Crime and Deviance - Neomarxism

Question 1

critical of traditional marxism, too deterministic
- WC are active agents with free will, voluntarily choose to commit crime as a political response to their negative experience of capitalism
- crime is a deliberate and meaningful political response by the powerless to protest against injustice, exploitation and alienation

Answer 1

Neomarxism - ‘new criminology’

Question 2

RC is aware of revolutionary potential of WC crime (aligns with marxism revolution)
- has taken steps to control it e.g police ‘occupying’ WC areas
- public police reports target black criminals to divide WC ethnic groups –> an ideological function of the RC
- this reduces the revolutionary power of WC through societal fragmentation

Answer 2

Stuart Hall

Question 3

Taylor, Walton and Young - fully social theory of deviance

Answer 3

identifies 6 key questions that need to be answered in order to understand crime and societies response to it

Question 4

A03 of neomarxism

Answer 4

• over romanticises WC criminals as ‘robin hoods’ (fighting capitalism through theft from the rich to the poor)
• political motive underpinning extreme crimes e.g rape very unlikely

Question 5

A03
Both Marxists and Neomarxists are too general to explain crime and too idealistic in that if capitalist societies are ‘fixed’ to be more equal, crime will halt

Answer 5

Roger Hopkins Burke