Constructing Crime examines the central question: Why do we define and enforce particular behaviours as crimes and target particular individuals as criminals?

To answer this question, contributors interrogate notions of crime, processes of criminalization, and the deployment of the concept of crime in five radically different sites – the enforcement of fraud against welfare recipients and physicians, the enforcement of laws against Aboriginal harvesting practices, the perceptions of incivilities or disorder in public housing projects, and the selective criminalization of gambling.

By demonstrating that how crime is defined and enforced is connected to social location and status, these interdisciplinary case studies and an afterword by Marie-Andrée Bertrand challenge us to consider just who is rendered criminal and why. This timely volume will appeal to policy makers and students and practitioners of law, criminology, and sociology.

Constructing Crime examines the central question: Why do we define and enforce particular behaviours as crimes and target particular individuals as criminals?

To answer this question, contributors interrogate notions of crime, processes of criminalization, and the deployment of the concept of crime in five radically different sites – the enforcement of fraud against welfare recipients and physicians, the enforcement of laws against Aboriginal harvesting practices, the perceptions of incivilities or disorder in public housing projects, and the selective criminalization of gambling.

By demonstrating that how crime is defined and enforced is connected to social location and status, these interdisciplinary case studies and an afterword by Marie-Andrée Bertrand challenge us to consider just who is rendered criminal and why. This timely volume will appeal to policy makers and students and practitioners of law, criminology, and sociology.