Realism Theories

• Right Realism:

  Strengths:

  • Several studies suport Rational Choice Theory (RTC). Rettig gave students a scenario of an opportunity to commit a crime. He found that the degree of punishment determined whether to commit the crime
  • Feldman found that People made rational decisions: if the rewards were high and risks low, they said the crime was worth committing.
• Right Realism:

  Strengths (2):

  • Bennet and Wright interviewed convicted burglars. The burglars considered the potential reward, difficulty of breaking in and risk of being caught. Risk was the most important factors influencing their decision to commit their crime.
  • Right realism may explain some opportunistic petty crimes such as theft
• Right Realism:

  Limitations:

  • Rettig and Feldman’s studies were experiments; the results may not apply to real offences.
  • Bennet and Wright studied unsuccessful burglars. We don’t know if successful burglars also think in this way
  • Not all crimes are the result of rational decisions. Violent crimes are often impulsive. Offenders under the influence of drugs or alcohol may also be unlikely to calculate the risks and rewards before offending.
• Left Realism:

  Strengths:

  • Left realism draws attention to the importance of poverty, inequality and relative deprivation as the underlying structural causes or crime.
  • It draws the attention to the reality of street crime and its effects, especially on victims from deprived groups.
• Left Realism:

  Limitations:

  • Henry and Milovanovic argue that left realism accepts the authorities‘ definition of crime as just being the street crimes of the poor. It fails to explain white collar crime and corporate crime and ignored harms done to the poor by the crimes of the powerful
  • It over-predicts the amount of working-class crime: not everyone who experiences relative deprivation turns to crime
  • It focus on high-crime Inner-city areas gives an unrepresentative view and makes crime appear a greater problem than it is.