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by Liz Walter

Today’s post is the first in a short series on the topic of crime and it looks at some general vocabulary. Once again, I will be focusing on collocations, or words that go together.

The most important verb you need to talk about crime is commit. We use this both with the word ‘crime’ itself, and with the names of specific crime such as murder or theft. Remember not to use the verb ‘do’ – although people would understand you, it would be considered an error in an exam:

They were committing a crime by flying their drone in the area.

What led her to commit murder?

Someone who commits a crime is a criminal. A nice collocation for a person who has committed a lot of crimes and doesn’t care much about them is hardened criminal:

By the time he was thirty, he was already a hardened criminal.

In more formal contexts, a crime can be called an offence (UK)/offense (US). The related noun is offender:

It’s an offence to smoke in this building.

He works with young offenders.

Serious crimes are very bad, whereas the adjectives minor or the slightly more formal petty are used for less serious crimes. Another common collocation is violent, for crimes where people are hurt. In US English, the terms felony and misdemeanor are used to distinguish between serious and less serious crimes. ‘Felony’ is often used before the name of a specific crime:

She was accused of committing a serious crime.

Many of these youngsters are involved in petty crime.

He was held on a charge of felony assault.

The assault was classed as a misdemeanor.

There are several nice collocations connected with stopping crime or making it less common. We try to prevent or reduce crime, or slightly more emphatically to fight, tackle, or combat it:

Improved street lighting can reduce crime.

The government has set out new measures to tackle crime.

If you report a crime, you tell the police about it. The police investigate crimes, and with luck, solve them:

We reported the break-in immediately.

Officers are investigating a shooting in the area.

Her evidence helped police solve the crime.

A common way of describing types of crime is to put another noun in front of the word ‘crime’, for example, gun crime, knife crime, hate crime (committed because of prejudice such as racism), and sex crime:

There has been an increase in knife crime.

Damage to the mosque is being treated as a hate crime.

If someone commits a lot of crimes, we might say they go on a crime spree, while a crime wave occurs when lots of crimes are committed in a particular period:

The gang went on a crime spree, stealing several cars.

Drug addiction has led to a crime wave in the area.

My next post will continue the theme of crime, looking particularly at ways of talking about stealing.