For decades, scholars have disagreed about what kinds of behaviour count as crime. Is it simply a violation of the criminal law? Or is it behaviour that causes serious harm? This examination of crime features contributors who debate the content of crime from various diverse perspectives.

In What Is Crime?, the first book-length treatment of the topic, contributors debate the content of crime from diverse perspectives: consensus/moral, cultural/relative, conflict/power, anarchist/critical, feminist, racial/ethnic, postmodernist, and integrational. Henry and Lanier synthesize these perspectives and explore what each means for crime control policy.