Right Realism

What is Right Realism?

• Right Realists favour a tough stance on crime.

• Crime is a real and growing problem that damages communities and social cohesion.

• Right realists focus on practical crime control rather than mainly looking for causes of crime.

• Wilson argued for tougher approaches, such as ‘zero tolerance’ of crime and disorder.

• They believe control and punishment are more effective than rehabilitation on tackling causes such as poverty.

Right Realists and Tackling Crime

• Right realists focus on control, containment and punishment.

• Crime prevention should reduce the rewards and increase the costs of crime, e.g. through target hardening more imprisonment and swift punishment.

• Zero tolerance means dealing quickly with signs of disorder, such as graffiti, vandalism, begging and drunkenness to maintain an orderly environment.

• Need to ensure neighbourhoods are well kept, broken windows and graffiti are catalysts of greater deviance/crime.

Zero Tolerance: an urban myth?

• First introduced in New York in 1944, applauded for reducing crime.

• Jock Young (2011) claims its success is a myth as crime was already falling from 1985 onwards.

Critics argue that Zero tolerance has several problems:

• It focuses too much on petty street crime while ignoring more serious crimes such as corporate crime.

• It may give police such as corporate crime.

• Focuses on controlling disorder rather than tackling deeper causes of crime, such as poverty.

Right Realism: Causes of Crime

• Biological differences:

• Ineffective Socialisation & Underclass:

• Rational choice:

Biological differences:

Biological differences:

• Some people are naturally criminals, or are programmed to be more aggressive, more impulsive and less intelligent.

  
  

Ineffective Socialisation & Unerclass:

• Need a traditional nuclear family to teach children right from wrong.

• New growing underclass (or ‘rabble’) are failing their children.

• Single-parent families ‘caused’ by the welfare state.

• Lack of parental role models and discipline.

• Values of hard work and self improvement not taught.

• The underclass threatens the very fabric of society.

Rational Choice:

• All individuals have free will and the power of reason.

• If the perceived benefits of something outweigh the potentially negative consequences, an individual will undertake the act.

• If the perceived costs of crimes are low therefore if one raises the costs of crime.

Criticisms of Right Realism

• Ignores poverty

• Rationality choice theory does not explain non-utilitarian crimes.

• Rational actors freely choosing to be criminals is in conflict with the view that some are biologically pre-disposed to crime.

• Zero-tolerance focuses on petty crime/street crime more than corporate crime.

• Zero-tolerance often leads to displacement.