Societies define crime as the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority or force may ultimately prescribe a punishment.

The word crime originates from the Latin crīmen (genitive: criminis), reflecting the Latin root cernō = "I decide, I give judgement", and the Greek κρινω = "I judge". Originally the Latin word crīmen meant "charge (in law), guilt, accusation".

When society deems informal relationships and sanctions insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, there may result more formalized systems of social control imposed by a government, or by a sovereign state. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel individuals to conform to behavioral codes, and can punish those who do not conform.

Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate behaviour, including rules codified into laws, policing people to ensure they comply with those laws, and other policies and practices designed to prevent crime. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. Not all breaches of the law, however, are considered crimes, for example, breaches of contract and other civil law offences.

The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma normally confine their scope to those activities seen as injurious to the general population or to the State, including some that cause serious loss or damage to individuals. The labellers intend to assert an hegemony of a dominant population, or to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behavior and to justify a punishment imposed by the State, in the event that standard processing tries and convicts an accused person of a crime. Usually, the perpetrator of the crime is a natural person, but in some jurisdictions and in some moral environments, legal persons are also considered to have the capability of committing crimes.

Definition

A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect the current definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law-enforcement, and penal responses made by society.

These structural realities remain fluid and often contentious. For example: as cultures change and the political environment shifts, societies may criminalise or decriminalise certain behaviours, which will directly affect the statistical crime rates, determine the allocation of resources for the enforcement of laws, and (re-)influence the general public opinion.

Similarly, changes in the collection and/or calculation of data on crime may affect the public perceptions of the extent of any given "crime problem". All such adjustments to crime statistics, allied with the experience of people in their everyday lives, shape attitudes on the extent to which the State should use law to enforce any particular social norm. One can control/influence behaviour in many ways without having to resort to the criminal justice system.