ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses first on the concept and presentation of crime as a key to understanding lynching. If mob murder has been largely a process of punishing criminals, why has crime in some places and times assumed terrible dimensions in a community’s eyes, producing a violent response? A second section of the chapter explores how the social communities of perpetrators and victims, which have often been the same around the world, have reacted to lynching, an issue that is also closely tied to perceptions of crime.
