Leisure, deviant leisure, and crime: “Caution: Objects may be closer than they appear”

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the imprecise definitions and likelihood of significant potential overlapping relationships among the concepts of leisure including casual and serious leisure (Stebbins, 1997; 1999); deviant leisure; and crime. Indeed, categorizations have been made between casual and serious leisure, normal and deviant leisure, while criminal behaviour may be included as a subset of deviant leisure (Rojek, 1999a). Although at face value the relationship between crime and deviant leisure appears to be somewhat forthright, what is much less apparent is the possibility that in specific cases, common and important variants of normal leisure may also overlap with criminal motivations and behaviours. Similarly, boundaries between normal and deviant leisure also may be blurred. Using a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates both leisure and forensics sciences, we suggest a new positioning of these various constructs in relation to each other, which may substantially impact the ways “leisure,” “deviant leisure,” and “crime” are conceptualized and operationalized by leisure and criminology scholars and professionals. We also propose a typology based on the work of Stebbins (1996, 1997) for better understanding the different dimensions of deviant leisure as it may relate to current views of leisure and crime.