A2 Crime and Deviance: New Criminology

What is New Criminology?

New Criminology was a popular neo Marxist combination within British Sociology in the 1970's. It seemed like a good idea at the time, after all , interactionism had dominated Liberal American Sociology in the late 1960's whilst Marxism reigned supreme in many British University departments. Taylor, Walton and Young therefore simply combined the two and produced what became known as the 'Robin Hood' theory of Criminology. In other words the criminal had to be understood as a victim of the system who was fighting back and attempting to redistribute wealth. Crime in short was a political act.

However, this was rapidly seen as idealistic - particularly given the fact that these 'outlaws' did not actually give to the poor but rather kept it all for themselves! Taylor et al. also seemed to miss the fact that poor do not rob from the rich, rather they rob from each other. The Chicago School could have told them this fifty years earlier!

However there were positives to the theory; by using Interactionism it enabled the sociologist to investigate the meanings of the act for the individual criminal and it additionally allowed them to thoroughly examine the importance of societal reaction and the consequences of this within the whole labelling process. The idea of mixing both theories was also successfully applied to the example of classroom deviance by Paul Willis in his book 'Learning to Labour' (a useful synoptic link).

Nevertheless the clear problems within New Criminology were demonstrated when Paul Gilroy applied this theory to the example of 'black crime'. Gilroy applied Marxism in suggesting that crime committed by the ethnic minority had to be seen as part of an 'anti-colonial struggle' - the exploited individual fighting back against an unjust system. However he then applied interactionism in suggesting that black crime was nothing more than the racist police stereotyping and labelling the community. In doing this, not only had Gilroy ignored the clear contradiction of suggesting that ethnic minorities do/do not commit crime, he also gave very little evidence in support of the view that crime was seen by the criminal as part of an anti-colonial struggle.

Although New Criminology was a little ahead of its time in trying to encourage sociologists to go beyond the narrow confines of placing themselves and their thoughts within separate theoretical groups, nevertheless the final nail in its coffin came when most its initial proponents- particularly Jock Young - introduced a new neo-Marxist theory in New Left Realism in the mid 1980's. The fact that this represented a dramatic shift to a more functionalist view of crime showed that even these sociologists had realised that perhaps they had originally tried to be a little too radical and had lost an understanding of the basic realities of crime.