C+D- Right Realism

• General Information:

  • Brought about in 70s/80s
  • Favoured reducing benefits and rolling back welfare state
  • Have a 'get tough' stance on crime
  • Criticise other theories for being 'too sympathetic to the criminal and hostile'
  • Less concerned about crime causes and focus on the solutions of it
• Reject the Marxist idea that structural or economic factors are the only cause of social inequality/crime
• Crime is the product of 3 factors

  • Individual biological differences
  • Inadequate socialisation and the underclass
  • The rational choice to offend
• Wilson and Hernstein - Biological Differences

  • Biosocial theory of criminal behaviour
  • Combination of biological and social factors
  • Some of the biological differences with can cause crime are aggression, risk-taking, extroversion and low impulse control
• Hernstein and Murray- Biological differences

  • Low intelligence is also a biological factors
• Murray- Socialisation and the underclass

  • Growing underclass as a 'rabble' of welfare dependants
  • Fail to socialise young into norms and values of society
  • Lone parent families - lack of male role models cause boys to turn to delinquent subcultures
  • Threatens social cohesion by undermining values of hard work and personal responsibility
• Clarke (1980) - Rational choice theory

  • Free will to choose actions
  • Weigh up costs and benefits of criminal activity
  • Perception of costs is low, so crime rates are high
• Wilson and Kelling - Tackling crime: Broken window theory)

  • Maintaining orderly character of neighbourhoods prevent crime
  • Vandalism/graffiti has to be dealt with immediately to prevent criminal spiral
  • Stops criminals from thinking there is a lack of a protector and that no one cares about an area
• Tackling crime- Zero Tolerance

  • Undesirable behaviour is immediately stopped such as prostitution, begging and drunkenness.
  • Police be on the streets to stop this so citizens feel safe and want to take care of their neighbourhoods.
• Tackling crime- Increasing cost

  • Crime prevention policies which increase costs and reduce rewards
  • Target Hardening (Car alarms ect)
  • Greater use of prison (longer sentences)
  • Immediate punishments (arrest)
• Strengths of right realism:

  • Provides practical solutions
  • Acknowledges individual responsibility in criminal behaviour.
• Limitations of Right Realism

  • Ignores wider structural causes
  • Overstates rationality (Low impulse control)
  • Contradiction of biological causes and rational choice
  • Zero Tolerance allows opportunity for police to discriminate against marginalised groups
  • Zero Tolerance only displaces crime
  • Takes police away from tackling serious crime
  • Over-emphasised control of disorder rather than tackling reasons such as lack of investment as causes of neighbourhood decline