i did my A levels at a private college so my work is of the best quality, standard and marks. this essay focusses on the Realist perspective for understanding crime and deviance. its explained in the highest detail and critically evaluated along the way. this is a top grade essay.
assess the usefulness of realist explanations of crime and deviance?
within sociology, there have been many different theories designed to help explain
why crime and deviance takes place. this essay will be focussing on the realist
perspective. the realist perspective can be can be broken down to two catogories:
right realism and left realism right realism comes from a political functionalist point of
view; whereas left realism comes from a neo – marxist point of view. the main aim of
this essay is to assess the usefulness of realist explanations of crime and deviance.
to do this it will be looking at the strengths and weaknesses of both ends of the
spectrum, followed by a final conclusion. the realist approach can be seen as a
reaction to both labelling theory and radical criminology.
right realism was the first type of realism to come about and takes a more realist look
at crime and deviance. right realists believe that there are many causes of crime and
deviance. they believe that in order to cut down on crime and deviance they need to
enforce zero–tolerance policy, which they believe will make everything safe for
people on the streets and in their homes. this is based on the broken widnow thesis
which argues that crime is related to the physical environemnt. minor infractions can
snowball into something serious. for instance, if you leave a broken window, it wont
be long until the other windows of the property get broken too and to combat this is
to implement a zero–tolerance policy. they also question the view that poverty and
unemployment are responsible for the rising rate of crime and deviance and turn
more to cultural explanations. right realists argue that inadequate socialisation or the
break down of the nuclear family as the cause of crime. a lot of emphasis is put on
the fact that there are a lot of fatherless families and the fact that it has an affect on
young men who do not have an older male role model to look up to. this is as the
way young men are soicalised within the family, education and wdier community has
important implications on their behaviour . right realists also see the lack of family
values, mainly discipline, from inside & outside of the home as the reason for the
high rates of crime. murray (1990) believes that the socialisation and role models
that are needed for young men growing up are often lacking in female headed, lwo
income families as they may not have the time to socialsie her children properly as
she is at work. wilson believes that the way to stop crime from increasing is by
increasing the chances of a criminal getting cuaght by implementing more policing.
he mainly focuses on social control as a reason for crime and deviance. where
wilson believes that high crime rates are due to socialisation, murray believes that it
is all down to the welfare state. it is argued that the welfare state has created a
dependency culture where people have become reliant on the on the welfare state.
this falls under the social control theory - which mainly focusses on the factors that
prevent people from committing crime. he also believes that the solution is to cut
down on welfare benefits or to compltely stop them in an attempt to make people
stop depending on the state and start depending on themselves = by taking
responsibility for themselves. furthermore, right realists believe that the wrong
question is being asked. instead of asking why people commit crime? we should be
asking why people do not commit crime not?. this is as right realists argue that there
is an important element of choice where deciding whether or not to commit a crime.
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