Learning Objectives
- Explain the general public's concern about crime, especially in relation to media.
- Describe how crime is categorized and measured in the United States.
- Summarize how the three major sociological perspectives frame problems of crime, and how specific theories within them explain crime.
- Identify myths and realities related to the connection between crime and immigration.
- Describe how crime varies by areas of social location such as social class, race, gender, and age.
- List several consequences of crime, particularly for white-collar crime and violence against women, and of social control.
- Define terms related to the criminal justice system and inequality such as social control and the prison industrial complex.
- Evaluate solutions to reduce crime and address other problems related to the criminal justice system.
Put most simply, crime is behavior that is prohibited by the criminal law because it is considered harmful or offensive. This simple understanding, however, raises many questions:
- Who decides what is offensive or harmful?
- Are some harmful behaviors not considered crimes, and are some crimes not that harmful?
- Are some people more likely than others to be considered criminals because of their race, nationality, social class, or other areas of social location?
These questions lie at the heart of the sociological study of deviance, of which crime is a special type. Deviance is behavior that violates social norms and results in social disapproval. This definition reflects the common sociological view that deviance is concerned with what other people think about the behavior. This view is reflected in an often-cited quote from sociologist Howard S. Becker (1963: 9) who wrote several decades ago that “deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules or sanctions to an ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.”
This definition reminds us that some harmful behaviors, such as white-collar crime, may not be considered deviant and fail to result in severe legal punishment, perhaps because wealthy individuals perform them. It also reminds us that some less harmful behaviors, such as sex work, may be considered very deviant because the culture deems the behavior immoral and because poor people engage in them. As these possibilities suggest, the application of a criminal label to an offender is problematic: People arrested and/or convicted of a crime may not have engaged in a very harmful behavior (or even engaged in the behavior of which they are suspected), and people with no criminal record have in fact engaged in harmful and even criminal behavior.
In this chapter, we'll cover a variety of social problems and concerns related to crime and the criminal justice system. Keep in mind as we discuss these issues that what is considered 'deviant' or 'criminal' is socially constructed, that there are problems in the ways we treat or punish people deemed 'criminal,' and that the targeting of people deemed 'criminal' perpetuates social inequalities. We will discuss crime itself including perceptions and myths, definitions and definitions, variation among perpetrators and victims, and consequences of crime. We will also connect crime to immigration, particularly the myth of the criminal immigrant, as well as to social control, particularly in the criminal justice system.
Public Concern about Crime
The American public is clearly concerned about crime. In a 2024 Gallup poll, nearly two-thirds of the public (64%) thought that crime had risen from the previous year, down from 77% in the year prior. Over half (56%) described crime as 'extremely' or 'very' serious (Brenan 2024). In 2023, 40% said that they would be afraid to walk alone at night within a mile of their home, half worried about having their car stolen or broken into, and over a quarter (28%) feared being murdered (Saad 2023). Although the public is concerned about crime, at least some of this concern might exceed what the facts about crime would justify. For example, although most of the public thinks the crime rate has been rising, this rate has actually been declining since the early 1990s. Regarding the fear of being murdered, homicides are quite rare, it does not rank among the top ten causes of death, and the number of homicides is much lower than the number of deaths from harmful behavior by corporations such as pollution or unsafe products and workplaces. Crime is indeed a real problem, but public concern about crime may be higher than the facts warrant. Why?
Media Myths
News media coverage of crime may be partly responsible (Robinson 2011). For example, if the television news and newspapers suddenly have several stories about a few sensationalized crimes, public concern about crime may jump, even though crime in general has not risen at all. Similarly, the news media have increased their crime coverage even when crime is falling, as happened during the early 1990s when the major US television networks more than doubled their nightly news stories about crime even though crime had been declining (Freeman 1994).
The news media, in fact, distort the amount and nature of crime in several ways (Surette 2011). First, they overdramatize crime by reporting it in many news stories. Crime dominates news coverage in many newspapers and television newscasts, and, as just noted, the media may devote much coverage to a few sensational crimes and create the false impression that a 'crime wave' is occurring when the crime rate may even be declining.
Second, the media devote particularly heavy coverage to violent crime. For example, research indicates that more than 25% of crime stories on evening newscasts and in newspapers concern homicide, even though homicide comprises less than 1% of all crime (Feld 2003). Similarly, the vast majority of crime stories feature violent crime, even though violent crime comprises only about 12-14% of all street crimes combined. Media attention to violent crime thus gives the public the false impression that most crime is violent when in fact most crime involves a theft or another property crime.
News media often feature violent crime, even though violent crime comprises only a small portion of all crime.
Darla Hueske – did not cross – CC BY-ND 2.0
Third, the media tend to highlight crimes committed by Black people or other people of color as well as crimes with white victims. A greater percentage of crime stories involve people of color as offenders than is accurate in arrest statistics. A greater percentage of crime stories also involve whites as victims than is actually true, and newspaper stories of white-victim crimes are longer than those of Black-victim crimes. Crimes in which Black people are the offenders and whites are the victims also receive disproportionate media coverage even though most crimes involve offenders and victims of the same race. In all these ways, the news media exaggerate the extent to which people of color commit crimes and the extent to which white people are victims of crimes.
In addition to news media, politicians and government officials have exaggerated the extent of crime, posting false claims on social media or conducting news interviews or filmed press conferences, which is then covered in the news media. Thus, media myths about crime and 'criminals' help fuel public fear about crime. What's the reality of crime?
Measuring Crime
It is surprisingly difficult to know how much crime occurs. Usually when it occurs, only the criminal and the victim, and sometimes occasional witnesses, know about it. We thus have an incomplete picture of the crime problem, but because of various data sources we still have a pretty good understanding of how much crime exists and of who is most likely to commit it and be victimized by it.
The government’s primary source of crime data is the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) (formerly the Uniform Crime Reports), published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). With data from police departments around the country, NIBRS logs details on each reported crime incident, such as demographic information about victims and offenders, relationships between the two. However, many crime victims do not report their crimes to the police, and the police thus do not know about them to report them to the FBI. These unreported crimes represent 'hidden crimes' or, as they are often called, the 'dark figure of crime.'
This underreporting of crime represents a major concern. To get a more accurate picture, the federal government began in the early 1970s to administer a survey, now called the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), to tens of thousands of randomly selected US households. People in the households are asked whether they or their residence has been the victim of several different types of crimes in the past half year. Their responses are then extrapolated to the entire US population to yield fairly accurate estimates of the actual number of crimes occurring in the nation. The figures can be striking: The Bureau of Justice Statistics, using the NCVS, counted 6,419,060 violent crimes and 13,637,450 property crimes in 2023, for a total of over 20 million crimes (Tapp & Coen 2024).
The image below, from a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, indicates the differences between the NIBRS and the NCVS. We can see that for 2022 the NCVS estimates more property crimes and violent crimes than the NIBRS as well as more property crime in 2021; however, the NCVS estimates fewer violent crimes in 2021. Thus, we should keep in mind when examining crime data that figures may not match because of the differing measurement used.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
A third source of crime information is the self-report survey. Here subjects, usually adolescents, indicate on an anonymous questionnaire whether and how often they committed various offenses in, say, the past year. Typically, they also answer questions about their family relationships, school performance, and other aspects of their backgrounds. Self-report studies have yielded valuable information about delinquency and explanations of crime. Like the NCVS, they underscore how much crime is committed that does not come to the attention of the police.
Types of Crime
Many types of crime exist. Criminologists commonly group crimes into several major categories: Violent crime, property crime, white-collar crime, organized crime, and consensual or victimless crime, though there are other categories such as cybercrime or transnational crime. Within each category, many more specific crimes exist. For example, violent crime includes homicide, aggravated and simple assault, rape and sexual assault, and robbery, while property crime includes burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. A full discussion of the many types of crime is beyond the scope of this chapter; instead we highlight here the most important dimensions of some major categories of crime and the issues they raise for public safety and crime control.
Violent Crime
Even if, as our earlier discussion indicated, the news media exaggerate the problem of violent crime, it remains true that violent crime plagues many communities around the country and is the type of crime that most concerns Americans. A sizable proportion of the American public fears being victimized by violent crime, including murder, as mentioned above. Though, women fear crime more than men. In the 2023 Gallup poll, women were more likely than men to say that fear of being victimized by crime has prevented them from walking or jogging alone in their area, as well as less likely to go to parks, talk to strangers, and attend crowded events due to fear of victimization (Saad 2023). The decline in violent crime over the past several decades has not lightened these fears, likely in part due to the media myths discussed above.
Data consistently show declining rates of violent crime since the 1990s. How did your perception of violent crime rates differ from this reality?
Source: Grawert 2024
Research on violent crime tends to focus on homicide and on rape and sexual assault. Homicide, of course, is considered the most serious crime because it involves the taking of a human life. As well, homicide data are considered more accurate than those for other crimes because most homicides come to the attention of the police and are more likely than other crimes to lead to an arrest. For its part, the focus on rape and sexual assault reflects the contemporary women’s movement’s interest in these related crimes beginning in the 1970s and the corresponding interest of criminologists in the criminal victimization of women. Homicide has been falling, as with violent crime in general.
Homicide surged during the pandemic but has steadily been declining since.
Source: Wu and Arango 2025
Other aspects of homicide are worth noting. First, although some homicides are premeditated, most in fact are relatively spontaneous and the result of intense emotions like anger, hatred, or jealousy (Fox, Levin, & Quinet 2012). Two people may begin arguing for any number of reasons, and the argument escalates.
Second, most homicide offenders and victims knew each other before the homicide occurred. Indeed, about three-fourths of all homicides involve nonstrangers, and only one-fourth involve strangers. Intimate partners (spouses or romantic partners and exes) and other relatives commit almost 30% of all homicides (Messner, Deane, & Beaulieu 2002). Thus although fear of a deadly attack by a stranger dominates the American consciousness, we in fact are much more likely on average to be killed by someone we know than by someone we do not know. Third, about two-thirds of homicides involve firearms. To be a bit more precise, just over half involve a handgun, and the remaining firearm-related homicides involve a shotgun, rifle, or another undetermined firearm.
Combining these first three aspects, then, the most typical homicide involves nonstrangers who have an argument that escalates and then results in the use of deadly force when one of the antagonists uses a handgun.
Fourth, most homicides (as most violent crime in general) are intraracial, meaning that they occur within the same race – the offender and victim are of the same race. Although white people fear victimization by Black people more than by other whites, whites in fact are much more likely to be killed by other white people. Fifth, men commit about the great majority of all homicides. Men are much more likely than women to commit most forms of crime, and this is especially true for homicide and other violent crime.
Finally, the homicide rate rose in the late 1980s and peaked during the early 1990s before declining sharply until the early 2000s and then leveling off or declining since. Although debate continues over why the homicide rate declined during the 1990s, many criminologists attribute the decline to a strong economy, an ebbing of gang wars over drug trafficking, and a decline of people in the 15-25 age group that commits a disproportionate amount of crime (Blumstein & Wallman 2006).
Property Crime
Property crime (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson) is far more common than violent crime. For instance, the FBI reported 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 1,954.4 property crimes per 100,000 people in 2022, a difference of over 1,500 (Gramlich 2024). Although property crime has in fact declined along with violent crime since the early 1990s, it still is considered a major component of the crime problem, because it is so common and produces losses of billions of dollars annually. Many Americans have installed burglar alarms and other security measures in their homes and similar devices in their cars and SUVs due to the fear of victimization.
Larceny or theft is by far the most common type of property crime. Much property crime can be understood in terms of the roles and social networks of property criminals. In this regard, many scholars distinguish between amateur theft and professional theft. Most property offenders are amateur offenders: They are young and unskilled in the ways of crime, and the amount they gain from any single theft is relatively small. They also do not plan their crimes and instead commit them when they see an opportunity for quick illegal gain. In contrast, professional property offenders tend to be older and quite skilled in the ways of crime, and the amount they gain from any single theft is relatively large. Not surprisingly, they often plan their crimes well in advance. The so-called cat burglar, someone who scales tall buildings to steal jewels, expensive artwork, or large sums of money, is perhaps the prototypical example of the professional property criminals. Many professional thieves learn how to do their crimes from other professional thieves, and in this sense they are mentored by the latter just as students are mentored by professors, and young workers by older workers.
White-Collar Crime
If you were asked to picture a criminal in your mind, what image would you be likely to think of first: A scruffy young man with a scowl on his face, or a handsome middle-aged man dressed in an expensive business suit? The former image likely comes to mind first, yet white-collar crime is arguably much more harmful than other forms of crime, both in terms of economic loss and of physical injury, illness, and even death.
What exactly is white-collar crime? The most famous definition comes from Edwin Sutherland, a sociologist who defined white-collar crime in the 1940s as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (1949: 9). Sutherland examined the behavior of the seventy largest US corporations and found that they had violated the law hundreds of times among them. Several had engaged in crimes during either World War I or II; they provided defective weapons and spoiled food to US troops and even sold weapons to Germany and other nations the US was fighting.
Although white-collar crime as studied today includes auto shop repair fraud and employee theft by cashiers, bookkeepers, and other employees of relatively low status, most research follows Sutherland’s definition in focusing on crime committed by people of “respectability and high social status.” Thus much of the study of white-collar crime today focuses on fraud by physicians, attorneys, and other professionals and on illegal behavior by executives of corporations designed to protect or improve corporate profits, called corporate crime. As we discuss on the Patterns page, corporate crime involves a heavy economic and health toll on its victims and for society at large.
The asbestos industry learned in the 1930s that asbestos was a major health hazard, but it kept this discovery a secret for more than three decades.
Aaron Suggs – Asbestos – CC BY 2.0
By any measure, the toll of white-collar crime dwarfs the toll of street crime, even though the latter worries us much more than white-collar crime. Despite the harm that white-collar crime causes, the typical corporate criminal receives much more lenient punishment, if any, than the typical street criminal (Rosoff et al. 2010).
Organized Crime
Organized crime refers to criminal activity by groups or organizations whose major purpose for existing is to commit such crime. When we hear the term 'organized crime,' many of us think of something like the Mafia, vividly portrayed in the Godfather movies and other films, that comprises several highly organized and hierarchical Italian American 'families.' The emphasis on Italian domination of organized crime overlooks these other groups' involvements and diverts attention from the actual roots of organized crime.
What are these roots? Simply put, organized crime exists and even thrives because it provides goods and/or services that the public demands. Organized crime flourished during the 1920s because it was all too ready and willing to provide an illegal product, alcohol, that the pubic continued to demand even after Prohibition began. Today, organized crime earns its considerable money from products and services such as illegal drugs, sex work, pornography, loan sharking, and gambling. It also began long ago to branch out into legal activities such as trash hauling and the vending industry.
Government efforts against organized crime since the 1920s have focused on arrest, prosecution, and other law-enforcement strategies. Organized crime has certainly continued despite these efforts. This fact leads some scholars to emphasize the need to reduce public demand for the goods and services that organized crime provides. However, other scholars say that reducing this demand is probably a futile or mostly futile task, and they instead urge consideration of legalizing at least some of the illegal products and services (e.g., drugs and prostitution) that organized crime provides. Doing so, they argue, would weaken the influence of organized crime.
Victimless Crime
Victimless crime, or consensual crime, refers to behaviors in which people engage voluntarily and willingly even though these behaviors violate the law. Illegal drug use is a major form of victimless crime; other forms include sex work, gambling, and pornography. These behaviors are not entirely victimless, as illegal drug users, for example, may harm themselves and others, though they are conceptualized as being without a victim.
Victimless crime raises two questions: First, to what degree should the government ban behaviors that people willingly commit and that generally do not have unwilling victims? Second, do government attempts to ban such behaviors do more good than harm or more harm than good? Problems arise from laws against crime. For example, laws against sex work may perpetuate gender and class inequalities and the criminalization of minor drug crimes resulted in mass incarceration.
Critics of crime laws for this form of crime say we are now in a new prohibition and that our laws against illegal drugs, sex work, and certain forms of gambling are causing the same problems now that the ban on alcohol did during the 1920s and, more generally, cause more harm than good. Proponents of these laws respond that the laws are still necessary as an expression of society’s moral values and as a means, however imperfect, of reducing involvement in harmful behaviors.
As we have seen, there are many categories and types of crime. Some involve victims, others do not. Some involve low-income people trying to survive, some involve rich people trying to gain more wealth. Some involve violence, some involve property. And so on. Crime itself is a social problem, and we will discuss more consequences of crime for victims, families, and society. First, however, we will turn to an introduction of how immigration fits into a chapter on crime.
Immigration
In this chapter we cover immigration for a few reasons: The false connection between immigrants and crime, the reality that some immigration is unauthorized, and the ways that the institution of the state has engaged in social control of immigrants.
Immigration is a source of great controversy in the US and in many other countries. This controversy is perhaps almost inevitable, as increasing numbers of migrants can affect aspects of society such as city crowding and housing availability. However, the fact that immigration can cause these complications does not justify the prejudice and hostility that have routinely greeted migrants to the US and elsewhere. As the number of immigrants in the US grew rapidly in various historical eras, native-born white people perceived threats to their jobs, land, and other resources and responded with mob violence.
The history of the US is filled with prejudice and hostility of this type. This nation was settled, or colonized, by immigrants who came to these shores seeking political and religious freedom and economic opportunity (we will discuss in a later chapter what this meant for Indigenous peoples on this land). Despite this reality, when great waves of immigrants came to the US beginning in the nineteenth century, they were hardly greeted with open arms (Roediger 2006). During the first half of this century, some three million Irish immigrants, most of them Catholic, moved to the US. Because these immigrants were not Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the native-born white population (most of whom were Anglo-Saxon Protestants) deeply disliked them and even considered them to be a different 'race' than white. During the 1850s, the so-called Know-Nothing Party, composed of native-born white people, was openly hostile to Irish immigrants and would engage in mob violence against them, even murder. Later waves of immigrants from Italian, Polish, and Jewish backgrounds also were not considered fully 'white' and were subject to employment discrimination and other prejudice and hostility.
Beginning with the California gold rush of 1849 and continuing after the Civil War, great numbers of Chinese immigrants came to the US and helped to build the nation’s railroads and performed other important roles. They, too, were greeted with hostility by native-born whites who feared that the Chinese were taking away their jobs (Pfaelzer 2008). As the national economy worsened during the 1870s, riots against the Chinese occurred in western cities. In more than three hundred cities and towns, white mobs went into Chinese neighborhoods, burned them down, and murdered some Chinese residents while forcing the remainder to leave town. Congress outlawed Chinese immigration in 1882, with this ban lasting for almost a century.
During the 1930s, rising numbers of Mexican Americans in the western US led to similar hostility (Daniels 2002). The fact that this decade was the time of the Great Depression deepened white citizens' concerns that Mexican immigrants were taking away their jobs. White-owned newspapers falsely claimed that these immigrants posed a violent threat to white Americans, and that their supposed violence was made more likely by their use of 'marijuana' – a term that was intentionally Spanish to tie cannabis use to Mexican people in order to demonize them. It is estimated that at least 500,000 Mexican people returned to their native country, either because they were forcibly deported or because they returned there themselves under great pressure.
This student-created ancillary displays data on unauthorized immigrants in the US and addresses misconceptions and realities about unauthorized immigrants.
When people think about immigration to the United States, they often picture Mexicans crossing the southern border. But the story is much bigger than that. Immigrants come from all over the world, each with their own reasons for leaving home. Many come from Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, fleeing poverty, gang violence, and political instability. Others, like Haitians, are escaping the aftermath of natural disasters. Still more come from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, seeking education, safety, and a chance at a better life. Geography plays a role, too. It’s no surprise that the largest numbers of unauthorized immigrants come from South and Central America, including Mexico, because the countries are nearby and land travel is possible. But numbers only tell part of the story. Every immigrant has a journey filled with challenges, hopes, and dreams. The United States immigration system touches millions of lives, shaping communities, workplaces, and schools across the country. And while headlines often focus on certain groups, every immigrant contributes to American society in meaningful ways through work, culture, and community. Understanding the full story of immigration means recognizing the struggles and strengths of all those who come, not just the ones most visible in the news.
Datawrapper. N.d. “Create Charts, Maps, and Tables.” www.datawrapper.de/.
Office of Homeland Security Statistics. 2025. “Estimates of the Illegal Alien Population Residing in the United States.” ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/illegal/population-estimates.
Origins of Unauthorized Immigrants by Aniyah Martinez, Sophia Wozniak, Colin Talbot, Sandra Gil is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Immigrants in the US today continue to experience hostility and stereotyping. With research findings and data, in this chapter we will counter the historical and contemporary misconception that immigrants are 'illegal,' bad people likely to be engaged in criminal activity that fuels much anti-immigrant sentiment. We will return to this issue on the Patterns page.
