ABSTRACT
The unbroken line which hits the roof gives the number per 1,000 inhabitants of all cases of crime investigated by the police in Norway from 1956 to 1997. Crimes against people’s honour have gone down substantially – in absolute figures from 1,103 to 745. The extreme case is natural crime, acts so wrong that they virtually define themselves as crimes, or are at least regarded as crimes by all reasonable humans. With a living tradition from the period where natural crimes were the only ones, combined with an unlimited reservoir of what can be seen as crimes in modern times, the ground has been prepared. The crime control market is waiting for its entrepreneurs. In societies with limited tendencies to perceive acts as crimes, and where most potentialities for such acts are prevented by God’s eye, neighbours’ attendance and situational restrictions, law can be seen as a receiver of the left-over.
