Crime and silence: ‘death and life are in the power of the tongue’ (Proverbs 18:21)

This article examines the constitutive role that silence performs in relation to crime; an area of study that remains relatively under theorized in criminological traditions more attuned to examining the noise that those party to the criminal act engage in, rather than the silence they also do. This article seeks to rectify this deficit by considering silence as the absent presence of crime. It outlines a methodological approach for excavating silence and applies it through undertaking a substantive analysis of the silence that perpetrators, control agents, bystanders and victims do.