Crime has become a huge topic in journalism, with endless scopes to discover, various information to collect and many questions to find answers to. It’s also a very emotional subject because of the harm that criminality causes to people and society. It’s important to be ethical and sensitive when writing about this. The last thing you want is to glorify violence and evoke trauma in your readers. This is why great true crime writers are so successful. They know how to take complex, chaotic real life events and transform them into a compelling narrative with suspense and tension.
What’s considered a crime reflects values, and values change over time and across cultures. Anthropologists and sociologists have found that what’s defined as a criminal act depends upon the culture of the place, and the circumstances in which it occurs. For example, the behavior of white-collar workers in modern businesses may cause socially harmful effects, but it evades criminal law. This is because it primarily involves the misuse of power, rather than the violation of specific laws.
For this reason, some criminologists are concerned with the politics of defining crime, and the processes by which interested groups control how it’s framed in the media and in popular culture. They’re also interested in how these definitions are then translated into formal law. This is a key concern of constructionist and critical criminology views, which explore the way in which the powerful exert their influence to shape the meaning of laws.