2.9 Conclusion

This chapter opened by suggesting that while there are many crimes that many people agree upon, several crimes are criminalised for moral and political reasons rather than out of concern for public safety. Therefore, it is important to be skeptical of the ways used to define and classify crime and the official statistics that flow from them, especially when considering offence disparities that sometimes emerge in minority and Indigenous populations. Patterns and rates of several types of crime were reviewed. The chapter ended with a discussion of how crime patterns are shaped over time and how certain events, such as environmental changes, technological advances, social unrest, and global pandemics, can affect these patterns.