Functionalist/Right realist

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Created by
phoebie buckley

Cards (8)

  • Right realists see criminals as making a rational choice to commit crime. Their view has led to three main crime control and punishment policies:
    1. Situational crime prevention
    2. Environmental crime prevention
    3. Penal populism and Imprisonment
    1. Situational Crime Prevention (SCP)
    SCP policies aim to reduce opportunities for committing crime by increasing the difficulty/risks of committing the crime as well as reducing its rewards. SCP policies are based upon the rational choice theory and include target hardening measures such as locking cars.
  • Although SCP policies have been viewed as fairly successful, a large issue with the policies is that they lead to displacement. This means that although there have been efforts to reduce the crime, it is simply redirected to another area as criminals will respond by looking for an easier target.
  • 2. Environmental crime prevention
    • environmental improvement strategy aiming for all signs of disorder to be tackled promptly
    • zero tolerance policing strategy: taking a tough 'zero tolerance' stance towards all crime. Police should concentrate on tackling 'quality of life' offences such as vandalism.
  • Environmental crime prevention: ZTP evaluation
    • ZTP and SCP fail to tackle structural causes of crime such as inequality. Additionally, they focus on low-level street crime which means that they ignore the crimes of the powerful such as white collar crime
    • ZTP can lead to the targeting of ethnic minorities due to things such as police racism
  • 3. Penal populism and imprisonment
    Penal populism = the government's attempts to propose laws that punish offenders that they believe will be popular amongst the public
    One form of penal populism is putting offenders in prison.
  • Prison has 2 functions:
    1. Incapacitation - making offenders incapable of harming the public
    2. Deterrence - making offenders think twice before committing
  • Politicians believed that tough penalties were popular with the public and would deter criminals, leading to the policy known as 'penal populism'