Asses the Right Realist View of Crime
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Assess the right realist view of crime
During the 1980s there was a movement within sociology which shifted towards realism in regards of crime. The perspective sees crime as real and growing problem, especially street crime, and it needs to be reduced because it destroys communities and breaks social cohesion. The right realist approach had been most influential in UK politics during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s because of Margaret Thatcher’s success in the general elections, but also with President Ronald Reagan in the USA with his advisor James Q. Wilson who was one of the main theorists of right realism. The fundamental of this view is to have a tough stance against crime, and rather than trying to look for the cause of it one should look at how to control it through pragmatic solutions such as harsher punishments rather than rehabilitation. A focus of this theory is on working class crime in particular, and it’s explained that other theories tend to ignore this. The concern is for the impact these crimes have on the victims, and by ignoring working class crime, which is intra-class, the working class victims are ignored. For right realists there are three factors which induce crime, and they are: individual biological differences, inadequate socialisation and the underclass with the rational choice to offend. These factors take precedence over others such as structural and economic because these don’t determine everyone’s behaviour, which Marxists propose. It’s found that the elderly are amongst the poorest in the country, yet their crime rate is low undermining the structural factors.
One factor aforementioned is the biological differences of individuals and how that causes crime. Wilson and Herrnstein produced the biosocial theory in order to explain this, as they believe crime involves biological and social factors. They state that some individuals are innately more liable to commit crime, which can be explained by biology through personality...
During the 1980s there was a movement within sociology which shifted towards realism in regards of crime. The perspective sees crime as real and growing problem, especially street crime, and it needs to be reduced because it destroys communities and breaks social cohesion. The right realist approach had been most influential in UK politics during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s because of Margaret Thatcher’s success in the general elections, but also with President Ronald Reagan in the USA with his advisor James Q. Wilson who was one of the main theorists of right realism. The fundamental of this view is to have a tough stance against crime, and rather than trying to look for the cause of it one should look at how to control it through pragmatic solutions such as harsher punishments rather than rehabilitation. A focus of this theory is on working class crime in particular, and it’s explained that other theories tend to ignore this. The concern is for the impact these crimes have on the victims, and by ignoring working class crime, which is intra-class, the working class victims are ignored. For right realists there are three factors which induce crime, and they are: individual biological differences, inadequate socialisation and the underclass with the rational choice to offend. These factors take precedence over others such as structural and economic because these don’t determine everyone’s behaviour, which Marxists propose. It’s found that the elderly are amongst the poorest in the country, yet their crime rate is low undermining the structural factors.
One factor aforementioned is the biological differences of individuals and how that causes crime. Wilson and Herrnstein produced the biosocial theory in order to explain this, as they believe crime involves biological and social factors. They state that some individuals are innately more liable to commit crime, which can be explained by biology through personality...