Left Realism

• • focuses on faults of society and inequality as causes of crime
  • Crime can be reduced by making society fairer
• Crime is a product of 3 factors:

  1. Relative deprivation
  2. subcultures
  3. marginalisation
• Relative deprivation - Lea and Young

  • how deprived someone feels in relationship to others
  • Media send out messages continuously urging everyone to aspire to achieve material possession, Young calls it a hooked which is hooked on ‘Gucci, BMW and Nikes’
  • Society becomes more unequal due to cuts in benefits, unemployment, job insecurity and low pay.
• Subcultures

  Certain subcultures become criminal because they are blocked off from legitimate opportunities and are rejected by our society.
• Marginalisation

  • some groups lack organisation to present their interests e.g. no one is fighting for the young unemployed whereas employed people have goals and status which are protected by their Unions.
• Why do subcultures turn to crime?

  • criminal subcultures share society’s materialistic goals but because legitimate opportunities are blocked

  BUT

  • not all subcultures turn to crime

  Some may turn to religion instead to find comfort and an explanation for their deprivation 

  Can encourage conformity not criminality, if a group share a sense of relative deprivation, they will develop lifestyles which allow them to cope with this problem.
• Advantages

  • draws attention to importance of poverty, inequality and relative deprivation as the underlying structural causes of crime.
• Advantages

  • Draws attention to the reality of street crime/effect, especially on victims from deprived groups.
• Disadvantages

  • Henry/Milovanoic argue that LR accepts the authorities definition as just being the street crime of the poor, fails to explain corporate and white collar crime.
• Disadvantages

  • Ignores harms done to poor by the crimes of the powerful.
• Disadvantages

  • Overpredicts amount of working class crime, not everyone who experiences of RD and M goes on to commit crime
• Disadvantages

  • Focus on high-crime inner-city areas gives an unrepresentative view and makes crime appear a greater problem than it is.