Neo-Marxism – Critical Criminology
NEO-MARXISTS – TAYLOR, WALTEN AND YOUNG:
Take ideas from traditional Marxism and labelling theory.
Their 1973 book, The New Criminology, was the most important contribution to our understanding of crime and deviance.
There’s 3 Marxist points Taylor et al agreed with:
Capitalist society is based on exploitation and class conflict and characterised by extreme inequalities of wealth and power. Understanding this is the key to understanding crime.
The state makes and enforces laws in the interests of the ruling class and criminalises members of the working class.
Capitalism should be replaced by a classless society. This would greatly reduce the extent of crime or even rid society of crime entirely.
Describe their book as ‘critical criminology’ – critiquing Marxist and non-Marxist theory.
ANTI-DETERMINISM:
They see Marxism as deterministic because it sees workers as driven to commit crime out of economic necessity.
They also reject theories that blame external factors: anomie, subculture or labelling, or by biological and psychological factors.
They take a voluntaristic view – people have free will. Crime is a meaningful action and conscious choice by an actor.
They believe crime has the political motive of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor.
So they don’t see criminals as passive puppets, they believe they’re deliberately striving to change society.
A FULLY SOCIAL THEORY OF DEVIANCE:
Fully social theory of deviance that includes aspects of Marxism and Interactionism:
The wider origins the deviant act in the unequal distribution of wealth and power in capitalist society.
The immediate origins of the deviant act – the particular context in which the individual decides to commit the act.
The act itself and its meaning for the actor – e.g was it a form of rebellion against capitalism?
The immediate origins of social reaction – the reactions of those around the deviant, such as police, family and community, to discovering the deviance.
The wider origins of social reaction in the structure of capitalist society – especially the issue of who has the power to define actions as deviant and to label others, and why some acts are treated more harshly than others.
The effects of labelling on the deviant’s future actions – e.g why does labelling lead to deviance amplification in some cases but not others?
This theory has two main sources:
Marxist ideas about unequal distribution of wealth and who has the power to make and enforce the law.
Interactionism and labelling theory about the meaning of the deviant act for the actor, societal reactions to it, and the effects of labelling on the individual.
ADVANTAGES OF CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY:
Hall (1978) was able to apply it to the moral panic over mugging in the 1970s.
Taylor et al still defend two aspects of critical criminology:
In calling for greater tolerance of diversity in behaviour, the book combatted the ‘correctional bias’ in most existing theories – the assumption that sociology’s role is simply to find ways of correcting deviant behaviour.
The book laid some of the foundation for later radical approaches that seek to establish a more just society, such as left realism and feminist theories.
CRITICISMS OF CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY:
Feminists would criticise this theory as being ‘gender blind’.
Left realists make two criticisms:
Critical criminology romanticises working class criminals as ‘Robin Hoods’ who are fighting capitalism by redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. However these criminals aren’t ‘Robin Hoods’ because they mostly prey on the poor.
Taylor et al don’t take crimes against the poor seriously which is an issue as it ignores the effects on its working class victims.
Burke (2005): the theory is useless as critical criminology is both too general and too idealistic to be useful in tackling crime.