The paper presents results of an empirical study of the system of social perceptions of crime in Russians. Questionnaires were used to find out the content and structure of these perceptions transmitted through interpersonal communication: the everyday definition of a "crime per se", types of actions identified by respondents as crimes, appraisal of the graveness and typicality of various crimes as well as murder scripts. In the second stage of the study murder scripts from crime news television programs were analysed with the help of content analysis.