ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the various definitions of crime, ranging from the legal definition to definitions that take into account crime's changing meaning as social harm. It provides new variables: social agreement, probable social response, individual and social harm, and extent of victimization. The chapter argues that the complexity of crimes like school violence defies such a simplistic framing. It discusses the legal definition of crime and its limitations in accounting for the variability of crime across time and cultures. The chapter looks at how consensus theorists had tied crime to societal agreement about universal morality. It explores how conflict theorists disagreed in their ideas about the basis of division in society and how their differences produced definitions of crime highlighting different issues, not least of which is the nature of harm itself. The chapter outlines that crimes of the powerful and crimes of the powerless and how these too can be interrelated.
