Left Realism

• What doe left realists believe?

  society is to blame for crime & deviance
• Matthew & Young -> 'square of crime'

  • 4 elements of crime:

  1. State Agencies: social control
  2. Offender: who commits the crime
  3. Victim: state if crime occurred
  4. Public: reaction to crime (informal control)
• Lea & Young


  3 main things that lead to crime:

  • Subculture: groups with different norms/values to gain status
  • relative deprivation: how deprived one feels in comparison with others
  • marginalisation: people on margin lack clear goals
• 'Bulimic Society' -> Young


  • material deprivation fuels crime
  • lower class NOT excluded from society
  • they cannot access higher class way of life
  • turn to crime
• 'The Exclusive Society'-> Thatcher


  • Thatcher: closed oil,coal & steel mines led to increase in male crime due to reduction in male jobs
  • Current society: increase in relative deprivation
  • Economic change: loss of low skilled jobs, exclusion of W/C from mainstream society
• EVALUATION

  1. Marxism: ignore whit-collar crimes -> too focused on street-crime
  2. Interactionism: over reliant on crime stats -> too subjective
  3. Deterministic: relative deprivation won't always lead to crime -> ignores free will