Left Realism

3 Pages 726 Words

In the early 1980's, two "new" approaches to the study of crime and deviance began to emerge in Britain and America, both of which focused upon the "realities" of crime (specifically) - but from different ends of the political spectrum.

In Britain, the "New Left Realism" started to develop through the work of writers such as Lea and Young, while the "New Right Realism" developed around the work of Wilson in America and writers such as Clarke and Mayhew in Britain.

While, as you might expect, the two basic approaches address the "problem" of crime from quite different political starting points, they have a couple of ideas in common:

1. Both view crime as a form of "social problem" - not only for control agencies but also for the victims / potential victims of crime.

2. Both produce ideas that attempt to locate crime within a wider political (although different) context - the "New Realism".

New Left Realism

For the past 30 years, Jock Young has been recognized as one of the major British writers in the field of crime and deviance. His intellectual career encompasses Interactionism, Radical Criminology and now New Left Realism and, for this reason alone, perhaps, his work represents an interesting area of study.

A New Left Realist approach to the study of crime begins by doing two things:

Firstly, it rejects "partial" theories of crime because they are guilty of either:

a. An over-concentration on the operation of control agencies (for example, Functionalism and Subcultural theory) or

b. An over-concentration on the experiences of criminals and the attempt to "understand" their point of view as either:

"Victims" of a labelling process (Interactionism) or

"Political catalysts" against bourgeois domination (Radical Criminology / Marxist Subcultural theory).

Secondly, it synthesizes various elements from past theoretical perspectives into a "new realistic" approach to crime and deviance that seeks to und...