Neo-Marxism

- Studied coverage of black muggers in 1970's.

- Concluded it has the effect of labelling all African-Carribbean individuals as criminal and a potential threat to white people.

- Served the ideological purpose of turning the white working-class against the black working-class in a process known as divide and rule - people are easier to control because they are segregated.

- Diverted attention away from the mismanagement of capitalism and was used to justify repressive laws and policing that could be used against other 'problem groups'.

- Proposed by Taylor, Walter and Young in 1970's to explain criminality in contemporary society.

- Combined ideas of Marxism about unequal distribution of wealth and ideas from Interactionism and labelling theory about the meaning of the deviant act, societal reactions to it and the effects of the deviant label of the individual to create the 'fully social theory of deviance'.

- Fully social theory needs to bring together 6 aspects.

1 - Wider origins of deviant act - unequal distributions of wealth and power in capitalist society.

2 - Immediate origins of deviant act - particular circumstances that have caused person to commit crime.

3 - The act of deviance - what was the meaning/purpose of the act for the individual e.g., was the person stealing to feed their starving family? Was it a form of rebellion against capitalism?

4 - Immediate origins of social reaction - the reactions of those connected to the individual - how did they react? Friends, family, the police? Were they sympathetic or angry?

5 - Wider origins of social reaction - how will the rest of society act to the deviance. Especially the issue of who has the power to define certain acts as deviant and to label others and why some acts are treated more harshly than others.

6 - The impact of societal reactions on future behaviour - will the person committing the act be labelled? Will the act become a master status and how will this impact on future acts of deviance?

- Neo-Marxists see crime as a form of protest. 

- An example of this includes the London Riots and the Black Lives Matter movement. 

- See working-class as fighting capitalism by re-distributing wealth from the rich to the poor.

- Left Realists criticize Neo-Marxists for being idealistic by romanticizing criminality. It portrays working-class criminals as 'Robin Hood' figures who are fighting capitalism. 

- Left Realists would also critcize this theory for not taking such crime seriously by ignoring its effects on working-class victims.

- It does not explain why most crime is committed against other working-class individuals, rather than the elite in society.

- Feminists criticize this theory for being 'gender blind' as it focuses excessively on male criminality at the expense of female criminality.