ABSTRACT
A common-sense approach to criminology suggests that it must have something to do with crime. As Abe Fattah says, the concept of crime is as central to criminology as the concept of society is to sociology. Fattah (1997: 29) suggests that criminology ‘may be loosely defined as the “study of crime” or as the “science of crime” and a definition of crime is therefore essential for our understanding of what criminology is all about’. However, as Fattah goes on to show, ‘crime’, like so many other key concepts central to the social sciences, e.g. ‘poverty’ or ‘unemployment’, is not all that easily defined.
