Crimes are commissions of acts that are publicly proscribed or the omissions of duties that thereby make offenders liable to legal punishment. More colloquially, a crime is any grave offense, particularly against morality, and thus something reprehensible, foolish, or disgraceful. Criminal behavior is in most cases unethical; it has also been subjected to scientific study in criminology. Technological change has in turn given rise to new forms of crime.

Legal Traditions

In some legal traditions, there is a distinction between crimes and torts. The former are offenses against the state or society that are enforced by agents of the state. The latter are offenses against specific citizens, which the machinery of the state will enforce only if victims pursue their grievances in the form of a civil suit. The boundary between these categories is fluid, as discussed below with respect to homicide's historical transition from tort to crime...