Left realism
Encyclopedia
Left Realist Criminology emerged out of Critical Criminology
as a reaction against what was perceived to be the Left's failure to take a practical interest in everyday crime, leaving it to the Right Realists
to monopolize the political agenda on law and order. Left Realism argues that crime disproportionately affects working class
people, but that solutions that only increase repression serve to make the crime problem worse. Instead they argue that the root causes of crime lie in relative deprivation, although preventative measures and policing are necessary, but these should be democratically controlled.
Pat Carlen (1992) suggests that the main tenets of left realism are:
"Theoretical
Political
taking issue with "the two major socialist currents in criminology since the war: reformism and left idealism", criticising 'the moral panics of the mass media or the blatant denial of left idealism'
summed up Critical criminology
's criticism of establishment criminology by saying
with the work of Lea and Young (1984) as representative of a group of academics: Richard Kinsey, John Lea
, Roger Matthews
, Geoff Pearson, and Jock Young
. The group saw themselves as facing up to the challenge thrown down by Ian Taylor
in Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism for the left to take crime seriously.
In What is to be Done About Law and Order? (1986), Young and Lea set out three main policies of left realism:
Demarginalisation
"Realists would argue for alternatives to prison", they would advocate "measures such as community service orders, victim restitution schemes, and widespread release from prison" which would stop "the severance of the moral bond with the community. The institutions that are involved in controlling crime and criminals must epitomise justice"
Pre-emptive Deterrence
"Environmental and public precautions against crime are always dismissed by left idealists and reformers as not relating to the heart of the matter. They are distractions from the real concerns... On the contrary, the organisation of communities in an attempt to pre-empt crime is of the utmost importance"
The Minimal Use of Prison
"Prisons should only be used in those circumstances where there is extreme danger to the community... Life inside should be as free and as 'normal' as possible. Such a demand is not humanitarian idealism - it is based on the simple fact that the result of prison experience is to produce pitiful inadequates or hardened criminals"
Left realism however, did not isolate itself completely from Critical Criminology. John Lea, for example, took issue with Stan Cohen's characterisation of retreating from previous theoretical gains
Left realists argue that the national victimization research, such as the British Crime Survey
, can been used to give an average risk rate that ignores the variations in crime between areas. Such studies can be used to view people's fear of crime
as 'irrational'. According to Young, "The (local) victimization survey accurately provides a map of the problems of an area. Although based on public input, it delivers what any individual member of the public is ignorant of: that is how private problems are publicly distributed."
Further more "at certain parts of the social structure, we have a compounding of social problems. If we were to draw up a map of the city outlining areas of high infant mortality, bad housing, unemployment, poor nutrition, etc., we would find that these maps would coincide and that further, the outline traced would correspond to those areas of high criminal victimization... Further, this compounding of social problems occurs against those who are more or less vulnerable because of their position in the social structure. That is, people who have the least power socially suffer most from crime."
Left realists conducted local victimisation
surveys in Islington, Hammersmith and Fulham, Broadwater Farm and Merseyside.
According to Young, "Any changes in one of these factors will affect the crime rate... The point here is that crime cannot be simply explained in terms of crime control agencies, and that the agencies involved in crime control are much wider than in the criminal justice system."
Young continues, "The police-public relationship is central the interaction between all the parts is also important. For example, the police and agency response to victims greatly affects the actual impact of victimisation and in certain instances, such as rape and sexual assault, can even involve what has been termed 'secondary victimisation'. That is where the victim herself becomes further stigmatised by police and courts. All of this, particularly in terms of willingness (and wariness) to report to the police, affects the official crime rate and the possibilities of clear-up."
(1994) argues that there is an aetiological crisis, i.e. there is a lack of explanation for the fact that reported crime rises during both economic good times and bad times. Aetiology assumes fundamental importance. If the cause of crime is injustice, then its solution must lie in this direction. If poor conditions cause crime, it must be impossible to prevent crime without changing these circumstances. Furthermore, it follows that it must be wrong to punish the offender for conditions beyond his or her control. This would be punishing the criminal and
blaming the victim. The social democratic brand of positivism, although sensing that injustice was the root cause of crime, either deflected its attentions to purely individual deprivation (e.g. maternal deprivation, broken homes, etc.) or made the fundamental mistake of believing that
ameliorating deprivation quantitatively in an absolute sense (e.g. raising standards of education, housing, etc.) would solve the problem of relative deprivation. Young distinguishes the structural approach of other Left-wing theorists, and posits that most crime is minor, amateurish, sporadic, and intra-class, i.e. committed by working class offenders on working class victims. He rejects the positivist view that unemployment or poverty causes crime, but prefers Merton's
theory of anomie
and Subcultural Theory
which focus on the lack of opportunity to achieve social status and economic expectations: a lack most commonly felt by the most disadvantaged sections of the community. He believes that the majority of criminals hold conventional social values, reflecting the need to achieve material success or social status in a competitive society where sexism, racism, machismo and other ideological forms affect outcomes. Indeed, criminal behaviour could be characterised as the operation of capitalist principles, i.e. the investment of labour for a return, but in an illegitimate form.
For left realism, "Discontent is a product of relative, not absolute, deprivation... Sheer poverty, for example, does not necessarily lead to a subculture of discontent; it may, just as easily, lead to quiescence and fatalism. Discontent occurs when comparisons between comparable groups are made which suggest that unnecessary injustices are occurring... Exploitative cultures have existed for generations without extinction: it is the perception of injustice - relative deprivation - which counts."
Young
argues that relative deprivation is the most probable cause of criminality because people whose progress towards fulfilling expectations has stalled grow more aware of the injustice and unfairness in a society that allows inequality to arise, and this in turn breeds political disenchantment. At a societal level, this disenchantment may lead to riot
ing. At an individual level, theft and burglary may seem an appropriate means to redress the balance. This may be seen as an appropriate means of furthering the "just cause" to throw off oppression. Realists tend to not see crime as some form of revolutionary challenge to the ruling class. Rather, they say, crime is a reactionary form of behaviour which demonstrates the absence of real political solutions to the experience of degradation and exploitation suffered by the working class, thus making individual crime devoid of political agenda. The majority fear crime regardless of social class and wish to find ways of eliminating it so as to create a secure environment. This creates a "problem of order" for a government which has the political responsibility to maintain an orderly society, and is accountable to an electorate likely to find disorder and chaos high on their political agenda.
was "...a key term in the policies of New Labour", Jock Young
commented that they used the 'weak thesis' of social exclusion
where such exclusion is self-imposed by a lazy and idle underclass, a value shared with the previous Conservative administration.
Critical criminology
Critical criminology is a theoretical perspective in criminology which takes a conflict perspective, such as marxism, feminism, political economy theory or critical theory. The focus of critical criminology is the genesis of crime and nature of ‘justice’ within a structure of class and status...
as a reaction against what was perceived to be the Left's failure to take a practical interest in everyday crime, leaving it to the Right Realists
Right Realism
In criminology, Right Realism is the ideological polar opposite of Left Realism...
to monopolize the political agenda on law and order. Left Realism argues that crime disproportionately affects working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
people, but that solutions that only increase repression serve to make the crime problem worse. Instead they argue that the root causes of crime lie in relative deprivation, although preventative measures and policing are necessary, but these should be democratically controlled.
Pat Carlen (1992) suggests that the main tenets of left realism are:
"Theoretical
- 'The basic triangle of relations which is the proper subject-matter of criminology [is] - the offender, the state and the victim' (Young, 1986) (since altered to include society at large, see The Square of Crime)
- Theoretical explanations must be symmetrical - there must be the same explanation for social action and reaction.
- 'Man is a creator of human nature' (Young, 1987), and therefore explanations of crime should not be deterministic and people should be seen as being responsible for their actions.
Political
- Crime is a real problem and especially to working-class people who suffer disproportionately from personal crime, such as robbery, assault, burglary and rape.
- The 'left' should attempt to develop a credible (populist?) approach to crime control in order to prevent the 'right' from having a monopoly of the 'crime problem'.
- The purpose of theorizing should be to make practical interventions into law and order issues.
- In order to reduce crime there is a need to achieve a higher level of cooperation between police and public, and this will be best achieved by a democratization of local control of the police."
Break with left idealism
Left Realism emerged from Critical criminologyCritical criminology
Critical criminology is a theoretical perspective in criminology which takes a conflict perspective, such as marxism, feminism, political economy theory or critical theory. The focus of critical criminology is the genesis of crime and nature of ‘justice’ within a structure of class and status...
taking issue with "the two major socialist currents in criminology since the war: reformism and left idealism", criticising 'the moral panics of the mass media or the blatant denial of left idealism'
Critique of establishment criminology
Writing years later, Jock YoungJock Young
This article is about the sociologist. For the rapper, see Yung JocJock Young is a British sociologist and criminologist.He began teaching at Enfield College of Technology....
summed up Critical criminology
Critical criminology
Critical criminology is a theoretical perspective in criminology which takes a conflict perspective, such as marxism, feminism, political economy theory or critical theory. The focus of critical criminology is the genesis of crime and nature of ‘justice’ within a structure of class and status...
's criticism of establishment criminology by saying
"The essential flaw of establishment criminology is, of course, the attempt to explain crime without touching upon reality, constantly to distance explanation from basic social and economic problems of a divided society."
Establishment of Left Realism
Left Realism set down a marker in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with the work of Lea and Young (1984) as representative of a group of academics: Richard Kinsey, John Lea
John Lea
John Lea is a left realist criminologist based at the Crime and Conflict Research Centre, Middlesex University in the United Kingdom.He graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London with a BSc in Economics in 1967, before gaining MSc's in Economics and...
, Roger Matthews
Roger Matthews
Roger Matthews is a British criminologist. He is currently Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.Matthews is one of the key figures in left realism, a criminological critique of both the dominant administrative criminology and the left...
, Geoff Pearson, and Jock Young
Jock Young
This article is about the sociologist. For the rapper, see Yung JocJock Young is a British sociologist and criminologist.He began teaching at Enfield College of Technology....
. The group saw themselves as facing up to the challenge thrown down by Ian Taylor
Ian Taylor (sociologist)
Ian Taylor was a British sociologist. He was born in Sheffield.- National Deviancy Symposium and Critical Criminology :...
in Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism for the left to take crime seriously.
In What is to be Done About Law and Order? (1986), Young and Lea set out three main policies of left realism:
Demarginalisation
"Realists would argue for alternatives to prison", they would advocate "measures such as community service orders, victim restitution schemes, and widespread release from prison" which would stop "the severance of the moral bond with the community. The institutions that are involved in controlling crime and criminals must epitomise justice"
Pre-emptive Deterrence
"Environmental and public precautions against crime are always dismissed by left idealists and reformers as not relating to the heart of the matter. They are distractions from the real concerns... On the contrary, the organisation of communities in an attempt to pre-empt crime is of the utmost importance"
The Minimal Use of Prison
"Prisons should only be used in those circumstances where there is extreme danger to the community... Life inside should be as free and as 'normal' as possible. Such a demand is not humanitarian idealism - it is based on the simple fact that the result of prison experience is to produce pitiful inadequates or hardened criminals"
Left realism however, did not isolate itself completely from Critical Criminology. John Lea, for example, took issue with Stan Cohen's characterisation of retreating from previous theoretical gains
Crime Statistics and Local Victimization Surveys
According to Young, "For Left Realism, the social survey is a democratic instrument: it gives a picture of consumer demand and satisfaction."Left realists argue that the national victimization research, such as the British Crime Survey
British Crime Survey
The British Crime Survey or BCS is a systematic victim study, currently carried out by BMRB Limited on behalf of the Home Office. The BCS seeks to measure the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking around 50,000 people aged 16 and over , living in private households, about the crimes they...
, can been used to give an average risk rate that ignores the variations in crime between areas. Such studies can be used to view people's fear of crime
Fear of crime
The fear of crime refers to the fear of being a victim of crime as opposed to the actual probability of being a victim of crime.The fear of crime, along with fear of the streets and the fear of youth, is said to have been in Western culture for "time immemorial"...
as 'irrational'. According to Young, "The (local) victimization survey accurately provides a map of the problems of an area. Although based on public input, it delivers what any individual member of the public is ignorant of: that is how private problems are publicly distributed."
Further more "at certain parts of the social structure, we have a compounding of social problems. If we were to draw up a map of the city outlining areas of high infant mortality, bad housing, unemployment, poor nutrition, etc., we would find that these maps would coincide and that further, the outline traced would correspond to those areas of high criminal victimization... Further, this compounding of social problems occurs against those who are more or less vulnerable because of their position in the social structure. That is, people who have the least power socially suffer most from crime."
Left realists conducted local victimisation
Victimisation
Victimisation is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. Research that studies the process, rates, incidence, and prevalence of victimization falls under the body of victimology.-Peer victimisation:...
surveys in Islington, Hammersmith and Fulham, Broadwater Farm and Merseyside.
The Square of Crime
One of left realisms most substantial contributions to criminology, is the square of crime. Expanding on "The basic triangle of relations which is the proper subject-matter of criminology [is] - the offender, the state and the victim" (Young, 1986), Young proceeded to add the public (civil society) to this to create the four corners of a square, with the offender and victim at one side (the actors) and the state and civil society at the other (the reactors).According to Young, "Any changes in one of these factors will affect the crime rate... The point here is that crime cannot be simply explained in terms of crime control agencies, and that the agencies involved in crime control are much wider than in the criminal justice system."
Young continues, "The police-public relationship is central the interaction between all the parts is also important. For example, the police and agency response to victims greatly affects the actual impact of victimisation and in certain instances, such as rape and sexual assault, can even involve what has been termed 'secondary victimisation'. That is where the victim herself becomes further stigmatised by police and courts. All of this, particularly in terms of willingness (and wariness) to report to the police, affects the official crime rate and the possibilities of clear-up."
Relative Deprivation
YoungJock Young
This article is about the sociologist. For the rapper, see Yung JocJock Young is a British sociologist and criminologist.He began teaching at Enfield College of Technology....
(1994) argues that there is an aetiological crisis, i.e. there is a lack of explanation for the fact that reported crime rises during both economic good times and bad times. Aetiology assumes fundamental importance. If the cause of crime is injustice, then its solution must lie in this direction. If poor conditions cause crime, it must be impossible to prevent crime without changing these circumstances. Furthermore, it follows that it must be wrong to punish the offender for conditions beyond his or her control. This would be punishing the criminal and
blaming the victim. The social democratic brand of positivism, although sensing that injustice was the root cause of crime, either deflected its attentions to purely individual deprivation (e.g. maternal deprivation, broken homes, etc.) or made the fundamental mistake of believing that
ameliorating deprivation quantitatively in an absolute sense (e.g. raising standards of education, housing, etc.) would solve the problem of relative deprivation. Young distinguishes the structural approach of other Left-wing theorists, and posits that most crime is minor, amateurish, sporadic, and intra-class, i.e. committed by working class offenders on working class victims. He rejects the positivist view that unemployment or poverty causes crime, but prefers Merton's
Robert K. Merton
Robert King Merton was a distinguished American sociologist. He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor...
theory of anomie
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
and Subcultural Theory
Subcultural theory
In criminology, subcultural theory emerged from the work of the Chicago School on gangs and developed through the symbolic interactionism school into a set of theories arguing that certain groups or subcultures in society have values and attitudes that are conducive to crime and violence...
which focus on the lack of opportunity to achieve social status and economic expectations: a lack most commonly felt by the most disadvantaged sections of the community. He believes that the majority of criminals hold conventional social values, reflecting the need to achieve material success or social status in a competitive society where sexism, racism, machismo and other ideological forms affect outcomes. Indeed, criminal behaviour could be characterised as the operation of capitalist principles, i.e. the investment of labour for a return, but in an illegitimate form.
For left realism, "Discontent is a product of relative, not absolute, deprivation... Sheer poverty, for example, does not necessarily lead to a subculture of discontent; it may, just as easily, lead to quiescence and fatalism. Discontent occurs when comparisons between comparable groups are made which suggest that unnecessary injustices are occurring... Exploitative cultures have existed for generations without extinction: it is the perception of injustice - relative deprivation - which counts."
Young
Jock Young
This article is about the sociologist. For the rapper, see Yung JocJock Young is a British sociologist and criminologist.He began teaching at Enfield College of Technology....
argues that relative deprivation is the most probable cause of criminality because people whose progress towards fulfilling expectations has stalled grow more aware of the injustice and unfairness in a society that allows inequality to arise, and this in turn breeds political disenchantment. At a societal level, this disenchantment may lead to riot
Riot
A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property or people. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are thought to be typically chaotic and...
ing. At an individual level, theft and burglary may seem an appropriate means to redress the balance. This may be seen as an appropriate means of furthering the "just cause" to throw off oppression. Realists tend to not see crime as some form of revolutionary challenge to the ruling class. Rather, they say, crime is a reactionary form of behaviour which demonstrates the absence of real political solutions to the experience of degradation and exploitation suffered by the working class, thus making individual crime devoid of political agenda. The majority fear crime regardless of social class and wish to find ways of eliminating it so as to create a secure environment. This creates a "problem of order" for a government which has the political responsibility to maintain an orderly society, and is accountable to an electorate likely to find disorder and chaos high on their political agenda.
After the 1997 Labour Party Victory
Criminologists such as Roger Hopkins Burke see left realism as 'very influential with the 'New' Labour Government elected in 1997' suggesting that acts such as the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act which combined measures that ensured offenders had to take responsibility for their actions and policies to tackle social and economic exclusion. However, whilst noting that social exclusionSocial exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterise contemporary forms of social disadvantage. Dr. Lynn Todman, director of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, suggests that social exclusion refers to processes in which...
was "...a key term in the policies of New Labour", Jock Young
Jock Young
This article is about the sociologist. For the rapper, see Yung JocJock Young is a British sociologist and criminologist.He began teaching at Enfield College of Technology....
commented that they used the 'weak thesis' of social exclusion
Social exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterise contemporary forms of social disadvantage. Dr. Lynn Todman, director of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, suggests that social exclusion refers to processes in which...
where such exclusion is self-imposed by a lazy and idle underclass, a value shared with the previous Conservative administration.
External links
- John Lea's website. http://www.bunker8.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
- Jock Young's articles. http://www.malcolmread.co.uk/JockYoung/
Key Articles
- Kinsey, Richard; Lea, John & Young, Jock. (1986). Losing the Fight Against Crime. London: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-13721-1
- Lea, John. (1987). Left Realism: A Defence Contemporary Crises
- Lea, John & Young, Jock. (1984). What Is To Be Done About Law and Order — Crisis in the Eighties. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Pluto Press revised edition: 1993). ISBN 0-7453-0735-3
- Matthews, Roger & Young, Jock. (2003). The New Politics of Crime and Punishment. Willan Publishing. ISBN 1-903240-91-3
- Matthews, Roger & Young, Jock. (eds.). (1992) Rethinking Criminology: The Realist Debate. (Sage Contemporary Criminology). London: Sage. ISBN 0-8039-8621-1
- Matthews, Roger & Young, Jock (eds.). (1992) Issues in Realist Criminology. Sage Contemporary Criminology Series. London: Sage. ISBN 0-8039-8624-6
- Taylor, Ian. (1982). Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism.
- Young, Jock. (ed.). (1994). The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity. London; Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ISBN 0-8039-8151-1