ABSTRACT
We believe that a consideration of crime alone is inadequate when seeking to understand the defining factors of what constitutes an offence, and what is simply bad behaviour, let alone when seeking comprehension of the wider legal processes associated with dealing with crime and punishment. Scholars, professionals and practitioners debating these concepts, whether intellectually or as part of practical daily strategies, become participants in a set of wide-ranging discourses on the nature of society and societal behaviour, past and present. These discourses are selfevidently interdisciplinary in their intellectual remit, multi-agency in their practical applicability. They have the capacity to influence popular understandings of the ways in which society should react to the badly behaved and the actual ·criminal', according to the law, as well as to influence government policy and legal practice in this area. But where does the boundary lie between bad behaviour and crime? Any examination of crime across even a short period of time shows how fluid, within a single society, that boundary is, raising questions about how and why such boundaries shift.
