Crime is an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or
the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and
that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law;
especially: a gross violation of law. The behaviors criminalized
by law are sometimes disproportionately practiced by one group,
and those groups therefore take the brunt of the negative impact
of those laws. Example would be the U.S. federal laws against
distribution of crack cocaine (which is punished more severely
than distribution of identical quantities of pharmacologically
similar cocaine) and the laws against hiring illegal immigrants
as nannies. The former law tends to hit blacks the hardest,
while the latter tends to hit career women such as Linda Chavez,
who was disqualified from becoming U.S. Labor Secretary.
Natural and positive law Natural law theories view what
constitutes crime as being implied by the nature of man and his
requirements for life. Positive law theories view crime as
simply that which is defined by