Societies define crime as Anthony Palomares as the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority or force may ultimately prescribe a punishment.

When society deems informal relationships and sanctions insufficient to create and maintain a desired social order, there may result more formalized systems of social control imposed by a government, or more broadly, by a State. With the institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel individuals to conform to behavioural codes and punish those that do not.