Right realism

• Right realism views

  • Blame cultural factors
  • Moved away from liberal ideas of rehabilitation towards tougher punitive measures aimed to deter people from offending
  • Moved away from social theories and towards explanations centered around individual
  • Focuses on control and prevention of criminal behaviour
  • Little interest exploring concepts of power and structures in society, individual is to blame
• Wilson and Kelling - Broken window theory

  Closely monitored neighbourhood has a ‘zero tolerance’ for petty crimes creates climate of order preventing more serious crime from occurring

  • opposite outcomes found in neighbourhood where petty crimes are tolerated
  • theory changed policing strategies and tactics
  • immediately adapted by law enforcement helping establish new law enforcement policies with little cost to implement
• Positive of broken window theory, Zero Tolerance Policing

  Bratton - used theory to initiate aggressive enforcement campaign to reduce escalating crime rate in NYC, leading to a reduction in crime
• Routine activity theory, Felson and Cohen

  • Studies crime relating it to environment, emphasizing it's process and diverting attention from offenders
  • Crime is unaffected by social causes like poverty, inequality and unemployment
  • Reason for increase = prosperity of contemporary society offers opportunities for crime to occur, e.g. advances in tech
  • Social changes and lifestyle contribute to occurrence of crime, e.g. female enrolment at college

  Crime is more likely to occur in certain environments
• Solutions to crime: Wilson and Kelling

  Argue we must keep neighbourhoods orderly to prevent crime
• Solution to crime: Zero Tolerance Policy

  Police need to control streets so citizens feel safe
• Criticisms of RR

  • ZTP focuses on ethnic minorities and homeless, allows police to discriminate
  • Marxists = ignores structural causes of crime, concerned with street crime and ignores corporate and white collar crime, more harmful to public