Realist Theories of Crime Flashcards
Right Realist perspective of crime -
WILSON
WILSON -
RR take a ‘zero tolerance’ method to street crime and disorder.
Overall right realist view
Sees crime as real and growing problem, destroy communities and undermines social cohesion.
RR are less concerned to learn to understand the cause of crime - more concerned about providing realistic solutions.
RR view of crime -
3 factors
- Biological differences
- Socialisation and the underclass
- Rational choice theory
RR: Biological differences - Hernnstein
Causes of crime
HERNNSTEIN -
Biological differences make people innately more stronger to commit a crime than others.
Low intelligence, aggressive, extroversion, risk taking, low control = more likely to do it.
RR: Socialisation and the underclass - Murray
Causes of crime
MURRAY -
- Nuclear family provide the best socialisation.
- Increase in crime because not proper socialisation and growing of the underclass (who can’t socialise).
- Increase in lone parent families as welfare is too generous, living off benefits.
- BOYS TURN TO GANGS
RR: Rational choice theory - Clarke
Causes of crime
CLARKE -
Committing a crime is a choice based on rational calculations: if the crime outweigh the cost…
- NOWADAYS, cost of crime in low = crime has increased (little risk being caught).
Criticism of RR
- Ignores wider structural causes: poverty
- Ignores the causes and why people commit the crime
CRITICISM for biosocial theory
LILLY ET AL -
IQ differences account for less than 3% of differences in offending.
Tackling crime:
RIGHT REALISTS
- Wilson and Kelling: Broken window theory = ‘zero tolerance’ towards behaviour.
Criticism of zero tolerance - RR
Nine years before zero tolerance crime started falling - also in cities that didn’t have zero tolerance policing.
Police and politicians wrongly claimed that they had causes the decline in crime.
Overall left realist view
Believe in gradual change rather than violent overthrowing of capitalism.
Need explanations of crime that will lead to practical strategies for reducing crime.
YOUNG: Aetiological crisis
left realist
This is the crisis of explanation from other theories of crime:
For example, critical criminology and labelling theory saw and increase in reports of crime but regarded it as no reality as it is socially constructed.
WHEREAS, LR believe that there is a REAL increase: evidence in victim surveys (e.g British crime survey).
LR: Lea and Young
causes of crime
- RELATIVE DEPRIVATION: advertising, comparing lifestyles and material possessions - those who cant afford turn to crime.
(CRITICISM of RD - combination of RD and individualism = pursue self-interest at the expense of others) - SUBCULTURE: crime is a reaction to failure to achieve mainstream goals. Criminal subculture = solution to relative deprivation. (E.G USA - Ghetto: ‘fully immersion in the American dream - culture hooked on BMW….turn to street crime).
- MARGINALISATION: Certain groups marginalised (young/ethnic/unemployed) - no clear goals and no one to represent them = seen as powerless.
LR: Late modernity, exclusion and crime - YOUNG
YOUNG -
Now living in a ‘late modern society’ - instability, insecurity, exclusion.
CULTURAL INCLUSION AND ECONOMIC EXCLUSION.
- Media-saturated late modern society promotes cultural exclusion = become materialistic = W/C turn to crime.
LR: Late modernist overall perspective of crime
High-crime society with a low tolerance for crime:
- Lines have become blurred between the boundaries of what it acceptable or not - it is more diverse.
- Informal control become less effective as families and communities disintegrate.
