Right realism

• Situational crime prevention (SCP)

  • Reduces crime by increasing the difficulties of committing crime
  • SCP is based on the theory that criminals act rationally, weight up risk vs reward
• SCP - target hardening, locked cars, designing crime out of an area eg. gated communities 
• Environmental crime prevention and zero tolerance policing

  • The broken window theory - attracts offenders, leads to honest citizens moving out
  • Fix broken windows and zero tolerance policing
• Penal populism and prison

  • By increasing punishments in increases the risk vs reward calculation
  • Prison works - Tory government 1995
  • leads to rise in the prison population
• Zero tolerance policing - taking a tough stance towards all crime even the most trivial. Police should concentrate on tackling ‘quality of life’ offences, such as aggressive begging prostitution or vandalism
• Environmental improvement strategy - all signs of disorder must be tackled promptly, graffiti moved, broken windows repaired.
• Penal populism - Leads to rises in prison population from 45,000 in 1993 to 83,000 by 2018
• In 2018 there were 69 suicides, 5 homicides, 44,000 other incidents or self-harm and 8,400 assults on staff inside the prisons
• • Prison works - tory government 1995:
  • Began to take the view that tougher penalties were needed arguing that prison works. In a right realist view prison has two functions, Incapacitation and Deterrance
• Incapacitation - criminal become incapable of harming the public, jail takes them out of circulation
• Deterrence - criminals think twice before offending when they see tough punishments handed out
• Crime fell after Zero tolerance policy (ZTP) was introduced in New York 1990s however this may also have been due to other factors
• Males and Macllair found that ZTP curfews can increase juvenile crime, by removing law abiding youth from the streets they leave them empty for crime
• ZTP can lead to targeting ethnic minorities due to police racism and to confrontations due to heavy handed military policing
• ZTP and SCP fail to tackle structural causes of crime like inequality. Also they focus on low level street crime ignoring powerful crimes like white collar and state crime
• If criminals radicals are rational actors then when they find a target too hard to crack they will simply look for a softer one, t may result in more vulnerable targets being victimised more because other targets have been hardened
• Effective? - Recidivism - imprisonment is ineffective in preventing recidivism 48% of adults are reconvicted within a year of release
• Effective? - Deterrence - right realists argue that the risk of jails deters would be criminals who make rational choices about offending. However studies show that risk of imprisonment doesn't deter offenders thought to affect overall crime rates.
• Effective? - Incapacitation - prisons might be said to work temporarily, offenders can't commit crimes against the public whilst in jail however they may offend against fellow inmates and staff
• Effective? - Rehabilitation - one function of prison is to rehabilitate offenders but overcrowding and budget cuts mean many prisoners lack access to education, skills training or treatment programmes that would help them become law abiding citizens