Left Reaism

New Left Realism is a contemporary form of Social Conflict Theory; a theory that tries to explain crime and it's connections to social class, crime and social control. Left Realism Theory affects mainly the working class and solutions to crime tend to only make crime problems worse. The roots of NLR, how it evolved, and current social implications are important to understanding this theory. NLR's largely reject the view that poverty and unemployment cause crime, preferring Merton's view of 'strain' and 'anomie'.

Left Realism began with the 1984 work of John Lea and Jock Young. In their writing of What Is To Be Done About Law and Order ?, these two authors give birth to the idea that crime is a three way process, the offender, the state and the victim. Jock Young breaks away from traditional structuralism by claiming that criminals must not be seen as 'passive' but active offenders responsible for their own actions.

In What Is To Be Done About Law and Order?, Lea and Young politically present the idea that crime is a real problem for working class people. The left realists have attempted to present a solution to crime (this was to stop the New Right having a monopoly of solutions for crime in regards to their philosophy on 'Zero Tolerance'). One solution the NLR's present is that there needs to be greater cooperation between the police and the public. This is a logical suggestion, but harder in reality as was witnessed during the Rhys Jones murder in Liverpool. When the police pleaded for help from the local community but the community "clammed" up and did not cooperate.

Current social implications NLR's claim is a lack of job creation, social inequality, social fear, political incompetence and failure, gender conflict leading to disenchantment and rioting. Our society has been changed according to Left Realism by the creation of fearful and isolated citizens through relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation. Lea and Young's concepts of demarginalisation, pre-emptive deterrence and the limited use of prisons for violent offenders can help you understand what Left Realism is all about. There attempt to create connections between social classes and crime and how criminals are punished or sentenced.

In regards to stopping marginalisation NLRs claim that community service orders and widespread release from prison would stop the separation between the criminal and the community currently being witnessed. In relation to pre-emptive deterrence NLR's claim that organisation of the community is of the highest importance. In regards to prison Lea and Young (right) claim that, "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"

NLR claim that social surveys are socially constructed and simple suit 'consumer demand and satisfaction', what is more accurate are localised victim studies. They have conducted large scale studies in Merseyside and Islington. This study will lead us onto the counter argument by the New Right...

A2 Crime and Deviance: "The New Right"

Guest Blogger: Janine Taylor

When you look at the picture on the right, what do you see? A plus-sized family of four? The girl from the X-Factor who had the awful dress? A dirty cotton bud on the floor? A family, which was forced to live in a car after being evicted for all night karaoke sessions? While all of the former are indeed true, what you are actually looking at the Chawners - a family who weigh 83st between them, claim £22,000 a year in benefits and have chosen not to work for 11 years. They are the embodiment of the underclass, the “scum of the depraved elements of all classes” – Marx.

Before I delve in to the sociology behind the phenomenon of the underclass, I’m sure you are wondering about why they are “entitled” to all the money they receive. Mrs Chawner receives an extra £330 a month, because she has epilepsy and asthma – the latter being caused by her obesity. Mr Chawner receives £71 a month, as he developed type 2 diabetes because of this weight. Samantha – the girl on the right, receives £168 a month in jobseeker’s allowance and the wannabe pop star who has is so elegantly placed herself on the arm of the sofa receives £116 a month as a student, due to the “poverty” of her family.

The New Right seek to reduce the welfare state which have allowed families like these to thrive on benefits as they believe that individuals have a social responsibility, a moral obligation to provide and be responsible for themselves. Because of this, ‘scroungers’ along with young offenders and other ‘undesirable’ social groups, in the eyes of the New Right, are labelled the ‘enemy within’.

Control theory influences the New Right and even thought it is most commonly applied to criminal and deviant behaviour, it can also be applied to the study of the Chawners and the underclass (although I would argue that the behaviour of the Chawners is criminal):
1/The Reasoning Criminal
→ Actions are calculated and rational
o Chawners – We can make more money by staying at home, and watching Jeremy Kyle than if we get a job.
2/Society influences the individual
→ People are influences by those in their neighbourhood
o Chawners -3,924 people are on benefits in Blackburn, why should we have to work?
Lastly, although the Chawners are yet to realise it:
3/People have a moral duty to work
→ Dependence on others decreases happiness and freedom.
→ Marsland – “welfare hand outs create incentives for staying unemployed”

So how does this link to crime and deviance?

Murray, a New Right Realist blamed the welfare state for “sapping moral fibre, eroding Christian ethics and threatening family values” (link to religion - Weber – The protestant ethic – hard work, spending money wisely). He believed that England would be come a nanny state where there was an over dependency on welfare, which has become the case now more than ever due to the recent economic recession. Murray also believed that the result of a nanny state was ‘social sickness’ which is the reduction of the strength of moral values and mechanisms of social control – anomie, which in turn leads to crime.

The New Right believes that crime is not a cause of poverty, but by “selfish and wicked people” – Wilson. The choice to turn to crime is always linked to the ease of committing the act, the opportunities available, the risk involved in the crime and the possibility of being detected. Because of this Wilson concludes that people are less likely to commit crimes if there is surveillance e.g. CCTV and ‘target hardening e.g. marking goods, such as laptops. They also advocate a policy of Zero Tolerance (Wilson and Kelling – Broken Windows, train jumpers), which means that minor crimes should be punished harshly, to stop larger ones from being committed, as the attributed the rise in crime to the lack of fear the criminal had about being caught.

Although the picture I have portrayed of the New Right may lead you to think that they are heartless, they are not. They do believe that the benefit system should be kept in place to help those who genuinely cannot help themselves. Anyway, if your dreams of making it big don’t work, I know how you can make £22,000 a year with minimal effort…

Films to Watch

There are many films on crime to watch and the following are just some of the sociology department favourites. Do check with who you live with before watching any film with a 18 certificate.

• A touch of evil
• All the President's Men
• Bad Day at Black Rock
• Badlands
• Boyz n' the Hood
• Cape Fear
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Falling Down
• L.A. Confidential
• Mean Streets
• Mississippi Burning
• Psycho
• Rear Window
• Salvador
• 10 Rillington Place
• The Accused
• The Manchurian Candidate
• The Untouchables
• The Usual Suspects
• West Side Story

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.

A2 Philip Zimbardo: How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes

Firstly, I realise Phil Zimbardo is a (Social) Psychologist, but do we as sociologists not have an obligation to address the question of, "what makes people turn evil" even when we are usually looking at such problems more systematically and through social structures. And how do we as sociologists relate this to 'crime and deviance'? Zimbardo looks at whether 'evil' is a fixed or a moving concept. Are we as an individual good or evil - is it as simple as that (or can we simply shift from one to the other)? Zimbardo looks at the 'Lucifer Effect' and how Lucifer went from god’s favourite angel (Lucifer means 'the light') to an occupant of 'hell' (see right illustration). Was he manipulated by the system, or were his flaws more psychological?

What may be more relevant is the unique circumstances that makes people do evil things, and how do we as individuals justify causing harm (think of the harmful impact of a war, regardless of the political reasoning)? In the C&D module, is it worth looking at those few bad apples, or the barrel itself (the barrell being the system)? If people are the actors on a stage, is their behaviour determined by the stage or are they acting independently, as conscious beings - as you can see on the attached video Zimbardo claims that the power is in the system. Obviously individual acts will relate more to Interactionism as a theory, but can sociologists link in the Marxist perspective here, is the system to blame for working class crime? Or maybe more importantly are the criminals those who can't achieve legitimate goals, when the system deprives them of the means.

The more anonymous the criminal is, dressed in face paint, a uniform, whatever, does this make them more likely to commit harm under the banner of a mystical force, under the cloak of invisability? The 'Stanford Prison Experiment' showed us that criminal acts are not beyond any one individual or put more bluntly, Zimbardo claims any one individual can turn to crime or an act of evil if the environment is conducive.

A2: Chicago School (Ecology of Crime)

The Chicago School (CS) was a sociological development in the 1920/30s to address changing patterns of behaviour relating to urban sociology. The CS is an attempt to link the human being as an organism to the social structure and environment in which they live. Genetic and personal characteristics are dismissed as part of the CS study which focused on the city of Chicago as the object of their study. The main issue, as a link to crime and deviance, is that due to increased social mobility communities become fractured primarily within what Shaw and McKay call the 'Zone of Transition' which is the inner-city that rings the city centre. Quantitative data was used to support their study in the form of census reports, housing/welfare records and crime figures. The CS largely focus on 'migrant' workers which move into these areas due to cheap housing and access to work, but quickly move away causing social disorganisation. There is a key synoptic link here with the family, schools and the church failing to bond communities, in short communities in the inner city are failing to "solve their problems together" leading to the functionalist ideas of anomie and strain theory.

In criticism of the CS:
1. Do all inner city residents turn to crime;

2. Is this over negative to migrant workers;

3. Are humans simply passive to their environment.

Read a review of the Shaw and McKay investigation on Social Disorganisation Theory.