What is Crime?
Crime
There are many ways to approach crime. The easiest would be to classify it as something that is criminal or against the law. While this may be true, the category of ‘crime’ becomes a bit of an issue when it is inflated to equal harm.
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Harm does not always occur when crime does, and things that harm people are not always crimes.
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A person running after their dog on someone else's field is technically a crime. Trespassing occurred; however, harm was not done.
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Companies and governments cause tremendous harm to people by polluting water systems. Harm happens, but it is not criminalized.
It is important to look at crime, not harm, as a legal category that is constantly evolving. What is, and is not, crime can be understood as a reflection of the values that are held in a given time and place.
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What was once legal can become a crime. For example, it was not a crime for white people to harm Black people under slavery. Nor was it a crime for men to rape their wives until 1983.
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Alternatively, things that were once criminalized can become decriminalized. For example, the adult use of marijuana was a crime until 2019.
All of these examples demonstrate the flexibility that exists within the category of ‘crime’. It is important to view crime as a reflection of society, rather than as natural, because in doing so, the forces used to respond to crime (police, prisons, criminal justice system) can be examined as a reflection of a time and place. What is considered crime is political and heavily influenced by structural inequalities that end up supporting the dominant power. Abolitionists are concerned with crime as a category because of its ability to facilitate and encourage harm towards those who are already disadvantaged in society. Because it is unequally distributed, what is considered criminal is often associated with actions and traits of already marginalized communities. In this way, crime operates alongside colonialism, racism, capitalism and the patriarchy (among other structural inequalities) to criminalize people for failing to adhere to, or embody, the ‘ideal citizen’. Crime is not a neutral category, it actively perpetuates inequality through upholding structures that benefit those in power.
After acknowledging that crime is an ever changing politicized category we can start to examine the types of crime that behaviors and actions are placed under. In attempts to complicate the ‘natural’ crime categories below, abolitionists ask about their function and purpose.
Violent crime
Violent crime consists of actions that result in physical harm. Stabbing, physical abuse, shootings, hitting, etc., are all examples of violent crimes. It may be easy to assume that violence is unanimously unacceptable, however, this view fails to recognize all the ways states, police, prisons, and the criminal justice system, perpetuate violence without the label of ‘crime’.
School shooters, for example, are perpetrators of violent crime. Their actions are violent in nature and contribute a significant amount of harm to the community.
Police shootings in no-knock warrants (as in the case of Breonna Taylor), on the other hand, are not considered criminal. In fact, this type of violence is commonly framed as necessary and helpful despite the overwhelming harm caused. Abolitionists do not wish to make all cases of violence criminal, rather, abolitionists want us to think of why and how crime hides harm. People are harmed in both school shootings and in no-knock warrants, the difference is the reason behind the violence. When what is considered ‘crime’ can be justified based on the dominant power, those who are marginalized will always suffer the consequences. Abolitionists do not assume that an end of crime will stop violence, however, they do believe that in abolishing crime as a legal category, responses to violence can be approached more equitably.
Moral Crime/Benign and Situational Crime
Moral crimes can be categorized as crimes that are based on an assumed immorality; such as stealing, using drugs, property destruction etc.
Benign and situational crime are similar to moral crimes, except that these types of crimes have no clear victim. Examples of benign crimes can include loitering, trespassing, panhandling and being drunk in public.
Abolitionists ask us to look at why these types of actions are criminalized in the first place. Whose sense of morality and goodness are being standardized in this mindset. How might these kinds of crime disproportionately affect marginalized (homeless, Black, low-income, disabled, etc.) people?
When crime is not assumed to be a neutral category these questions can be raised more efficiently. When crime is positioned as a measure to protect the safety of the community, it becomes difficult to see its purpose when victimless crimes occur. Abolitionists would argue that especially in cases where victimless crime happens, the crime is targeted more on the individual and less on the action.
Who Is Criminal
Who is assumed to be a criminal goes hand in hand with who is convicted of crime.
The racist foundation of police, prisons, and therefore ‘crime, required the assumed criminality of Black people and their actions. In doing this, police and prisons position whiteness as inherently ‘non-criminal’. This assumed criminality of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour is still widespread today and is directly related to the disproportionate crime rates in these communities.
In opposition to the assumed criminality of Black, Indigenous and people of colour, police are assumed to be innocent and embody morality. The process of ascribing morality onto a profession has resulted in little accountability from police officers for the harm they have caused.
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Double Standards
When people themselves are labeled as criminal, the actions and behaviours they exhibit are more easily criminalized. If we take a look at the responses to new mask laws we can see the ways the threat of criminality emerges for marginalized people and how whiteness maintains an ignorance in the nuances of crime.​
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Following a different example, if we look at how poisoning crimes are approached we can again see the differences in criminality according to who the violator is. According to the Canadian Criminal Code, "any Every person who administers or causes to be administered to any other person or causes any other person to take poison or any other destructive or noxious thing is guilty."
The Canadian government, however, is somehow exempt from this definition despite their inability to fix the water crisis that is rampant in Indigenous communities. The government creates what is criminal, therefore, it can modify what crime is in order to be exempt from it.
This double, or triple, or infinitely complicated set of standards allow crime to function to uphold systems, not to ‘punish’ those who are ‘bad’. Crime is not dependent on actions, it is dependent on who and how a person is doing them.​
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Abolitionists seek to eliminate crime because it is a reflection of the political and social environment it exists in. When that political and social environment is inherently racist, sexist, transphobic, ableist etc. the people who will be harmed, and criminalized the most, are those who are already oppressed by the state.
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Crime Vs Harm
Restorative forms of justice want to make the difference between “crime” and “harm” distinct. Where crime, for all the reasons suggested above, is a subjective idea, dependent on one’s culture, legal systems, time period, and a myriad of other factors, harm is completely objective. If someone claims that harm has been done, no matter what the acts or intentions were, that harm needs to be addressed. Our current forms of justice rely on addressing a crime, which means that the perpetrator is individualized, and takes sole responsibility for that act through punishment. However, this does not address the harm that has been done, or any societal factors that may have led to this outcome, and further, it does not work to prevent it from ever happening again. By focusing instead on harm that has been done, punishment becomes inconsequential, as it is solution oriented and preventative, as opposed to punitive.