ABSTRACT

Three decades after it was first published, Richard Quinney's The Social Reality of Crime remains an eloquent and important statement on crime, law, and justice. In The Problem of Crime, Quinney extended the idea that law is the creation and interpretation of specialized rules in a politically organized society, by formulating a new concept of crime, one that was more attuned to his evolving conception of science. The theory of the social reality of crime begins with the premise that criminality is not determined by the nature of the behavior itself; rather, crime is a category of human behavior that is created and imposed by authorized political agents, through the formulation of criminal definitions. Crime is a judgment made by some persons about the behavior and characteristics of others. Quinney argues that the images of crime and criminals created by the powerful segments are diffused throughout the society in their effort to control the actions of the less powerful segments.