Crime and its Types

.....Insert Your Encoded Adsense Code here.....

Crime is a violation of criminal law for which formal penalties are applied by some governmental authority. It represents some type of deviation form formal social norms administered by the state. Crimes are divided by law into various categories, depending on the severity of the offence, the age of the offender, the potential punishment that can be levied, and the court that holds jurisdiction over the case.

Types of Crime
Rather than relying solely on legal categories, sociologists classify crimes in terms of how they are committed and how the offences are viewed by the society. In this section, we will examine four types of crime as differentiated by sociologists: professional crime, organized crime, white-collar crime, and “victimless crimes”.

Professional Crime
Although the adage “crime doesn’t pay” is familiar, many people do make a career of illegal activities. A professional criminal is a person who pursues crime as day-to-day occupation, developing skilled techniques and enjoying a certain degree of status among other criminals. Some professional criminals specialize is burglary, safecracking, hijacking or cargo, pick pocketing, and shoplifting. Such people can reduce the likelihood of arrest, conviction, and imprisonment through their skill. As a result, they may have long careers in their chosen “professions”.

Organized Crime
The term organized crime has many meanings. For our purposes, we will consider organized crime to be the work of a group that regulates relations between various criminal enterprises involved in smuggling and sale of drugs, prostitution, gambling, and other activities. Organized crime dominates the world of illegal business just as large corporations dominate the conventional business world. It allocates territory, sets prices for illegal goods and services, and acts as an arbitrator in internal disputes.
Organized crime is a secret, conspirational activity that generally evades law enforcement. Organized crime takes over legitimate business; gains influence over labour unions, corrupt public officials, intimidate witnesses in criminal trials and even take “taxes (bhatta)” from merchants in exchange for “protection”. Through its success, organized crime has served as a means of mobility for groups of people struggling to escape poverty.