Asking the right questions about crime

Criminologist Dr Laura Bui wants us to ask the right questions when it comes to crime. The popular genre of ‘true crime’ may be popular but is it helping us better understand the origins of crime?

We turn to crime novels, film and documentaries to compare ourselves to both victims and perpetrators. How different are we? This genre loves to tell us the ‘origin stories’ of infamous criminals to tell us of their childhoods and often past traumas - as if to explain their future actions. But this can have the effect of erasing the victims, diminishing their memory in some way.

But is the habit of asking ‘why’ a criminal committed a crime and not ‘how’ they got to the point of becoming a criminal flawed? We take one criminal out of the public only to have them replaced by another - Laura argues asking ‘how’ helps to finally break this cycle.

Presenter - Olly Mann Producer- Jordan Dunbar Editor - Tara McDermott SM- Rod Farquhar