Crime Directory

Crime is antisocial conduct for which punishment may be imposed in the name of the state. Crimes can be classified according to their nature: violent personal crimes, such as murder and rape; property offenses, such as burglary and theft; and public welfare or moral infractions, such as gambling, intoxication, and promiscuous sexuality. Usually, those in the first group are thought to be more serious than those in the second and are therefore punished more severely.

There is the existential view of crime, which holds that we are frail human beings who are strangers in a strange land and strangers even to ourselves from time to time. We profess common values life is sacred, property sacrosanct but what we believe in theory we do not always practice. Crime in this view reflects what life is all about uncertainty. Given a particular convergence of circumstances, not always foreseeable, human behavior can be monstrous, collectively, as in warfare, or individually, as in crime. Crime, like warfare, is part of life and not always predictable or preventable, much less redressable.