Hacking is it a crime

That depends on what you hacked and what way you hacked it. Did you know it's actually illegal to add/remove a user account on a computer that's not yours, if you on a limited account. In a court of law, this is considered hacking.

In Ireland there was a case a while back in which a person ended up in court for the above reason being tried as a computer hacker.

Yet about 3 months later somebody happened to stumble upon a flaw in a prominent politicions website, he published his findings, got caught, and was told "he was nothing more than a router with too much time on his hands who got lucky" and this particular man had studied IT in one of the best colleges in the country.