of men and women aged from fourteen to twenty-four increased by 63 percent, more than six times the rate of all other age groups. That cohort of young people, known as the baby boom, had been born immediately following World War II, the sons and daughters of soldiers eager to resume their lives. In 1960 persons aged from fourteen to twenty-four accounted for 69 percent of all arrests for serious crimes. Many youths may have found it difficult to adjust to life as adults, especially if their economic prospects were bleak. Their frustrations may have played out in rebellious activities that ultimately led to violence.

In the mid-1980s the rate of violent offenses began to decline just as the baby boom generation passed beyond its most crime-prone years. The rate of violent offenses by teenagers continued to rise for some time before dropping; the analog rate for persons in their twenties fell more steadily. In 1985 the homicide rate diminished to just under eight deaths per 100,000 residents. That rate rose for a few years, reaching more than nine per 100,000 in 1991. Thereafter, however, the homicide rate steadily dropped to a low of less than seven per 100,000 in 1998. The rate of robberies followed roughly the same pattern.

Violent crime in the United States is necessarily associated with firearms (especially handguns) for the obvious reason that firearms are often the instruments by which violent offenses are committed. The data reveal, moreover, that the use of firearms varies according to offender characteristics. After 1985, when the homicide rate for adult offenders declined, the rate at which adults employed handguns to kill dropped proportionately. During the same period, when the homicide rate for young offenders initially increased and then declined, the rate at which young people used handguns to kill increased dramatically. In 1993, 90 percent of the homicides committed by offenders under twenty-five years of age involved firearms. The rate of gun violence was particularly pronounced among young male African Americans in depressed urban areas. The rate of firearm homicides in that group was twenty-one times higher than the rate for the American population as a whole. After 1993 the rate of firearm violence among all offender groups fell along with the general decline in the rate of violent crime.

Even considering the diminution at the end of the twentieth century, the incidence of violent crime is still much higher in the United States than in any comparable developed nation. The rate of deaths or serious bodily injury from personal attacks is four to eighteen times higher in this country than in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, or Japan. The rate of non-violent crime in the United States has always been high, but not markedly higher than in comparable nations. In the 1990s, for example, the general crime rate in this country was higher than in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan, but not grossly higher than in Italy and about the same as the general crime rate in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

Changes in Criminal Law Policy

By most accounts, the increase in the rate of violent crime that occurred in the 1960s deeply affected American attitudes about crime in general. Americans came to regard crime as an extremely serious problem meriting extraordinary efforts at control. That public sentiment persisted through the end of the twentieth century. According to a poll taken in 1994, when the rates of both violent and nonviolent crime had been declining for nearly a decade, more than 40 percent of Americans nonetheless viewed crime as the nation's most pressing social problem. Concomitantly, Americans came to regard criminal sanctions as the appropriate means by which to address an expanding variety of activities thought to threaten society. Many academicians contended that actual experience did not warrant the public insistence on anticrime measures, much less the wider use of criminal sanctions as a tool of social control. By some accounts, citizens who were concerned that they might become victims of violent assaults failed to distinguish between the violence they feared and other forms of criminal behavior. Accordingly, they supported a sweeping expansion of criminal law and its enforcement that bore fundamental implications for the prevailing social order.

Five developments illustrate the changes that have occurred in modern American criminal law policy: the adoption of lengthy terms of imprisonment as a routine punishment for all serious criminal offenses; the prosecution of juveniles as though they were adults; the expansion of the federal government's role in the making and enforcement of criminal law; the accelerating use of criminal law to regulate corporate behavior; and the escalating use of criminal law to address the social problems associated with drugs.

Longer sentences. Beginning in the 1980s, most states enacted arrangements under which persons convicted of crimes received much longer terms of imprisonment than had previously been prescribed. The shift in policy was deliberate and explicit. Legislatures largely abandoned the rehabilitative ideal that had dominated penal policy for more than a century and, in its place, recognized retribution and incapacitation as the primary purposes of punishment. Today convicts are chiefly punished with lengthy prison terms on the theory that they deserve it and because, during the period in which they are incarcerated, they are unable to commit more crimes. The terms of incarceration are extremely long. Life sentences have become common and terms of twenty or thirty years routine. Moreover, multiple-offender sentencing schemes often double or triple the sentences for offenders found guilty of more than one violation. So-called "three strikes and you're out" laws are not typically limited to violent offenders; anyone who commits three offenses of any kind may be sentenced to an extraordinarily long period behind bars.

Long terms of incarceration have significant effects throughout the system of American law. State courts send far more convicts to state prisons than existing institutions can accommodate. The crowding that ensues makes prison life, already harsh, more oppressive. Even before the flood of new prisoners in the 1980s, federal courts had held the poor conditions found in many state prisons to constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. Those courts ordered prison officials to make numerous adjustments and to eliminate crowding. With the subsequent flow of prisoners increasing so dramatically, most states have responded by constructing more penal facilities. New prisons, in turn, are little more than human warehouses confining prisoners for ever increasing periods of time at the least possible cost.

Treating juveniles as adults. The prosecution of juveniles as adults began in earnest in the 1990s. Previously, under juvenile justice codes adopted earlier in the twentieth century, persons under a certain age (typically eighteen) were formally regarded as unable to commit a serious criminal offense. They might engage in conduct that would be criminal if committed by an adult, but because of their immaturity (and thus their diminished culpability) they were treated differently. Young people were typically held to appear before special juvenile courts, which adjudicated them to be delinquent and, on that basis, specified remedial programs thought to be appropriate. In some instances, juveniles were sent to reformatories for vocational training; more often, they were channeled into some form of community supervision and counseling. In the 1990s, however, the extreme violence of which juveniles proved to be capable prompted many states to subject at least some of them to ordinary criminal charges, trial in ordinary criminal courts, and, if convicted, punishment of the ordinary (enhanced) kind.

The treatment of juveniles as adults also has important effects on the system as a whole. Tens of thousands of teenagers have received lengthy sentences, ostensibly to be served in one of the prisons designed to confine adults. Most penal authorities recognize that young offenders cannot easily be mixed with older convicts and have established special units for teenagers within larger institutions. Yet the length of the sentences imposed on young prisoners guarantees that they will eventually be assimilated into the adult prisoner population.

Expansion of the federal role. The idea that crime is a serious problem has led to the (quite different) idea that it is a national problem as well. Congress has responded by extending federal criminal jurisdiction on a host of fronts. In most instances Congress continues to base federal criminal statutes on its authority to regulate commerce among the states. Yet modern enactments dramatically extend that authority to activities with little demonstrable connection to interstate commerce. Toward the end of the twentieth century Congress enacted federal criminal legislation in virtually every session. Examples include the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1984, the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1968 and 1988, the Crime Control Act of 1990, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Those statutes did not consolidate federal crimes in a coherent code but rather added numerous freestanding offenses to the sprawling body of federal law. By the year 2000 there were more than three thousand separate federal offenses. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, not only were more activities considered federal crimes than ever, but those crimes, like their state counterparts, typically carried extremely long prison sentences as well.

The federalization of American criminal law has significance for a variety of other governmental agencies and functions. Certainly the growth of federal crimes demands a consequent growth in federal law enforcement agencies and personnel: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Marshal Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and related organizations. For the first time in its history, the United States has commissioned a powerful central police force. The introduction of federal criminal law into spheres of local affairs also creates conflicts with state authorities. In many instances, suspects can be charged with violating a federal criminal statute, a similar state statute, or both. That overlap demands cooperation between federal and state law enforcement officials that was unnecessary before the 1990s. Federal criminal cases dominate the dockets of federal trial courts, forcing other judicial business to be postponed. The courts, in turn, sentence large numbers of convicts to lengthy terms of imprisonment at federal penal facilities that have no room for them. Thus the federal government, like many states, has launched a major prison-building campaign. Where once the Federal Bureau of Prisons operated only a few federal prisons like Leavenworth and Alcatraz, in 2002 the Bureau controlled 102 institutions.

Regulating corporate behavior. The use of criminal law as a means of regulating corporate behavior is a twentieth-century innovation. So-called white-collar crime, committed by comparatively wealthy people holding positions of trust, has substantial historical footing in American law. In many cases individual perpetrators commit familiar offenses for their own benefit: offenses like embezzlement, tax evasion, and fraud. In other cases, however, corporate officers and employees implicate their companies in criminal offenses like restraints of trade, unlawful manipulations of stocks and bonds, and violations of environmental protection statutes. Corporate crime thrives in the complexities of the modern technological economy and is characteristically difficult to detect and prosecute. The demand for effective enforcement has prompted the federal government to bring its considerable resources to bear on the problem. Congress has enacted a variety of statutes to contend with white-collar and corporate crime, most prominently the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act of 1970.

Individuals convicted of white-collar offenses are sentenced to some form of incarceration at about the same rate that street criminals are sentenced to prison. However, the terms for white-collar criminals are substantially shorter, measured in months rather than years. Of course, corporations cannot be given prison sentences for their crimes (though the individuals who act for corporations certainly can be). Accordingly, corporations are typically fined or subjected to some other form of economic penalty. Some academics contend that it is a mistake to subject corporations to criminal liability at all, because "civil" fines can achieve the same objective: the creation of economic disincentives to behave in a socially disadvantageous way.

Addressing drug problems. The policy of making it a crime to possess, manufacture, or sell hallucinogenic and addictive drugs has contributed significantly to the developing nature of American criminal law. By some accounts the criminalization of drugs increases the price that drug dealers can charge for their product and thus increases the resulting profits. Those high profits, in turn, perversely foster the very behavior that antidrug laws are meant to discourage. Certainly drug dealing has developed into a massive industry, stretching from source points both in this country and in foreign nations (principally South American states) through manufacturing facilities to "retail" sales on the streets. One-third of all state criminal prosecutions are for drug-related offenses, and one-fourth of the inmates serving terms in state prisons are there for possessing or selling drugs. A disproportionate number of those prisoners are young African Americans from inner-city areas.

The criminalization of drugs is also intimately linked with the expanding role of the federal government in crime control. Early in the twentieth century Congress enacted numerous federal criminal statutes regarding drugs, among them the Harrison Narcotic Drug Act of 1914, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, and the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942. Subsequently, the growth of the drug industry, with its many international connections, prompted Congress to expand the federal "war on drugs" to much larger dimensions. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 organized federal criminal drug laws, and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established mandatory minimum prison sentences for many violators. Between 1980 and 1990, when the general rate of criminal prosecutions in the federal courts rose by 69 percent, the rate of federal prosecutions for drug offenses rose by 300 percent. Drug cases in 2000 accounted for nearly half the criminal trials in federal court. The federal government's commitment to antidrug laws generated a corresponding expansion in the federal bureaucracy. The DEA was established in 1973 to take primary responsibility for federal enforcement efforts. Not only the DEA and the FBI but many other agencies (including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the navy, and the Coast Guard) are also engaged in interdicting the drug trade in this country, in foreign nations, and on the high seas.

All these features of modern criminal law have evoked intense controversy. With the exception of the prosecution of corporate crime, the practical consequence of each development has been the long-term imprisonment of a large and increasing population of Americans, a disproportionate number of whom are young, poor people of color. There is no discounting the profound social (and moral) implications of a system that incarcerates so many of its dispossessed members. Nevertheless, public concerns about crime, particularly violent crime, continue to drive American policy toward more (and more punitive) uses of criminal sanctions.

Bibliography

Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman, eds. The Crime Drop in America. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Friedman, Lawrence M. Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

Geis, Gilbert, and Robert F. Meier, comps. White-Collar Crime: Offenses in Business and the Professions. New York: Free Press, 1977.

Gray, James P. Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2001.

Robinson, Paul H., and John M. Darley. Justice, Liability, and Blame: Community Views and the Criminal Law. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995.

Silberman, Charles E. Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice. New York: Random House, 1978.

U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice. 2d ed. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Justice Statistics Clearinghouse, 1988.

Zimring, Franklin E., and Gordon Hawkins. Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America. New York: Oxford University, 1997.

—Larry Yackle

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

Acts or omissions that are in violation of law.

Each state in the United States, as well as the federal government, maintains a body of criminal laws. As populations have increased and personal interactions and business transactions have grown more complicated, criminal laws have likewise grown in number and complexity. Most jurisdictions codify criminal statutes in a separate section in their laws. However, some crimes are placed in chapters or titles outside the designated criminal code. Generally, criminal laws are divided into several broad categories: offenses affecting public order, health, and morals; offenses involving trade, business, and professions; and offenses against the family. These categories often overlap. Juveniles and minors generally receive special treatment under criminal statutes.

Offenses Affecting Public Order, Health, and Morals

A number of acts are made criminal to preserve public order, health, and morals. Some of these laws are grounded in the common law but have undergone significant changes over the years. Prostitution, if discreet and practiced indoors, was generally tolerated in colonial America, but streetwalkers were charged under lewdness, vagrancy, or similar laws. In the late nineteenth century, states began to identify and prohibit all prostitution, in criminal statutes, where it was defined as engaging in sex for hire. Prostitution is now illegal in all states save Nevada, where it is strictly regulated.

Pandering, or inducing another into prostitution, is illegal in all states, including Nevada. The solicitation of prostitution is illegal in all states except Nevada, where it is allowed only in licensed brothels.

Public obscenity laws find their roots in the religious prohibitions of blasphemy and heresy, or defiance of the church. Laws prohibiting blasphemy and heresy were passed in colonial America, but after the passage of the First Amendment in 1791, states began to focus obscenity statutes on material with a sexual content. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-104, Feb. 8, 1996, 110 Stat. 56, which included criminal punishment for the transmission of obscenity through cyberspace.

The definition of obscenity is generally a matter of contemporary community standards. In New York, for example, any material or

performance is obscene if "the average person, applying contemporary community standards," would find that the predominant appeal of the work as a whole appeals "to the prurient interest in sex" (N.Y. Penal Law § 235.00 [McKinney 1995]). To be defined as obscene, the material or performance must also depict or describe "in an offensive manner, actual or simulated: sexual intercourse, sodomy, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sadism, masochism, excretion or lewd exhibition of the genitals." Finally, the material or performance must lack "serious literary, artistic, political and scientific value" before its creator can be punished for obscenity.

Obscenity laws include the prohibition of public profanity. The federal government, for example, outlaws visible written profanity in the mails and profanity on radio and television. The Federal Communications Commission makes some exceptions for certain words during nighttime hours. Profanity, like obscenity, is a fluid concept, and its treatment is frequently the subject of legislation.

Gambling is illegal in some states. Other states allow only certain forms of gambling. Even where gambling is legal, it is strictly regulated, and the regulations are enforced by criminal statutes. For example, persons who maintain an unlicensed gambling operation in New Jersey may be charged with a crime of the fourth degree. Fourth-degree crimes in New Jersey normally carry a penalty of a $7,500 fine or eighteen months' imprisonment, or both; when the crime is unlicensed gambling, fines may reach $25,000 for individuals and $100,000 for organizations.

The U.S. Congress and state legislatures prohibit the manufacture, possession, and sale of certain mood-altering substances, such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens. Many manufactured drugs yielding psychotropic effects are legal, but only under the administration of a physician.

All states maintain laws that prohibit the driving of motorized vehicles while under the influence of alcohol or other mood-altering substances. These driving-under-the-influence (DUI) and driving-while-intoxicated (DWI) statutes outlaw or prohibit the drunken driving of boats and snowmobiles in addition to passenger vehicles and motorcycles. The range of vehicles subject to these laws is ever expanding: in 1996, a Texas man was charged with riding a bicycle while intoxicated. Intoxication is defined by statute at a specified blood-alcohol ratio, which varies from state to state.

Some criminal statutes are mainly designed to preserve public order. For example, many states criminalize loitering or prowling. In New Hampshire, no person is allowed to appear "at a place, or at a time, under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity" (N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 644:6). When challenged, however, most loitering statutes are held by courts to be unconstitutionally vague.

Breach of the peace is a generic description for a range of disorderly conduct. Generally, breach-of-the-peace crimes consist of any acts that disturb public tranquility and order. Stalking, or menacing, is the related crime of continually following or forcing unwanted contact on another.

The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 U.S.C.A. §§ 1961 et seq.) is designed to investigate, control, and prosecute organized crime. States have adopted RICO. Essentially, RICO punishes a pattern of racketeering activity that is accomplished through an organized enterprise. Prosecutors have broadened the use of RICO to support an additional criminal charge for even the most loosely organized crimes. For example, a person who conspires with another to commit fraud may be charged with fraud and violation of RICO, if the conspiracy was the product of an organized enterprise. Youth gangs are among the organizations subject to RICO laws.

State and federal statutes criminalize the unlicensed possession of firearms. Firearm statutes prevent convicted felons from owning a gun. State and federal laws also place an outright ban on some models of automatic firearms.

Other criminal laws respecting public order, health, and morals are many and varied. State and federal election laws have burgeoned since the nineteenth century to prohibit a wide range of acts in connection with the public vote, such as campaigning on election day, coercing voters, and engaging in fraud. Immigration laws provide criminal penalties for immigrating illegally and for hiring illegal immigrants. All states maintain statutes to punish littering and the unauthorized dumping or storage of toxic waste. In Mississippi, dueling is outlawed (Miss. Code Ann. § 97-39-1), as is cruelty to animals (§ 97-41-1). In New Hampshire, desecration of the U.S. flag is punishable as a misdemeanor (N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 646-A:4).

Offenses Involving Trade, Business, and Professions

Fraud, theft, and misrepresentation are extensively covered in state and federal statutes concerning virtually every conceivable occupation. These laws prohibit a wide variety of acts ranging from simulating gemstones and rigging weight scales to impersonating a doctor or a police officer, breaching confidentiality, and engaging in insider trading (the buying or selling of publicly held corporate shares by persons with inside or advance information regarding the corporation). The fraudulent use of credit cards is also the subject of criminal statutes. And the new technologies of cable television and computers have inspired a number of criminal statutes punishing their abuse; state statutes, for example, punish the theft of cable television services.

Offenses against the Family

State legislatures enact numerous statutes to protect people against members of their own family. Child abuse laws make criminal the physical or mental abuse of a child. Spousal abuse is also punished under state statutes.

The failure of a parent to pay court-ordered child support is made criminal in state statutes. States work together in apprehending so-called deadbeat parents through a uniform statute called the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (U.L.A. Unif. Interstate Family Support Act [1995]). A divorced parent who flees with a child may be criminally charged under state and federal kidnapping statutes as well as child custody statutes.

Juveniles and Minors

Persons under the age of eighteen, known as juveniles, are presumed incapable of forming the criminal intent to commit criminal acts. They are, then, generally immune from prosecution for their crimes. However, a juvenile may be tried for a crime if the prosecution is able to convince the court to certify the juvenile as an adult. A prosecutor generally reserves certification of a juvenile for serious crimes, such as murder or rape. In the 1990s, some state legislatures passed statutes allowing prosecutors to certify for criminal trial juveniles as young as age fourteen.

Minors also warrant special protection from society. Criminal statutes punish adults for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. This crime can be any act that tends to make a child delinquent. For example, giving a minor illegal drugs or pornography is criminal under these statutes. State statutes also criminalize the sale of other adult materials, such as tobacco and alcohol, to minors.

See: domestic violence; juvenile law.

IN BRIEF: Something that is against the law. Also: An evil or foolish act.

Not failure, but low aim, is a crime. — Ernest Holmes

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - forbrydelse, kriminalitet, synd, tjenesteforseelse
v. tr. - anklage for, dømme for

idioms:

• crime sheet    generalieblad
• crime wave    bølge af forbrydelser

Nederlands (Dutch)
misdaad, criminaliteit, zonde

Français (French)
n. - délit, crime, criminalité, (fig) crime
v. tr. - commettre (un délit/un crime)

idioms:

• crime sheet    dossier criminel
• crime wave    vague de crimes

Deutsch (German)
n. - Verbrechen, Straftat
v. - beschuldigen, anklagen (eines Verbrechens)

idioms:

• crime sheet    Strafregister
• crime wave    Verbrechenswelle

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - έγκλημα, αδίκημα, κακούργημα, κρίμα, αμαρτία

idioms:

• crime sheet    (στρατ.) ποινικό μητρώο κατηγορουμένου (σε στρατοδικείο)
• crime wave    κύμα εγκληματικότητας

Italiano (Italian)
crimine, delitto, criminalità, delinquenza

idioms:

• crime sheet    foglio delle punizioni
• crime wave    ondata di delinquenza

Português (Portuguese)
n. - crime (m)

idioms:

• crime sheet    relatório (m) do crime
• crime wave    onda (f) de crimes

Русский (Russian)
преступление, преступность

idioms:

• crime sheet    обвинительное заключение
• crime wave    волна преступности

Español (Spanish)
n. - crimen, delito, fechoría, criminalidad, delincuencia
v. tr. - cometer un crimen, delito o fechoría

idioms:

• crime sheet    antecedentes delictivos
• crime wave    ola delictiva

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - brott, förbrytelse, brottslighet

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
犯罪, 罪恶, 罪行, 控告...违反纪律, 对...定罪

idioms:

• crime sheet    处罚记载, 犯罪记录
• crime wave    犯罪率激增

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 犯罪, 罪惡, 罪行
v. tr. - 控告...違反紀律, 對...定罪

idioms:

• crime sheet    處罰記載, 犯罪記錄
• crime wave    犯罪率激增

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 범죄, 죄악, 어리석은 행위
v. tr. - 군기 위반죄로 고발하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 罪, 犯罪, よくない行為, 反道徳的な行為, 残念なこと

idioms:

• crime sheet    処罪記録
• crime wave    一時的な犯罪の急激な増加

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) جريمه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חטא, פשע‬
v. tr. - ‮הרשיע, האשים‬

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