Right realism crime

• Right realism


  Sees crime, especially street crime, as a major and growing problem that destroys communities, undermines social cohesion and threatens society
• The right realist approach to crime has been very influential in the UK, the USA and elsewhere
• Right realist views on crime correspond closely with those of neo-conservative governments during the 1970s and 1980s
• Policy-makers argued that 'nothing works' - criminologists had produced many theories of crime, but no workable solutions to curb the rising crime rate
• This led to a shift in official thinking, away from the search for the causes of crime and towards a search for practical crime control measures
• It also dovetailed with the US and UK governments' tough stance towards offenders and their view that the best way to reduce crime was through control and punishment, rather than rehabilitating offenders or tackling causes of crime such as poverty
• Right realism


  • Criticises other theories for failing to offer any practical solutions to the problem of rising crime
  • Regards theories such as labelling and critical criminology as too sympathetic to the criminal and too hostile to the forces of law and order
  • Less concerned to understand the causes of crime and more concerned to provide what they see as realistic solutions
• Right realists reject the idea put forward by Marxists and others that structural or economic factors such as poverty and inequality are the cause of crime
• Causes of crime (right realist view)

  • Individual biological differences
  • Inadequate socialisation and the underclass
  • Rational choice to offend
• Biological differences- biosocial theory Wilson and Herrnstein 1985

  • Some people are innately more strongly predisposed to commit crime than others due to personality traits like aggressiveness, extroversion, risk taking and low impulse control
  • Low intelligence is also seen as a biologically determined cause of crime
• Socialisation and the underclass

  • Effective socialisation decreases the risk of offending as it involves learning self-control and internalising moral values
  • The best agency of socialisation is the nuclear family
  • The growing underclass, defined by their deviant behaviour and failure to socialise their children properly, is a cause of increasing crime rates
• The right realist Charles Murray argues that the welfare state's 'generous revolution' since the 1960s has led to the decline of marriage and the growth of lone parent families, which means that men no longer have to take responsibility for supporting their families
• Lone mothers are ineffective socialisation agents, especially for boys, and absent fathers mean that boys lack paternal discipline and appropriate male role models
• As a result, young males turn to other, often delinquent, role models on the street and gain status through crime rather than supporting their families through a steady job
• Rational choice theory RON CLARKE

  Assumes that individuals have free will and the power of reason, and that the decision to commit crime is a choice based on a rational calculation of the likely consequences
• Right realists argue that currently the perceived costs of crime are low and this is why the crime rate has increased, as there is often little risk of being caught and punishments are lenient
• Crime prevention policies


  • Field experiments to identify cause and effect relationships, e.g. redesigning a market to reduce thefts
  • Routine activity theory - the presence of a 'capable guardian' deters offenders
• Right realist approach to tackling crime

  • Does not believe it is fruitful to try to deal with the causes of crime (such as biological and socialisation differences)
  • Focuses on control, containment and punishment of offenders rather than eliminating the underlying causes of their offending or rehabilitating them
  • Advocates 'zero tolerance' policies and 'target hardening' to reduce the rewards and increase the costs of crime to the offender
• Criticisms of right realism

  • Ignores wider structural causes such as poverty
  • Overstates offenders' rationality and how far they make cost-benefit calculations before committing a crime
  • May not explain much violent crime
  • Conflicts between view of criminals as rational actors freely choosing crime and view of their behaviour as determined by biology and socialisation
  • Over-emphasises biological factors
  • Preoccupied with petty street crime and ignores corporate crime
  • Advocates a zero tolerance policy that discriminates against certain groups and results in displacement of crime
  • Over-emphasises control of disorder, rather than tackling underlying causes of neighbourhood decline
• Routine activities theory 1979 cohen and Felson

  social control mechanisms, lack of opportunity and/ or risk of getting caught prevents crime so crime needed 3 conditions to take place:

  1. individuals motivated to commit crime
  2. availability of opportunities and targets
  3. lack of capable guardians like police and parents to prevent crime
• Cohen and Felson- crime was opportunistic rather than planned in advance so If people motivated to commit crimes encouraged easy opportunities to do so in their daily lives, the crime was more likely to occur
• In the 1990s, the New York City Police Department began to universally enforce minor crimes, such as fare evasion on the subway. Rather than being up to the officer's discretion, all instances of fare evasion were met with arrest.
• weakness= if target hardening and surveillance worked then shop lifting should go down but co-op food business lost 33m in first 6 months of 2023- cost of living
• broken window theory- low level disorder must be tackled or else problems escalate. broken windows attract criminals sensing an opportunity eg squatters. but not true as good people will report crime- more policing and authorities will try to improve the area
• nimby- 'not in my backyard'- don't care about crime that isn't in their backyard
• felson- situational crime prevention of port authority bus terminal in new york which was poorly designed and provided opportunities for drug deals and stealing luggage. Re-shaping the environment and removing the sinks in the toliets that homeless used decreased the number of homeless hanging around the area