What Is a Crime?

The Law Commission of Canada is an independent federal law reform agency that advises Parliament on how to improve and modernize Canada's laws.

• Introduction / Nathalie Des Rosiers and Steven Bittle1 What is a Crime? A Secular Answer / Jean-Paul Brodeur, with Geneviève Ouellet2 Undocumented Migrants and Bill C-11: The Criminalization of Race / Wendy Chan3 Crime, Copyright, and the Digital Age / Steven Penney4 Criminalization in Private: The Case of Insurance Fraud / Richard V. Ericson and Aaron Doyle5 From Practical Joker to Offender: Reflections on the Concept of "Crime" / Pierre Rainville6 Poisoned Water, Environmental Regulation, and Crime: Constituting the Non-Culpable Subject in Walkerton, Ontario / Laureen SniderContributorsIndex

The contributors reflect on the social processes that form definitions of crimes and enforcement, and indicating the subjective nature of same. This is a scholarly work that should be of interest to criminal justice practitioners and anyone with a stake in our current approaches to crime. - Ronald F. MacIsaac (The Barrister, June 2005) On the whole, I enjoyed this collections of essays and would recommend it for anyone with a serious interest in criminal law. - David Rose, Neuberger Rose LLP (Queen's Law Journal, Fall 2005) The research contributions of this volume are useful additions to the literature, and will be appreciated by scholars and students in more than one discipline. - Greg Marquis, Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick Contributing authors to this collection of six essays bring together a range of multi-disciplinary and critical perspectives on the question of "what is a crime?" and how we define criminal conduct in contemporary society ... This collection of essays will be of interest to scholars and students in criminology, law, philosophy, political science, sociology as well as all individuals and policy makers who work in the criminal justice sector. - Nancy-Louise Hustins (Ottawa Law Review, 36:2)