Left realist, lea and young

• Lee and Young developed left realism in the early 1980s as a response to rising crime rates and the need for realistic solutions to crime issues
• They were influenced by various theories, including Marx's theories of structural inequality and interactionist theories focusing on the role of the state, media, and police in labeling individuals
• Left realism aimed to provide an alternative to right realist policies dominating criminal justice policies of new right governments
• Crime is not caused by a single factor but a combination of factors working together
• Jock Young argued that the causes of crime include structural inequality, informal and formal social control mechanisms, and individual agency
• Lee and Young identified three main factors influencing the rising level of crime:

  • Relative deprivation
  • Growth of subcultural responses to society's unequal structure
  • Marginalization
• Relative deprivation is when people feel they lack the same economic resources as others in society, leading to criminal behavior
• Subcultures are responses to societal pressures and economic success, providing relief from relative deprivation and status within the group
• Marginalization occurs when groups have minimal representation in society, leading to frustration and anti-social behavior as a form of protest
• Lee and Young's work built on various theorists' ideas and influenced criminal justice policies in the late 1990s under New Labour
• Critics suggest their work is theoretical and not research-based, pointing to the decline of recorded crime in the era of global capitalism
• However, unreported crimes and the manipulation of recorded crime data for ideological and political purposes are factors to consider