Left Realism Essay

In the context of criminology Left and Right Realism first came into prominence in accordance with the Reagan and Thatcher governments that emerged in America and Britain in the 1970s. Both administrations dominated politics for a considerable period and represented a significant break with much previous post-war politics and public policy, favouring free market economics and mounting a critique on social welfare programmes that had developed in previous decades (Newburn 2012). In this essay I will compare and contrast these two criminological perspectives, first by explaining Left and Right Realism, and subsequently developing an analysis to highlight any areas of contrast between the two perspectives. I will argue that Left Realism is primarily

Left Idealism, they argued assumed that crime occurred within the working class because of poverty and that crime was an attempt to redress their balance in an unequal society (Young and Matthews 1992). However, as noted by Braithwaite (1989:133) this present state of criminology was considered “one of abject failure in its own terms,” associated with severe criticism such as, for example, utopianism (Newburn 2012). As noted by Newburn (2012), Left Idealism continued to adhere to the view that some form of crime-free future is possible if social structural conditions could be changed, leading to the criticism of Left Idealism being associated with focusing on unrealistic and unachievable political change, failing to focus on more practical policy changes which could improve people’s lives. In this sense the nature of Left Realism was to break away from what was considered by the ‘irrelevance’ (Newburn 2012) and “romanticized”

Central to the development of Right Realism as a criminological perspective was the work of political scientist James Q. Wilson and his work entitled ‘Thinking About Crime’ (1975) arguing against traditional sociological explanations of crime, arguing against efforts to manipulate crime rates through social-welfarist approaches as well as, arguing for a greater emphasis on deterrence and increased penalties for repeat offending. Newburn (2012) argues that Right Realism has two major characteristics; first, it tends to take an individualised view of crime, looking for explanations in individual choices rather than in broader social or structural conditions and second, Right Realist responses to crime tend to be associated with greater controls and enhanced punishments. In association with these two features of right realism and indeed the political agenda of the 1970s and 1980s was the belief that the breakdown of moral values and social controls associated with permissiveness was central to understanding rising crime rates (Newburn 2012). This can be seen in Wilson and Herrnstein’s (1985) work focusing on the socialisation of young children where the study aimed to analyse reasons why some children fail to develop a strong moral conscience. Wilson and Herrnstein (1985) argued that children from one-parent families