REALIST ON CRIME

Question 1

Realist Perspective of Crime

Answer 1

• Realist approaches emerged in the 1970s and 1980s when a shift to the right in politics was taking place.
• New Right conservative governments came to power on both sides of the Atlantic. These governments favoured rolling back the welfare state together with a strong commitment to law and order.
• Both right realism and left realism see crime as a real problem needing a solution; it is not just a social construction created by social control agencies.
• They come from different ends of the political spectrum and argue that there has been a significant rise in the crime rate - especially in street crime, burglary and assault. They are concerned about the widespread fear of crime and its impact on victims.
• They argue that other theories have failed to offer realistic solutions to the problem of crime, and they propose what they regard as practical policies to reduce it.

Question 2

Right Realist Causes

Answer 2

• Right realists share the New Right political outlook and support policies. They believe that crime destroys social cohesion.
• This approach has been very influential in the UK and the USA.
  Key focuses - biological differences, socialisation and the underclass and rational choice theory.

Question 3

Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985
RR: Biological differences

Answer 3

• Present and critique almost all major theories of the etiology of crime, creating instead a biosocial theory of crime.
• They argue that a mixture of biology and socialisation causes crime, suggesting that some people are innately more strongly predisposed to commit crime.
• For example, they propose that personality traits like extroversion and aggressiveness increase the likelihood of an individual to take risks, acts on impulses and, in turn, sometimes also commit crime. (deterministic)

Question 4

Murray, 1990
RR: Socialisation and the Class Gap

Answer 4

• Crime is rising due to the growth of an underclass who are defined by their deviant behaviour and fail to socialise their children properly.
• The cause of the parents’ behaviour is welfare dependency, a factor that is only growing in the UK and the USA He argues that this has led to the deterioration of marriages and thus the increase in number of single-parented families.
• Seeing lone mothers especially as inadequate and ineffective socialisation agents, Murray links the absence of a father figure to crime.
• Otherwise lacking fatherly influence, boys are likely, according to Murray, to turn to male role models in delinquent subcultures and eventually to crime to form their identity.

Question 5

Clarke, 1980
RR: Rational choice

Answer 5

• Committing crime is a choice based on a rational calculation of the likely consequence. If the rewards outweigh the risk then people will be more likely to offend.
• Right realists argue that the crime rate has increased because the perceived costs of crime are low.
• As put into context by Wilson (1975): “a rational teenager might as well conclude that it made more sense to steal a car than to wash them”

Question 6

Felson, 2002
RR: Routine activity theory

Answer 6

• Argues that for crime to occur, there must be a motivated offender, a suitable target (victim or property) and the absence of a ‘capable guardian’ such as a police officer or members of the public. Offenders are assumed to act rationally and logically - the presence of the guardian is likely to deter them.

Question 7

Right Realist Causes
EV.

Answer 7

• Ignores wider structural causes such as poverty.
• Overstates the cost/benefit calculations that they believe criminals make. Some crimes are simply violent and impulsive.
• Viewing criminals as irrational actors freely choosing crime conflicts with the biosocial theories
• Deterministic, over-estimating biological factors.
• Lilly et al (2002) found that IQ differences account for less than 3% of differences in offending.
• Preoccupied with street crime and petty crime, whilst turning a blind eye to corporate crime and white collar crime.

Question 8

Right Realist Solutions

Answer 8

• Right realists focus on control, containment and punishment of offenders rather than eliminating the underlying causes of offending or rehabilitating them.
• Crime prevention policies should therefore reduce the rewards and increase the costs of crime to the offender e.g. target hardening.
• Prison should be used to ensure punishments follow soon after the offence to maximise their deterrent effect.

Question 9

Wilson and Kelling, 1982 - Broken Windows article

Answer 9

• Zero tolerance
• Argue that it is essential to maintain the orderly character of neighbourhoods to prevent crime taking hold. Any sign of deterioration such as graffiti or vandalism must be dealt with immediately.
• They suggest a zero tolerance policy towards undesirable behaviour such as prostitution, begging and drunken behaviour. The police should focus on controlling the streets so that law-abiding citizens feel safe.
• Zero tolerance policing was first introduced in New York in 1994 and was widely applauded for reducing crime.

Question 10

Young, 2011

Answer 10

• Argued that the success of zero tolerance was a myth peddled by politicians and police keen to take the credit for falling crime
• In fact, the crime rate in New York had already been falling since 1985 (9yrs before zero tolerance) and was also falling in other US (and foreign) cities that didn’t have zero tolerance policies.
• Argues that the police need arrests to justify their existence and NY’s shortage of serious crime led police there to ‘define deviance up’ i.e. arrest people for minor deviant acts that had previously fallen outside their ‘net’, relabelling them now as worthy of punishment.
• The ‘success’ of zero tolerance was just a product of the police’s way of coping with a decline that had already occurred.

Question 11

Zero tolerance
EV.

Answer 11

• This policy has been criticised for its efficiency - some argue that when criminals become aware of the target areas they simply move away from them, therefore, such efforts simply displaces crime instead of lessening it.

Question 12

Left Realist Explanations

Answer 12

• Left realists favour quite different policies for reducing crime. Developed in the 80s and 90s.
• Like Marxist, left realists see society as unequal and capitalist.
• However, unlike Marxists, left realists are reformist rather than revolutionary socialists (they believe in gradual change rather than the violent overthrow of capitalism as the way to achieve greater equality).
• Left realists believe that we need explanations of crime that will lead to practical strategies for reducing it now, rather than waiting for a revolution and a classless society to abolish crime.

Question 13

Young - ‘Crisis in Explanation’ (1997)

Answer 13

• Government Statistics suggest a real increase in crime since the 1950s
• The increase in crime is real (an aetiological crisis).
• Critical criminology and labelling theory tend to deny that the increase was real, instead arguing that it was just the result of increased reporting, or an increased tendency to label the poor (increase in the stats was just a social construction, not a reality).

Question 14

Lea and Young, 1984

Answer 14

Believed that there are 3 related causes of crime:
1. Relative deprivation
2. Subculture
3. Marginalisation

Question 15

Relative deprivation

Answer 15

• How someone feels deprived in relation to others or compared to their own expectations.

Question 16

W.C. Runciman, 1966

Answer 16

• Relative deprivation
• Created the concept of relative deprivation and argued that it can lead to crime when people resent others unfairly having more and resort to crime to obtain what they feel they are entitled to.

Question 17

Young, 1999
Relative deprivation

Answer 17

• The “lethal combination is relatively deprivation and individualism”. These combine and causes crime by the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others.
• Subcultures: A subculture is a group’s collective solution to the feelings of being relatively deprived. Some may turn to crime to close the ‘deprivation gap’. Criminal subcultures still subscribe to the goals of society (materialism and consumerism) - where the legitimate avenues are blocked these groups resort to crime.
• Marginalisation: Marginalised groups lack clear goals and organisations to represent their interests. For example, the unemployed are marginalised and their frustration and resentment can be expressed through criminal means such as violence and rioting rather than through political means.

Question 18

Young, 2002
Late Modernity, Exclusion and Crime

Answer 18

• Argues that we are now living in the stage of late modern society, where instability, insecurity and exclusion make the problem of crime worse.
• Relative deprivation has become generalised throughout society rather than being confined to those at the bottom. There is widespread resentment at the undeservedly high rewards that some receive.
• The result of exclusion is that the amount and types of crime are changing in late modern society.
• Firstly, crime is found increasingly throughout the social structure, not just at the bottom. Secondly, it is also “nastier”, with an increase in ‘hate crimes’.
• Reactions to crime are also changing; late modern society is more diverse and there is less public consensus on right and wrong, so the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour has become blurred.
• Informal controls are becoming less effective as families and communities disintegrate. This has led to the public becoming more intolerant, demanding harsher penalties and increased criminalisation of unacceptable behaviour.
• Late modern society is a high-crime society with a low tolerance for crime.

Question 19

Young, 2011

Answer 19

• Pointed to a ‘second aetiological crisis’, or crisis of explanation.
• The crime rate has fallen substantially since the 1990s which is a problem for realist explanations because it suggests that crime is no longer the major threat they had originally claimed.
• However, as Young notes, because crime is seen as a social construction, it may continue to be seen as a problem as, with this theory, it is something we give power to and create ourselves.

Question 20

The CSEW (2014)

Answer 20

Found that 61% thought crime had risen not fallen.

Question 21

Young
The rising ‘anti-social behaviour rate’

Answer 21

• Crime surveys also show a high level of public concern about ASB.
• Young sees this as a result of ‘defining deviance up’. Since the 1990s, governments have aimed to control a widening range of behaviour, introducing ASBOs in 1998 and IPNAs (Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance Annoyance) in 2015. These measures have several key features:
• Blurring the boundaries of crime, so ‘incivilities’ become crimes. Breaching an ASBO is itself a crime, thus manufacturing more crime.
• Subjective definition - ASB has no objective definition; it is in the eye of the beholder.
• Flexibility - the subjective definition means the net can be constantly widened to generate an almost endless number of infringements.

Question 22

Kinsey, Lea and Young, 1986

Answer 22

• Tackling crime
• We must both improve policing and control, and deal with the deeper structural causes of crime.
• Argue that police clear-up rates are too low to act as a deterrent to crime and that police spend too little time actually investigating crime. They argue that the public must become more involved in determining the police’s priorities and style of policing.
• The flow of information dries up and police come to rely instead on military policing such as ‘swamping’ an area and using random stop and search tactics.
• This alienates communities and results in a vicious circle: locals no longer trust the police and don’t provide then with information, so the police resort to military policing (the police are losing public support, especially in the inner cities and among ethnic minorities and the young).
• Policing must be made accountable to local communities and deal with local concerns. Police need to improve their relationship with local communities.
• Crime cannot be left to the police alone - a multi-agency approach is needed; involve agencies such as local councils’, social services, schools etc.

Question 23

Tackling these structural causes

Answer 23

• We must deal with inequality of opportunity and the unfairness of rewards, tackle discrimination, provide decent jobs for everyone and improve housing and community facilities.
• We must become more tolerant of diversity and cease stereotyping whole groups as criminal (link to labelling).

Question 24

Left realism and government policy

Answer 24

• Left realists have had more influence on government policy than most theorists of crime e.g. New Labour’s firmer approach to policing hate crimes, sexual assaults
• etc. echoed left realists concerns to protect vulnerable groups from crime and low-level disorder.
• Young regards many of these policies including the New Labour’s New Deal for unemployed youth as doomed attempts to recreate the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1950s. The New Deal did not lead to secure, permanent jobs.

Question 25

Left Realist View
EV.

Answer 25

+ It has succeeded in drawing attention to the reality of street crime and its effects, especially on victims from deprived groups.
- Henry and Milocanovic (1996) argue that it ignores the more harmful corporate crime
- Interactionalists critiques left realists on using quantitative data as this does not explain the motives of offenders.
- The use of subculture theory means that LR assumes that there is a value consensus and crime only occurs when this breaks down.
- Relative deprivation cannot fully explain crime as not all of those who experience it commit crime.
- Left realists focus on high-crime in inner-city areas and this may give an unrepresentative view and makes crime appear to be a greater