Right Realism

RR sees crime, especially street crime, as a growing problem.

Attitude to other theories - RR's believe other theories have failed to solve the problem of crime.They regard labelling theory and critical criminology as too sympathetic to the criminal and hostile to the police/courts.

Practical solutions - RR's are mainly concerned with practical solutions to reduce crime. In their view, the best way to do so is through control and punishment, rather than rehabilitating offenders or tackling causes such as poverty.

The causes of crime

- RR's reject the idea that structural or economic factors such as poverty are the cause of crime (e.g. they point out that the old tend to be poor yet have very low crime rate)

- For RR's, crime is the product of 3 factors: biological differences, inadequate socialisation and the underclass, and rational choice to offend. 

1) BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

According to Wilson and Herrnstein, crime is caused by a combination of biological and social factors (biosocial factors)

The biological differences between individuals make some people innnately predisposed to commit crime, due to personality traits such as aggressiveness, low intelligence etc, which RR's see as biologically determined.

A02- Critics argue that evidence for intelligence being biologically determined is limited. Even if it is, it may not explain offending. Lilly et al found that differences in intelligence accounted for only 3% of the difference in offending.

2) THE UNDERCLASS

Effective socialisation decreases the risk of offending by teaching self control and correct…