Legal Dimensions Series Analysis

What Is a Crime?

Legal Dimensions Series This series stems from an annual legal and socio-legal research initiative sponsored by the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, the Canadian Law and Society Association, the Canadian Council of Deans, and the Law Commission of Canada. Volumes in this series examine various issues of law reform from a multidisciplinary perspective. The series seeks to advance our knowledge about law and society through the analysis of fundamental aspects of law. The essays in this volume were selected by representatives from each partner association: Dorothy Chunn (Canadian Law and Society Association), John EcEvoy (Canadian Association of Law Teachers), Beth Bilson (Canadian Council of Law Deans), and Steven Bittle
A Secular Answer / 1 Jean-Paul Brodeur, with Geneviève Ouellet 2 Undocumented Migrants and Bill C-11: The Criminalization of Race / 34 Wendy Chan 3 Crime, Copyright, and the Digital Age / 61 Steven Penney 4 Criminalization in Private: The Case of Insurance Fraud / 99 Richard V. Ericson and Aaron Doyle 5 From Practical Joker to Offender: Reflections on the Concept of “Crime” / 125 Pierre Rainville 6 Poisoned Water, Environmental Regulation, and Crime: Constituting the Nonculpable Subject in Walkerton, Ontario / 155 Laureen Snider Contributors / 185 Index /
David Garland (2001, 120) reminds us of this by arguing that there is “an emerging distinction between the punishment of criminals, which remains the business of the state (and becomes once again a significant symbol of state power), and the control of crime, which is increasingly deemed to be ‘beyond the state’ in significant respects” (see also Hudson 1998; O’Malley 2000). What does this transformation mean for how we perceive and respond to crime? When and how is the use of criminal law and the formal legal justice system deemed appropriate? Also underscoring the importance of examining what constitutes a crime is the blurring of the lines between the public and private realms. Increasingly, the formal control of crime and unwanted behaviour is no longer solely within the purview of the state. For example, the privatization of various criminal justice system functions is very much part of Canadian criminal justice discourse. “Public sector agencies (prisons, probation, parole, the court system, etc.) are now being remodelled in ways that emulate the values and working practices of private industry” (Garland 2001, 18). What does this trend mean for how we define and control crime? Has the criminal justice system simply become, as Nils Christie (1994) has argued, an industry? The work of Michel Foucault (1979) and various