Evaluation of Marxist view on crime and law

Marxist key idea

Capitalism is crimingentic. It is the root cause of crim.e All classes commit crime but selective law enforcement means crime apprears to be only a working-class problem.

Strengths of Marxism

• It shows how poverty and inequality can cause working-class crime, and how capitalism promotes greed and encourages upper-class crime

• It shows how both law making and law enforcement are biased against the working class and in favour of the powerful. For example, corporate crime is rarely prosecuted

Limitations of Marxism

• It focuses on class and largely ignores the relationship between crime and other inequalities. such as gender and ethnicity.

• It over-predicts the amount of working-class crime: not all poor people turn to crime.

• Not all capitalists societies have high crime rates: e.g. Japan’s homicide rate is only about a fifth of the USA’s/ (However, Marxist points out that capitalist societies with little welfare provision, like the USA have higher crime rates.

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