Download Conservative and New Right Criminology

Conservative and New Right Criminology
Understanding Criminology
Chris Fox
Lecture Outline
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Conservative Criminal Justice Policy 1979-1997
Control Theories
Right Realism
Broken Windows Thesis
Administrative Criminology and Crime Science
Conservative Criminal Justice Policy 1979-1997
• “Law and order” became a central concern of British voters:
Conservatives benefited
• Strong support for police:
– wage increases
– increased powers
– move to a more confrontational policing
• Increased punitiveness: ‘Prison Works’
• Presided over largest increase in recorded crime
Criticism of ‘liberal’ criminology
• Positivism concentrates too much on:
– understanding the causes of crime & treating the offender
• Theories such as labelling, radical and conflict concentrate too much on:
– critique of an unfair and unequal (capitalist) society
– policy of understanding offenders and non-intervention
• Provided a basis for the acceleration of the permissive society
Control Theories of Criminality
• Very different notion of “human nature” from most
criminological theories
• Traditionally:
– How do social structures work to push people to commit crime?
• Control Theories:
– Why don’t people commit crime?
• Human nature essentially anti-social
– need to understand how this is controlled
Travis Hirschi
“Delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or
broken”
Right Realism
• Politically conservative: consensus position
• Not really concerned with identifying causal explanations for offending
– "To people who say "crime and drug addiction can only be dealt with by attacking their root
causes", I am sometimes inclined, when in a testy mood, to rejoin: "stupidity can only be dealt
with by attacking its root causes". I have yet to see a "root cause" or encounter a government
programme that has successfully attacked it...". James Q. Wilson
• Non-problematic acceptance of official definitions of crime, measurement of
offending, and identification of criminality
James Q. Wilson
• American criminologist and academic: advisor to numerous US
presidents on crime since mid-1960s
• “Thinking about Crime”
– root causes of criminality cannot be identified
– increasing punishment as a deterrent unlikely to work, focus on
certainty of punishment
– All we can do is to reduce the impact of crime on people’s lives
– Victim surveys show burden of crime falls disproportionately on poor
James Q. Wilson: “Solutions”
• A call for re-moralization of society: emphasizing societal bonds
• Adjust cost/benefit balance of criminality
• Certainty of punishment
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Catch more offenders – increase police efficiency
Improve consistency of criminal justice system
Fixed term sentences
Prison as incapacitation
Wilson and Kelling (1982) Broken Windows
• “A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, and a window is
smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened
become more rowdy. Families move out, unmarried adults move in.
Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to
move, they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking
in front of the grocery store, in time an inebriated drunkard slumps to the
sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off.” (page 32)
Wilson and Kelling
• “Broken Windows” Thesis
Broken Windows: the solution
• The maintenance of public order and public morality allows community
control mechanisms to flourish and encourages law-abiding behaviour
• The police are most effectively used not to reduce crime but to maintain
social order
• Interventions to restore order should focus on areas at risk of becoming or
just becoming high crime areas
• Areas where crime already endemic should not have resources devoted to
them.
Broken Windows: criticisms
• Strong right-wing morality eg notice reference to “unmarried adults”
• Dubious on civil rights eg what offence have teenagers in front of store
committed?
Criticisms of Right Realism
• Focus on street criminality and maintenance of order
– Excludes white collar crime and corporate crime
• No acknowledgement that social and economic factors in society (eg
poverty) could contribute to crime
• Areas with worst social problems and highest levels of crime deemed not
worth saving
• Strict policing of public order offences targets disadvantaged groups
Administrative Criminology
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“Establishment” criminology in UK and USA
Crime Science – the Jill Dando Institute
An empirical project
A rational choice perspective
A reaction to the perceived failure of criminology to intervene in
causes of criminality
Routine Activities Theory:
Marcus Felson
Crime event will occur when 3 things coincide in time and space
Aim: disrupt this coincidence: remove opportunities for crime
Situational crime prevention