Neo Marxism Theories Of Crime

• Taylor, Walton & Young (1973)

  •This is the most significant Neo-Marxist text on criminology. (“The New Criminology”)••Taylor et al agree with traditional Marxists that:–Class conflict and exploitation within Capitalist society are key to understanding crime.–The state makes and enforces laws in the interests of the capitalist class whilst criminalising the working class.–Capitalism should be replaced with a classless society. This would greatly reduce crime.
• •Anti-determinism: Taylor et al reject the determinism of Marxism (people are driven to crime by poverty/greed etc).
• •Voluntarism - place more emphasis on free will and choice. They see the choice to commit crime as  a meaningful action with a political motive.
• •A fully social theory of deviance: their understanding of acts of deviance is complex, incorporating social context, individual context, social reaction, labelling etc.
• Stuart Hall Policing Crisis

  Hall argued that a moral panic over black criminality (mugging) at the time created a diversion away from the wider economic crisis.

  There was no evidence that ‘mugging’ was increasing, or that it was more prevalent in one specific ethnic group.
• Policing The Nature Of Black Crime

  •Black crime is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles•Resistance to racism in former colonies was being ‘passed down’ to children•Rastafarianism contains a set of revolutionary political ideas about overthrowing white authority and tends to bring its followers into confrontation with the police over, for example, marijuana use.•
• Eval Strength


  •Avoids the problems of determinism – gives a deeper understanding of individual meanings behind crime.•Provides a more developed theory of crime and deviance than labelling alone – attempts to explain why some groups are more prone to being labelled than others, and why people commit crime even before being labelled (primary deviance).•Laid the foundations for other critical approaches such as left realism and feminism.
• Eval Weakeness

  •The fully social theory of deviance is so complex it is difficult to apply in practice – Hall is one of the few examples of its use.•It is gender blind.•It romanticises working-class criminals as Robin Hoods rather than criminals with real victims.•In focusing on working class perpetrators, they ignore the effects of crime on working class people.•Not useful in actually tackling crime.