Crime and society

Much of society’s resources are devoted to dealing with, or preparing for the possibility of, crime. The dominance of concerns about crime also hints at the broader implications that offending has for many different facets of society. They suggest that rather than being an outlawed subset of social activity crime is an integrated aspect of societal processes. As an introduction to this themed issue of Contemporary Social Science, a brief review is undertaken of some of the direct and indirect social impacts of criminality, proposing that this is worthwhile, not just in terms of understanding crime but also because of how it elucidates more general social considerations. A range of studies that examine the interactions between crime and society are brought together drawing on a wide range of countries and cultures, India, Israel, Nigeria, Turkey and the USA, as well as Britain and Ireland. They include contributions from many different social science disciplines, which complement each other. Taken together the 11 papers reviewed do demonstrate that the implicit and direct impact of crime is very widespread indeed.