Have you ever wondered how a particular conduct ought to become qualified as a crime? What factors are taking into account by the various interest groups involved in the criminalisation process, when assessing such a thing? Those questions are precisely the ones that criminologists and legislators have to reflect on.
A common-sense answer would be to look at the legal definition of crime, as criminal law specifically gives behaviour its quality of criminality. It defines crime as an act/omission prohibited by criminal law, committed without defence/justification, and liable for sanctioning by the criminal justice system, or actually sanctioned. This justification is not as clear-cut as it seems. Indeed, relying on a strict legal definition of crime would fail to encompass those harms that are covered by administrative law, such as white-collar crimes.
Moreover, another significant issue with the legal definition is that it ignores the truth that the law is contextual; what counts as a crime in one particular place at one specific point in time may not qualify as such in another legal system at another point in time. Take the example of prostitution; while some countries have adopted a prohibitionist approach, criminalising all the activities and parties involved in the conduct, others have accepted prostitution as a social fact, which needs to be strictly controlled through regulation for the protection of society. Thus, what is crime in the legal sense varies, depending on diverse contextual factors such as the historical context, the social setting, the location, and so on.
Last but not least, one should keep in mind that criminal law is largely shaped by the interests of powerful groups in society. Those groups (politicians, lobbyists, corporations, etc.) have the ability to influence legislation through their status and consequently, the so-called “crimes of the powerful” (ie: corporate crimes) often go unrecognised and their criminalisation may be considered as minimal. With these three major limitations in mind, it is easier to conceive why there is little agreement among criminologists about what really constitutes crime.
Various approaches are being used for this purpose, each of them presenting its own advantages and boundaries. This paper will submit one of those approaches as a powerful visual tool to, at the very least, argue whether a particular behaviour should be labelled as crime, or not. This conception was first provided by the criminologist John Hagan in his famous pyramid of crime. He integrated three dimensions in the pyramid; the degree of agreement among people about the wrongfulness of an act, the severity of the society’s response in law (reflected in the sentences set by the law) and finally, the social evaluation of the harm the act inflicted on others.
Even if this view has the advantage of encompassing more harms and contextual factors than a strict legal definition of crime, Lanier and Henry submitted that it is nonetheless incomplete. According to them, Hagan’s pyramid firstly neglects the public awareness of crime. It is not exceptional that some crimes, even if involving a certain degree of harm, may not be recognised as such because the victims do not realise that they actually have been harmed; this tendency is mostly reflected in victims of government and corporate crimes. A second missing dimension is the extent of victimisation as such. Indeed, it is easy to perceive that a society’s perception as to the seriousness of a crime can be influenced by the number of people harmed by the conduct. Lastly, as to Hagan’s dimension of the severity of the society’s response in law, Lanier and Henry argued that it failed to acknowledge the probability or likelihood that an offender will receive a serious response, even when the law sets such a penalty. Unfortunately, crimes of the powerless (ie: street crimes, rape, theft, etc.) are much more scrutinised by the various legal agencies involved in the process of criminalisation as compared to the crimes of the powerful, where the state is commonly involved.
In an attempt to resolve those inadequacies, Lanier and Henry have proposed a re-defined conception of Hagan’s pyramid: the Crime Prism. It is composed of five dimensions, each of them subjected to changes in degree depending on the particular conduct/crime. Those are the individual and social harm that resulted from the conduct (does it affect one specific individual or the society as a whole?), the visibility of the crime (what about invisible crimes, such as environmental crimes?), the degree of consensus in society about the wrongfulness of the crime, the extent of victimisation (many victims vs. victimless crimes) and finally, the probability of severe social response (is the criminal a repeated offender?). It is however important to keep in mind that the prism offers a theoretical conception of a crime’s definition. It definitely still rests on the challenge that two persons with different life experiences may locate a particular conduct on two different spatial points on the prism, as they may not agree on certain dimensions; for instance, the victim of a crime may perceive its seriousness in a much more absolute way than the one that has never been confronted to such a conduct. With the dimensions in mind, you can now consider the following illustration in order to better visualise the conception of the prism:
As you can see, toward the upper half of the prism are crimes that are obvious as to the seriousness of it, highly visible to the society, extremely harmful and noncontroversial as to the society’s response in law, as the punishments attached to those crimes are the most severe one can receive. Crimes such as terrorism would undeniably be located on this part of the prism. The more the degree of the different dimensions decrease, the lower the crime will be positioned on the prism.
In the middle of it, but still through the upper half, are violent acts of individual crimes: those crimes are also largely perceived as serious, the societal reaction is severe and so are the sanctions attached to those crimes, even if fewer people are hurt. Acts of rape, homicide, incest, but also robbery, burglary or vandalism are usually positioned toward this spatial location. At the center of the prism is where social deviations and diversions would best be placed; those include for example public drunkenness and crimes of juveniles. There is little harm inflicted and those acts are generally accompanied by a lack of consensus about their criminalisation.
Through the center to the very lower half of the prism can be positioned conducts where the obscurity of their criminal character is more and more apparent. The harm may be relatively hidden, there is a lack of consensus (one may even talk about conflict) over the criminal definition, the seriousness of the society’s perception will differ among the various interests groups and the reflection in punishment is much less severe (ie: fines). The context is therefore particularly relevant for those crimes.
At the final level are those crimes that are so obscure as to rarely be punished and many consider those acts as not deserving their criminal quality. Sexism, for instance, would probably fall under this category.
Now that you have a better understanding of how to integrate the dimensions of the prism, you can try to apply it to different acts on which you wonder whether the criminal label is legitimate or not. As you will see, behaviours such as sexual harassment, marital rape, domestic violence, and so on, are interesting examples of crimes that will be located at different points of the prism depending on the context (some consider those as normal while others are largely outraged and agree upon the wrongfulness).
One last word should be given to the fact that crimes of the powerless (street crimes) are mostly positioned on the upper half of the prism while crimes of the powerful are located on the lower half of it. Noticeably, holding powerful positions in society influence the degree of the prism’s dimensions!
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