Can a Society Exist Without Crime?

Elliot Chan’s vlog on novels, world building, and crime

It’s pretty wonderful to think of a place without crime, but is such a concept possible?

Hypothetically, yes and no… See, crime is a social construct. What is deemed illegal in one society can be perfectly normal in another. Take legalization of cannabis, for example, one day it was illegal to smoke weed, the next day, it’s perfectly fine.

When I was building my fictional world, a fictional city to be exact, I wrote that that city had no crime. I now know that simply stating that is lazy writing. What do I mean by there having no crime? Is nothing illegal? Is everybody so enlightened that they don’t participate in any criminal activity?

Lazy writing isn’t a crime, but in this episode, I dig into that topic and unpack what I really meant when I wrote that my city had no crime.

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Reposted from Elliot Chan’s website.

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