Realism

RIGHT REALISM

Right realism assumes it takes a more realistic view of the causes of crime and deviance. Right realists believe crime and deviance are a real social problem that requires practical solutions. It is said that right realism perpetuates moral panics as a means of swaying the public to agree with their views.

THE CAUSES OF CRIME

Right realists reject the idea put forward by Marxists and others that structural or economic factors such as poverty and inequality are the cause of crime. For example, they point out that the old tend to be poor yet they have a very low crime rate, which goes against the Marxist view. For right realists, crime is the product of three factors; individual biological differences, inadequate socialisation and the individual’s choice to offend.

• Wilson and Herrnstein put forward a biosocial theory of criminal behaviour. In their view, crime is caused by a combination of biological and social factors.
• Biological differences make some people innately more strongly prone to commit crime than others. For example, personality traits such as aggressiveness, extroversion and low impulse.
• Similarly, Herrnstein and Murray argue that the main cause of crime is low intelligence, which is biologically determined.

While biology may increase the chance of an individual offending, effective socialisation decreases the risk because it involves learning self-control and moral values of right and wrong.

For right realists, the best agency of socialisation is the nuclear family. 

• Murray utilised the term ‘underclass’ to refer to individuals who lack employment, income or an education. He believed that these individuals have become surplus to requirements in developed economies due to globalisation, where cheaper labour can be obtained in other (developing) countries. Murray’s views on society mean that he fits with new rights theorists, who view state welfare as creating a culture ofdependencyand individuals don’t have an incentive to work.
• For lone mothers, they are ineffective socialisation agents, especially for boys. Absent fathers mean that boys lack paternal discipline and appropriate male role models. As a result, young males turn to other, often delinquent, role models on the street and gain status through crime rather than supporting their families by getting a steady job.

• An important element in the right realist view of crime comes from rational choice theory, which assumes that individuals have free will and the power of reason.
• Ron Clarke argues that the decision to commit crime is a choice based on a rational calculation of the likely consequences.
• Right realists argue that the perceived costs of crime are low and this is why the crime rate has increased. In their view, there is often little risk of being caught and punishments are in any case lenient. 
• Similarly, Felson’s routine activity theory argues that for a crime to occur there must be a motivated offender, a suitable target and the absence of a ‘capable guardian’. Offenders are assumed to act rationally, so that the presence of a guardian is likely to deter them.

• It ignores wider structural causes such as poverty
• ts view of criminals as rational actors freely choosing crime conflicts with its claim that their behaviour is determined by their biology and socialisation.
• It overstates offenders’ rationality and how far they make cost-benefit calculations before committing a crime.

• Right realists do not believe it is fruitful to try to deal with the causes of crime since these can’t be easily changed.
• Their main focus is on control, containment and punishment of offenders rather than eliminating the underlying causes of offending or rehabilitating them.
• Crime prevention policies should therefore reduce the rewards and increase the costs of crime to the offender, for example by ‘target hardening’. 

• Zero tolerance policy was first introduced in New York in 1994 and was widely applauded for reducing crime.
• However, Jock Young argues that its ‘success’ was a myth peddled by politicians and police keen to take the credit for falling crime. Young argues that the police need arrests to justify their existence, and New York’s shortage of serious crime led police there to ‘define deviance’. They went to the streets arresting people for minor deviant acts that had fallen outside of their ‘net’, re-labelling them now as worthy of punishment.

The success of zero tolerance was just a product of the police’s way of coping with a decline that already happened.

• Zero tolerance and target hardening just lead to displacement of crime to other areas
• It over emphasises control of disorder, rather than tackling the causes of neighbourhood decline such as lack of investment.
• It gives police free rein to discriminate against minorities, youth, the homeless etc 
• It is preoccupied with petty street crime and ignores corporate crime, which is costly and harmful.