Topic

Crime

Crime in this collection is treated with a scepticism that extends to the institutions that define it. Aristotle on poverty as the parent of revolution and crime is the structural argument: crime is not a deviation from social norms but often a consequence of the conditions those norms produce. Napoleon on religion keeping the poor from murdering the rich is the political economy version of the same insight. Bierce on alliance as the union of two thieves gives international relations its most honest definition and implies that crime is less exceptional than the word suggests. Rogers on new ways of killing in every war is the institutional version: states commit crimes on a scale that individuals cannot approach, and call it something else. Wilde on every saint having a past and every sinner a future is the most redemptive entry: the moral taxonomy is more permeable than the legal one. What the collection argues is that crime is a category defined by power as much as by harm, and that the most consequential crimes are usually the ones that are not called by that name.