Right Realism
Encyclopedia
In criminology
, Right Realism (also known as New Right Realism, Neo-Classicism, Neo-Positivism, or Neo-Conservatism) is the ideological polar opposite of Left Realism. It considers the phenomenon of crime from the perspective of political Conservatism
and asserts that it takes a more realistic view of the causes of crime
and deviance
, and identifies the best mechanisms for its control. Unlike the other Schools
of criminology, there is less emphasis on developing theories
of causality in relation to crime and deviance (the tendency is to scientifically examine Official Statistics as evidence). The school employs a rationalist, direct and scientific approach to policy-making for the prevention and control of crime. Some politicians that ascribe to the perspective may address aspects of crime policy in ideological terms by referring to freedom
, justice
, and responsibility
. For example, they may asserting that individual freedom should only be limited by a duty not to use force against others. This, however, does not reflect the genuine quality in the theoretical and academic work and the real contribution made to the nature of criminal behaviour by criminologists of the school.
and punished
if they do. There is little interest in exploring concepts of power
and structures in society
. Indeed, the political view is that, "There is no such thing as Society
. There are individual men and women and there are families
". (Margaret Thatcher 1993:626). This is distinguishable from political systems that provide order for their subjects and the problems to be governed in terms of their relationship to society, whether as functional or dysfunctional, integrated or isolated, organized or disorganized. In the face of theories of autonomy and an increasingly entrepreneurial culture
, government
increasingly focuses on mobilizing individuals, families, "the market" and voluntary associations such as "communities". Privatization
rather than social welfare has become the paradigm.
New Right therefore adopts the language of "realism" to describe the lawmaking process, instead of addressing the causes of the "crimes" being created. James Q. Wilson
who was President Reagan's adviser on crime, for example, rejects the idea that crime has "root causes" that can be found in the structural contexts of people's lives. Given the lack of correlation between unemployment and crime, which could have formed the basis for a structural explanation of crime, the New Right turns to a cultural explanation. They see a decline in 'family values' and, in particular, a lack of discipline both inside and outside the home. Further, there is sometimes an apparent rejection of utilitarian theories of deterrence
as a basis for eliminating any cause of crime. The only practical outcome said to be achievable is the minimization of the impact that crime might have on ordinary people. Whereas Jeremy Bentham
advocated the "use of pain where shame has proved ineffective", Right Realism advocates the principle that nothing deters more than the certainty of detection. Thus, more proactive policing through policies of zero tolerance
to make it safe for citizens to be on the streets and in their homes, and the greater allocation of resources to detection will have more success than the current reactive stance in relation to crimes committed. In this strand of argument, there is a form of Cost-benefit analysis
where the success of institutions charged with the task of control is measured by reference to the recorded incidence of crime over time. One Benthamite concept is accepted, namely that man is a calculating animal who will weigh the rewards likely to be earned from crime against the chances of being caught. Indeed, to build greater conformity where deviancy
is socially unacceptable, the New Right advocates the allocation of resources into the education
system to underpin adherence to moral
values. This is an informal and internal system of control to match the formal and external controls through lawmaking and enforcement through policing.
and, as such, it is related to Functionalist theories of crime. It is said that there are three types of control:
Social Control Theory
(later also called Social Bonding Theory) proposes that people's relationships, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs encourage them not to break the law. Thus, if moral codes are internalized and individuals are tied into, and have a stake in their wider community, they will voluntarily limit their propensity to commit deviant acts. The theory seeks to understand the ways in which it is possible to reduce the likelihood of criminality developing in individuals. It does not consider motivational issues, simply stating that human beings may choose to engage in a wide range of activities, unless the range is limited by the processes of socialization
and social learning
. This derives from a Hobbesian
view of human nature as represented in Leviathan
, i.e. that all choices are constrained by implicit social contract
s, agreements and arrangements among people. Thus, morality
is created in the construction of social order, assigning costs and consequences to certain choices and defining some as evil, immoral and/or illegal. Although Travis Hirschi was not the first to propose a social control theory, the Causes of Delinquency (1969) was a landmark book, contrasting with the Strain Theory (see anomie
and the work of Robert King Merton) and Conflict Theory
. In particular, Hirschi challenged Differential Association Theory
(Edwin Sutherland
and Donald Cressey
) on the impact of delinquent peers on delinquency. He proposed that delinquent peers would be found to have no direct effect on delinquency when social bonds inhibiting delinquency were taken onto account. He argued that similarly unattached youth drifted together into delinquent groups. It was weak social bonds that resulted in both delinquency and association with delinquents.
, starting with the socialization of children within the family and the education system to develop consciences sufficiently strong to reject the temptation to engage in crime. But this social conditioning on its own will be ineffective. It must be combined with deterrence through improvement in detection and arrest rates, and reform in the attitudes of judges who have been too lenient in sentencing. This is specific deterrence and they argue that punishment works if a connection can be established in the mind of a punished offender between a planned criminal action and memories of the consequence for a previous criminal action. But they reject rehabilitation in the face of the statistics of recidivism. If all else seems to fail, hardened criminals must be locked away for the protection of society. There is also some movement back to biological and psychological explanations for criminality (see Gottfredson and Hirschi: 1987, Wasserman and Wachbroit: 2001, Rowe: 2002). Control Theory addressed social as opposed to legal deterrence, but Neo-Positivism accepts that whichever view may be correct, autonomy is paramount, i.e. the potential offender has a free choice on whether to ignore the feelings of others or the penalties of the state.
It focuses on reducing crime opportunities rather than on the characteristics of criminals or potential criminals. The strategy is to increase the associated risks and difficulties, and reduce the rewards. It asserts that crime is often committed through the accident of a practical or attractive opportunity, e.g. that a car is found unlocked or a window left open and that patterns in criminal activity are not simply based on where criminals live. For crimes aimed at households, initiatives include encouraging people to make their homes more secure - sometimes called 'target hardening'- and marking their property for easier identification. Responsibility rests with the individual householder; the police role is usually restricted to giving free specialist security advice. The most interesting criticism of this theory is that it may breed a fortress society where everyone is locked in his or her homes to prevent crime. At the community level, Neighborhood Watch schemes encourage people to monitor their neighbourhoods and to report suspicious incidents to the police. Environmental design focuses on improving street lighting, controlling access to buildings, restricting pedestrian and traffic flow, and dividing residential spaces into identifiable areas. The most ambitious environmental design schemes have been carried out in the United States
where the property of the rich is protected by expensive hardware, alarm systems, and even private guards. The overall challenge is to motivate those most in need of protection against crime to help themselves. This raises the need for a corporate or inter-agency response to crime prevention, rather than devolving all responsibility onto the individual.
This is a practical application of the Control Theory and answers the question, "Why don’t people commit crime?" by "Because of social control and deterrents". This implies that crime and delinquency are a result of choice, and Clarke and Cornish (1985) posit that, "...crime is purposive behavior designed to meet the offender’s commonplace needs for such things as money, status, sex, excitement, and that meeting these needs involves the making of (sometimes quite rudimentary) decisions and choices, constrained as they are by limits of time and ability and the availability of relevant information." Thus, offenders make decisions that appear rational (to the offenders at least) to engage in specific criminal acts.
are routine activity, situational crime prevention, and economic theories of crime (Clarke, 1997:9) This repeats the Classical School
of Jeremy Bentham
and Cesare Beccaria. Neoclassicism in the U.S. differ from Rational Choice theorists in their emphasis on punishment as a deterrent, imposing punishment systems like the "three strikes law
" and placing limits on sentencing discretion as rational, effective deterrents to crime. Apart from the ethical considerations and the high cost of long-term incarceration, Clarke's research demonstrates that certainty of apprehension rather than the severity of punishment is the major deterrent. Critics observe that there is little point in investing resources in situational crime prevention if the thwarted criminal simply moves from one crime to another (termed "crime displacement"). It is difficult to prove the absence of displacement. Central to the displacement criticism is the belief that, to the offender, most crimes are equivalent, i.e. that an offender would just as soon commit one crime as another. This is a positivist assumption that crime is a product of enduring dispositions by the offender. Clarke & Cornish (1987: 45-50) argue that displacement occurs only under certain conditions, namely, all things considered, the criminal may not think that the benefits justify displacement. For example, in 1960 the steering columns of all cars in Germany
were equipped with locks and the result was a 60 per cent reduction in car thefts. Whereas, in Great Britain
only new cars were so equipped with the result being crime was displaced to the older unequipped cars. However, no evidence exists to suggest that an obscene phone caller will begin a career as a burglar. In response, Akers (1990) says that rational choice theorists make so many exceptions to the pure rationality stressed in their own models that nothing sets them apart from other theorists. Further, the rational choice models in literature have various situational or cognitive constraints and deterministic notions of cause and effect that render them, "...indistinguishable from current ‘etiological’ or ‘positivist’ theories."
evidence as to whether patterns of offending are related to age
, gender
, race, location, social class
, etc. nor providing any research into metrics of success or failure for proactive policing and education as a system for imparting values. It accepts the utilitarian idea that people act rationally without considering why people may choose to break the law. People have the capacity to engage in a wide range of behavior. If they are truly rational, the decision to break the law must be informed by their social condition or other factors that are relevant to them. Identifying the factors that condition the decision would both assist the prevention process, because government policies could address those issues, and support the creation of a suitable curriculum in the education system to demonstrate more clearly why the commission of crime is a "bad" decision. As it is, the School seems to depend on the inculcation of moral imperatives which are taken to be self-evidently the best solution to the problem of crime. Bryson and Mowbray (1981) regard the notion of shared values in the community as a cynical exercise by Conservatism to set insiders (law-abiding, consensual community members) against outsiders (criminals), and thus to foster a law and order politics (Wilson: 1986). But this ignores the empowerment potential in the community as a voluntary organization of citizens taking responsibility for themselves and their neighbors, mobilized in their own interests, to act in a mutually beneficial fashion. Independent collective action without involving the state and its more heavy-handed compulsions may be more effective than aggressive policing that alienates local opinion. Ironically, this adopts the arguments of Left Realism (as in Taylor: 1982) which emphasized police accountability and responsiveness to local community needs. Also note the models of situational crime prevention which are not simply gesture politics by the "Right" but an area in which progressive criminologists recognize positive developments in rethinking social justice (James 1996).
It has been argued that within Right Realism, there is inadequate interest in corporate crime
, white-collar crime
, political crime
or state crime
. Van Den Haag (1975) asserts that capitalism
is about the creation of "winners" and "losers". Livesey identifies the implication that the winners must be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their enterprise and risk-taking without these rewards being taken-away by the losers. Indeed, if capitalism to continue as a (successful) form of economic production, those responsible for the creation and accumulation of wealth must be protected from the activities of criminals. This apparently justifies shifting the remit of law enforcement to concentrate surveillance and monitoring on the activities of the poor and powerless (the losers). However, it has also been asserted that any given set of economic institutions establishes "winners" and "losers", which did also exist before the rise of capitalism
and will also continue to exist under a system protective of the criminal, therefore turning its victims into the real "losers".
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
, Right Realism (also known as New Right Realism, Neo-Classicism, Neo-Positivism, or Neo-Conservatism) is the ideological polar opposite of Left Realism. It considers the phenomenon of crime from the perspective of political Conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and asserts that it takes a more realistic view of the causes of crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
and deviance
Deviant Behavior
Deviant Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal which focuses on social deviance, including criminal, sexual, and narcotic behaviors.The journal is published by Taylor and Francis, Inc., and was ranked 41st out of 46 psychology journals and 46th out of 90 sociology journals in 2004 by the...
, and identifies the best mechanisms for its control. Unlike the other Schools
School (discipline)
A school of thought is a collection or group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, cultural movement, or art movement....
of criminology, there is less emphasis on developing theories
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
of causality in relation to crime and deviance (the tendency is to scientifically examine Official Statistics as evidence). The school employs a rationalist, direct and scientific approach to policy-making for the prevention and control of crime. Some politicians that ascribe to the perspective may address aspects of crime policy in ideological terms by referring to freedom
Freedom (political)
Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
, justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
, and responsibility
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
. For example, they may asserting that individual freedom should only be limited by a duty not to use force against others. This, however, does not reflect the genuine quality in the theoretical and academic work and the real contribution made to the nature of criminal behaviour by criminologists of the school.
Discussion
The primary focus is on the control and prevention of criminal behavior, i.e. the criminals have to be prevented from breaking the criminal lawCriminal law
Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...
and punished
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
if they do. There is little interest in exploring concepts of power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
and structures in society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. Indeed, the political view is that, "There is no such thing as Society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. There are individual men and women and there are families
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
". (Margaret Thatcher 1993:626). This is distinguishable from political systems that provide order for their subjects and the problems to be governed in terms of their relationship to society, whether as functional or dysfunctional, integrated or isolated, organized or disorganized. In the face of theories of autonomy and an increasingly entrepreneurial culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
increasingly focuses on mobilizing individuals, families, "the market" and voluntary associations such as "communities". Privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
rather than social welfare has become the paradigm.
New Right therefore adopts the language of "realism" to describe the lawmaking process, instead of addressing the causes of the "crimes" being created. James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College....
who was President Reagan's adviser on crime, for example, rejects the idea that crime has "root causes" that can be found in the structural contexts of people's lives. Given the lack of correlation between unemployment and crime, which could have formed the basis for a structural explanation of crime, the New Right turns to a cultural explanation. They see a decline in 'family values' and, in particular, a lack of discipline both inside and outside the home. Further, there is sometimes an apparent rejection of utilitarian theories of deterrence
Deterrence (legal)
Deterrence is the use of punishment as a threat to deter people from committing a crime. Deterrence is often contrasted with retributivism, which holds that punishment is a necessary consequence of a crime and should be calculated based on the gravity of the wrong done.- Categories :Deterrence can...
as a basis for eliminating any cause of crime. The only practical outcome said to be achievable is the minimization of the impact that crime might have on ordinary people. Whereas Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
advocated the "use of pain where shame has proved ineffective", Right Realism advocates the principle that nothing deters more than the certainty of detection. Thus, more proactive policing through policies of zero tolerance
Zero tolerance
Zero tolerance imposes automatic punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct. Zero-tolerance policies forbid persons in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are...
to make it safe for citizens to be on the streets and in their homes, and the greater allocation of resources to detection will have more success than the current reactive stance in relation to crimes committed. In this strand of argument, there is a form of Cost-benefit analysis
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost–benefit analysis , sometimes called benefit–cost analysis , is a systematic process for calculating and comparing benefits and costs of a project for two purposes: to determine if it is a sound investment , to see how it compares with alternate projects...
where the success of institutions charged with the task of control is measured by reference to the recorded incidence of crime over time. One Benthamite concept is accepted, namely that man is a calculating animal who will weigh the rewards likely to be earned from crime against the chances of being caught. Indeed, to build greater conformity where deviancy
Deviant Behavior
Deviant Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal which focuses on social deviance, including criminal, sexual, and narcotic behaviors.The journal is published by Taylor and Francis, Inc., and was ranked 41st out of 46 psychology journals and 46th out of 90 sociology journals in 2004 by the...
is socially unacceptable, the New Right advocates the allocation of resources into the education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
system to underpin adherence to moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
values. This is an informal and internal system of control to match the formal and external controls through lawmaking and enforcement through policing.
Social control theory
Right Realism has its origins in Control TheoryControl theory (sociology)
Control Theory in sociology can either be classified as centralized or decentralized or neither. Decentralized control is considered market control. Centralized control is considered bureaucratic control...
and, as such, it is related to Functionalist theories of crime. It is said that there are three types of control:
- Direct: by which punishmentPunishmentPunishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
is threatened or applied for wrongful behavior, and compliance is rewarded by parents, family, and authority figures. - Indirect: by which a youth refrains from delinquency because his or her delinquent act might cause pain and disappointment to parents and others with whom he or she has close relationships.
- Internal: by which a person's conscience or sense of guilt prevents him or her from engaging in delinquent acts.
Social Control Theory
Social control theory
In criminology, Social Control Theory Travis Hirschi fits into the Positivist School, Neo-Classical School, and, later, Right Realism. It proposes that exploiting the process of socialization and social learning builds self-control and reduces the inclination to indulge in behavior recognized as...
(later also called Social Bonding Theory) proposes that people's relationships, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs encourage them not to break the law. Thus, if moral codes are internalized and individuals are tied into, and have a stake in their wider community, they will voluntarily limit their propensity to commit deviant acts. The theory seeks to understand the ways in which it is possible to reduce the likelihood of criminality developing in individuals. It does not consider motivational issues, simply stating that human beings may choose to engage in a wide range of activities, unless the range is limited by the processes of socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
and social learning
Social learning
Social learning may refer to:* Observational learning , learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behavior observed in ones environment or other people....
. This derives from a Hobbesian
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
view of human nature as represented in Leviathan
Leviathan (book)
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil — commonly called simply Leviathan — is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan...
, i.e. that all choices are constrained by implicit social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
s, agreements and arrangements among people. Thus, morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
is created in the construction of social order, assigning costs and consequences to certain choices and defining some as evil, immoral and/or illegal. Although Travis Hirschi was not the first to propose a social control theory, the Causes of Delinquency (1969) was a landmark book, contrasting with the Strain Theory (see anomie
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
and the work of Robert King Merton) and Conflict Theory
Conflict theory
Conflict theories are perspectives in social science that emphasize the social, political or material inequality of a social group, that critique the broad socio-political system, or that otherwise detract from structural functionalism and ideological conservativism...
. In particular, Hirschi challenged Differential Association Theory
Differential association
In criminology, Differential Association is a theory developed by Edwin Sutherland proposing that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior....
(Edwin Sutherland
Edwin Sutherland
Edwin H. Sutherland was an American sociologist. He is considered as one of the most influential criminologists of the twentieth century...
and Donald Cressey
Donald Cressey
Donald R. Cressey was an American penologist, sociologist, and criminologist who made innovative contributions to the study of organized crime, prisons, criminology, the sociology of criminal law, white-collar crime....
) on the impact of delinquent peers on delinquency. He proposed that delinquent peers would be found to have no direct effect on delinquency when social bonds inhibiting delinquency were taken onto account. He argued that similarly unattached youth drifted together into delinquent groups. It was weak social bonds that resulted in both delinquency and association with delinquents.
Self-control theory
Hirschi has since moved away from his bonding theory, and in co-operation with Michael Gottfredson, developed a "General Theory of Crime" or self-control theory in 1990 and onwards. Based on the empirical observation of the strong, consistent connection between criminal behavior and age, Hirschi and Gottfredson theorizes that the single most important factor behind crime is individual lack of self-control. Individual self-control improves with age as a result of many factors: changing biology trough hormonal development, socialization and increasing opportunity costs of losing control. In addition, criminal acts are often markedly non-controlled; both opportunistic and short-sighted. Akers (1991) argued that a major weakness of this new theory was that Gottfredson and Hirschi did not define self-control and the tendency toward criminal behavior separately. By not deliberately operationalising self-control traits and criminal behavior or criminal acts individually, it suggests that the concepts of low self-control and propensity for criminal behavior are one and the same. Hirschi and Gottfredson (1993) rebutted Akers argument by suggesting it was actually an indication of the consistency of General Theory. That is, the theory is internally consistent by conceptualizing crime and deriving from that a concept of the offender's traits. The research community remains divided on whether the General Theory of Crime is sustainable but there is emerging confirmation of some of its predictions (e.g. LaGrange & Silverman: 1999). A number of empirical studies - including meta-analysis - have confirmed that individual self-control is in fact one of the strongest predictors of crime, when compared to a range of factors at various levels of analysis.Containment theory
Walter Reckless began developing Containment Theory by focusing on a youth's self-conception or self-image of being a good person as an insulator against peer pressure to engage in delinquency. This inner containment through self-images is developed within the family and is essentially formed by about the age of twelve. Outer containment was a reflection of strong social relationships with teachers and other sources of conventional socialization within the neighborhood. The basic proposition is there are "pushes" and "pulls" that will produce delinquent behavior unless they are counteracted by containment. If the motivations to deviant acts are strong and containment is weak, then crime is highly likely to follow.Neo-Positivism
This is particularly associated with Wilson (1975) and Wilson and Herrnstein (1985) who agree that social transformation will be required if crime rates are to be reduced, but believe that this can be achieved without any significant loss of freedom (which they consider worth preserving even if that means having to tolerate some crime). They attribute the cause of the growth in crime to a general permissiveness in society and a dependency culture among those who survive on welfare benefits. They claim realism in that the state should aim to make modest reductions in street crimeStreet crime
Street crime is a loose term for criminal offences taking place in public places. It has moved to occupy the place once held by mugging. According to London's Metropolitan Police Force, street crime is:...
, starting with the socialization of children within the family and the education system to develop consciences sufficiently strong to reject the temptation to engage in crime. But this social conditioning on its own will be ineffective. It must be combined with deterrence through improvement in detection and arrest rates, and reform in the attitudes of judges who have been too lenient in sentencing. This is specific deterrence and they argue that punishment works if a connection can be established in the mind of a punished offender between a planned criminal action and memories of the consequence for a previous criminal action. But they reject rehabilitation in the face of the statistics of recidivism. If all else seems to fail, hardened criminals must be locked away for the protection of society. There is also some movement back to biological and psychological explanations for criminality (see Gottfredson and Hirschi: 1987, Wasserman and Wachbroit: 2001, Rowe: 2002). Control Theory addressed social as opposed to legal deterrence, but Neo-Positivism accepts that whichever view may be correct, autonomy is paramount, i.e. the potential offender has a free choice on whether to ignore the feelings of others or the penalties of the state.
Situational theory
Situational crime prevention has been defined as "the use of measures directed at highly specific forms of crime, which involve the management, design or manipulation of the immediate environment in as systematic and permanent a way as possible" (Clarke & Hough: 1980). It is sometimes referred to as "primary prevention" or "opportunity reduction" and it seems most relevant to offences which cluster in time or space, and are high rate, creating crime "hot spots". This theory seek to develop ways of making crime "more difficult", and of making people more aware of opportunistic crime, say through advertising campaigns, and of how physical environment encourages or deters crime. Situational crime prevention (Clarke: 1995, 1997) has four components:- a theoretical foundation drawing upon routine activity and rational decisions.
- a standard methodology based on the action research paradigm,
- a set of opportunity-reducing techniques or target hardening, and
- a body of evaluated practice including studies of displacement. (Clarke, 1997: 6)
It focuses on reducing crime opportunities rather than on the characteristics of criminals or potential criminals. The strategy is to increase the associated risks and difficulties, and reduce the rewards. It asserts that crime is often committed through the accident of a practical or attractive opportunity, e.g. that a car is found unlocked or a window left open and that patterns in criminal activity are not simply based on where criminals live. For crimes aimed at households, initiatives include encouraging people to make their homes more secure - sometimes called 'target hardening'- and marking their property for easier identification. Responsibility rests with the individual householder; the police role is usually restricted to giving free specialist security advice. The most interesting criticism of this theory is that it may breed a fortress society where everyone is locked in his or her homes to prevent crime. At the community level, Neighborhood Watch schemes encourage people to monitor their neighbourhoods and to report suspicious incidents to the police. Environmental design focuses on improving street lighting, controlling access to buildings, restricting pedestrian and traffic flow, and dividing residential spaces into identifiable areas. The most ambitious environmental design schemes have been carried out in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where the property of the rich is protected by expensive hardware, alarm systems, and even private guards. The overall challenge is to motivate those most in need of protection against crime to help themselves. This raises the need for a corporate or inter-agency response to crime prevention, rather than devolving all responsibility onto the individual.
This is a practical application of the Control Theory and answers the question, "Why don’t people commit crime?" by "Because of social control and deterrents". This implies that crime and delinquency are a result of choice, and Clarke and Cornish (1985) posit that, "...crime is purposive behavior designed to meet the offender’s commonplace needs for such things as money, status, sex, excitement, and that meeting these needs involves the making of (sometimes quite rudimentary) decisions and choices, constrained as they are by limits of time and ability and the availability of relevant information." Thus, offenders make decisions that appear rational (to the offenders at least) to engage in specific criminal acts.
Rational choice theory
The immediate roots of Rational Choice TheoryRational choice theory (criminology)
In criminology, the rational choice theory adopts a utilitarian belief that man is a reasoning actor who weighs means and ends, costs and benefits, and makes a ra...
are routine activity, situational crime prevention, and economic theories of crime (Clarke, 1997:9) This repeats the Classical School
Classical school
The Classical School in criminology is usually a reference to the 18th-century work during the Enlightenment by the utilitarian and social contract philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria. Their interests lay in the system of criminal justice and penology and, indirectly through the...
of Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
and Cesare Beccaria. Neoclassicism in the U.S. differ from Rational Choice theorists in their emphasis on punishment as a deterrent, imposing punishment systems like the "three strikes law
Three strikes law
Three strikes laws)"are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which require the state courts to hand down a mandatory and extended period of incarceration to persons who have been convicted of a serious criminal offense on three or more separate occasions. These statutes became...
" and placing limits on sentencing discretion as rational, effective deterrents to crime. Apart from the ethical considerations and the high cost of long-term incarceration, Clarke's research demonstrates that certainty of apprehension rather than the severity of punishment is the major deterrent. Critics observe that there is little point in investing resources in situational crime prevention if the thwarted criminal simply moves from one crime to another (termed "crime displacement"). It is difficult to prove the absence of displacement. Central to the displacement criticism is the belief that, to the offender, most crimes are equivalent, i.e. that an offender would just as soon commit one crime as another. This is a positivist assumption that crime is a product of enduring dispositions by the offender. Clarke & Cornish (1987: 45-50) argue that displacement occurs only under certain conditions, namely, all things considered, the criminal may not think that the benefits justify displacement. For example, in 1960 the steering columns of all cars in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
were equipped with locks and the result was a 60 per cent reduction in car thefts. Whereas, in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
only new cars were so equipped with the result being crime was displaced to the older unequipped cars. However, no evidence exists to suggest that an obscene phone caller will begin a career as a burglar. In response, Akers (1990) says that rational choice theorists make so many exceptions to the pure rationality stressed in their own models that nothing sets them apart from other theorists. Further, the rational choice models in literature have various situational or cognitive constraints and deterministic notions of cause and effect that render them, "...indistinguishable from current ‘etiological’ or ‘positivist’ theories."
Critique
According to its critics, there are a number of problems with this School of thought. Because the School under-emphasises the causes of crime, it is actually reacting to the phenomenon of crime and seeking to prevent it without a substantial body of empiricalEmpiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
evidence as to whether patterns of offending are related to age
Ageing
Ageing or aging is the accumulation of changes in a person over time. Ageing in humans refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological, and social change. Some dimensions of ageing grow and expand over time, while others decline...
, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, race, location, social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
, etc. nor providing any research into metrics of success or failure for proactive policing and education as a system for imparting values. It accepts the utilitarian idea that people act rationally without considering why people may choose to break the law. People have the capacity to engage in a wide range of behavior. If they are truly rational, the decision to break the law must be informed by their social condition or other factors that are relevant to them. Identifying the factors that condition the decision would both assist the prevention process, because government policies could address those issues, and support the creation of a suitable curriculum in the education system to demonstrate more clearly why the commission of crime is a "bad" decision. As it is, the School seems to depend on the inculcation of moral imperatives which are taken to be self-evidently the best solution to the problem of crime. Bryson and Mowbray (1981) regard the notion of shared values in the community as a cynical exercise by Conservatism to set insiders (law-abiding, consensual community members) against outsiders (criminals), and thus to foster a law and order politics (Wilson: 1986). But this ignores the empowerment potential in the community as a voluntary organization of citizens taking responsibility for themselves and their neighbors, mobilized in their own interests, to act in a mutually beneficial fashion. Independent collective action without involving the state and its more heavy-handed compulsions may be more effective than aggressive policing that alienates local opinion. Ironically, this adopts the arguments of Left Realism (as in Taylor: 1982) which emphasized police accountability and responsiveness to local community needs. Also note the models of situational crime prevention which are not simply gesture politics by the "Right" but an area in which progressive criminologists recognize positive developments in rethinking social justice (James 1996).
It has been argued that within Right Realism, there is inadequate interest in corporate crime
Corporate crime
In criminology, corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation , or by individuals acting on behalf of a corporation or other business entity...
, white-collar crime
White-collar crime
Within the field of criminology, white-collar crime has been defined by Edwin Sutherland as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation" . Sutherland was a proponent of Symbolic Interactionism, and believed that criminal behavior was...
, political crime
Political crime
In criminology, a political crime is an offence involving overt acts or omissions , which prejudice the interests of the state, its government or the political system...
or state crime
State crime
In criminology, state crime is activity or failures to act that break the state's own criminal law or public international law. For these purposes, Ross defines a "state" as the elected and appointed officials, the bureaucracy, and the institutions, bodies and organisations comprising the...
. Van Den Haag (1975) asserts that capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
is about the creation of "winners" and "losers". Livesey identifies the implication that the winners must be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their enterprise and risk-taking without these rewards being taken-away by the losers. Indeed, if capitalism to continue as a (successful) form of economic production, those responsible for the creation and accumulation of wealth must be protected from the activities of criminals. This apparently justifies shifting the remit of law enforcement to concentrate surveillance and monitoring on the activities of the poor and powerless (the losers). However, it has also been asserted that any given set of economic institutions establishes "winners" and "losers", which did also exist before the rise of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and will also continue to exist under a system protective of the criminal, therefore turning its victims into the real "losers".