Bagher Shamloo; Mahdi Kazemi Jouybari
Abstract
Defining the concept of crime is the starting point in the criminal
thought. Basically, any view taken on the concept of crime formulates the
other fundamental criminological concepts (such as the criminal and
etiology) as well as basic concepts of criminal policy system (such as justice,
criminalization ...
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Defining the concept of crime is the starting point in the criminal
thought. Basically, any view taken on the concept of crime formulates the
other fundamental criminological concepts (such as the criminal and
etiology) as well as basic concepts of criminal policy system (such as justice,
criminalization and prevention). In the light of the foregoing, we attempt to
discuss the concept of the crime in the framework of two distinct paradigms
of modernism and postmodernism. That said, we argue that while the
modernist reading conceives the crime with the presumption of the objective
nature or inherent meaning, the postmodernist reading, on the contrary,
replaces this presumption with the subjective nature or acquired meaning. In
order to develop this thesis, the ideas of postmodernism will first be
introduced. Subsequently, a critique of the modernist view of the crime will
be offered. Eventually, a new definition of the crime from the perspective of
the constitutive criminology will be provided. Despite the above-said
importance, this analysis of the meaning of the crime has never been touched
upon in the Persian literature of criminology.
