What Crime Reveals About Us

I was watching a show with my son when the question was raised:

How has crime changed over time?

What began as casual curiosity unfolded into something much larger. It became an inquiry into the nature of law, power, harm, and justice.

And what I saw stopped me in my tracks.

Law Is Not Justice

We’re taught to believe that crime is simple: people do bad things, and the law holds them accountable.

But that’s not how it works.

The truth is, crime is not a measure of harm—it’s a reflection of what a society cannot tolerate at a given moment in time.

That line—the intolerable—moves.

• In tribal communities, hoarding food might have been intolerable.

• In medieval Europe, heresy or healing outside the church was criminalized.

• In industrial cities, striking for fair wages was seen as a threat to order.

• Today, the line sits uneasily around things like drug possession, tax evasion, property damage—often targeting the poor, while the wealthy move freely through loopholes carved in marble.

Law doesn’t exist to ensure justice.

Law exists to protect the current order.

And that order is almost always shaped by those who benefit from it.

Crime Reveals What We Choose Not to See

What we call “criminal” often has less to do with the act and more to do with who commits it, and to whom.

• Steal a loaf of bread and you’re a criminal.

• Steal wages, land, or clean air, and you’re a CEO.

• Survive poverty and trauma with addiction or theft, and the cage awaits.

• Evade billions in taxes, and you’re awarded for your “financial savvy.”

We don’t prosecute harm—we prosecute the powerless.

And we excuse harm when it’s done by the powerful.

Crime, then, becomes a mirror.

It shows us who we value.

And who we’ve already written off.

Predatory Crime and the Fracture of Relationship

And yet, some forms of crime shake us at the core:

serial violence, sadistic harm, pedophilia, abuse.

These aren’t about property or profit. They are ruptures in the human spirit.

But even here, the lines of intolerable have been drawn unequally.

For centuries, domestic abuse was dismissed as private.

Child exploitation was ignored or institutionalized.

Victims who were poor, racialized, queer, Indigenous, or women were silenced—while perpetrators walked free behind titles, uniforms, and sacred robes.

Society didn’t see these acts as intolerable—not because the pain was less, but because the people were.

The Root Is Othering

At the root of both systemic and predatory crime lies one fracture:

othering.

The act of deciding that some lives matter less.

This is how racialized communities are overpoliced and underprotected.

How poor people are punished for surviving.

How entire populations are seen as problems to be managed, not people to be cared for.

Crime doesn’t just reveal what we forbid.

It reveals who we have failed to see as fully human.

So What Would Justice Actually Look Like?

If the legal system isn’t designed for justice—then what is?

Where does justice live?

It lives in right relationship.

• Where harm is understood as a rupture, not just a rule broken.

• Where the response is repair, not exile.

• Where survivors are honored and those who cause harm are held accountable within a framework of restoration—not punishment alone.

In a system of right relationship:

• The intolerable would no longer be defined by what threatens power.

• It would be defined by what severs connection, dignity, and trust.

Dehumanization would be intolerable.

Exploitation would be intolerable.

Silence would be intolerable.

Many Indigenous Justice Systems Have Shown Us the Way

This vision is not new.

It lives in the memory of many Indigenous peoples, whose justice systems were built not on punishment, but on balance, kinship, and repair.

Among many First Nations, harm was addressed through circle processes, where the community came together—not to cast out, but to speak truth, name impact, and guide restoration.

• Accountability meant facing those you harmed, hearing their pain, and making things right.

• Healing was collective.

• Exile was rare—and used only when restoration was truly impossible.

In these systems, relationship was the measure of justice.

The goal was not retribution, but to return the person—and the community—to wholeness.

These traditions remind us that it’s not only possible, but ancient, to build justice around care rather than control.

Justice as Atmosphere, Not Institution

A truly just society wouldn’t house justice in courthouses.

It would breathe it.

It would teach it in classrooms, practice it in communities, model it in leadership.

We’d have healing councils instead of prosecutors.

Truth-telling circles instead of adversarial trials.

Sanctuaries of accountability—not cages of shame.

We wouldn’t just punish wrong—we’d tend to what went wrong.

We’d protect people, not just property.

We’d build systems that see everyone as worthy of repair.

The Invitation

We cannot wait for the legal system to become just.

It was not built for that.

But we can build justice into our lives.

Into our policies, our movements, our imaginations.

Because justice is not a law.

It’s a practice.

A remembering.

A radical act of saying: no one is disposable.

Not the harmed.

Not the ones who cause harm.

Not us.

We don’t need more rules.

We need more relationship.

We need to decide—together—what we can no longer tolerate.

And make sure it begins with anything that denies our shared humanity.