Task 1:
Positivist theories:
Before the 19th century, criminologists believed the classical theory, with their main assumption being volunteerism, meaning that we perform acts voluntarily and that our free will plays a large role in our actions. Cesare Lombroso is considered as the founder of this. He wrote a book in 1876, where he studied the genetic make up of criminals, where he concluded that it was both your genetic make up and your physical appearance. However, in the 19th century, criminologists began to change their views from the classical theory and their assumptions, most importantly, their assumption of a person’s free will. This theory (individual positivism) looks into the biological side of crime, believing that it is a source of nature and depending on one’s mental state, can answer for why they act in the way they do.
Interactionism:
Between the years of 1863-1931, George Herbert Mead was a famous ‘symbolic interactionist’, which is the study of how people interact together within society. While criminologists have mainly focused on the causes behind crime, by the 1960’s, a new focus had come around, as there were bigger social issues to worry about. They then led themselves towards Interactionism, which helped explain crime. The theory studies deviant behaviour, rather than the acts themselves. This puts emphasis on how deviant behaviour is considered criminal and their consequences. The theory also refers to processes and how each individual reacts to themselves. This links to Sacrotes and his work on the 3 versions of ourselves, meaning that our behaviours can depend on our moods and how we think of ourselves (our self esteem). For example, if we have low self esteem, we might wish to take this out on others to make ourselves feel better about ourselves and help raise our self esteem.
Labelling:
In 1963, Howard Becker developed a theory called ‘Labelling’. The principal of this theory is that if we label someone as a ‘criminal’ continuously, that they will eventually act in a criminal way as they will subconsciously add the label into what they believe is their identity. An example of this is that the media hugely labels entire communities to make others believe that the entire community acts in the same way that a minority does.
Right Realism:
Right Realism is related to the conservative party (right-wing) and was originally found in the US, in the late 1970s by the policy advisor of Ronald Reagan. They had noticed a rise in crime post war and the welfare state offers which were out in place were failing. The theory was based off of the works of James Q Wilson. He had the ‘smashed window’ theory which metaphorically says that if we ignore minor crimes within a society, the entire society will eventually be condoned to crime with difficulty to fix it. The theory suggested that heavy government help would allow the levels of crime to fall.
Left Realism:
Left realism is a theory thought of by the labour party, more specifically Lea and Young in 1984. It was published as a response to Right Realism, and promised new realistic policies which would not only reduce crime, but also allows police and the authorities to be able to connect to the public more. The theory focuses on the victim as well as the offender, which enabled them to achieve their connection with the public. They believed that the police force were too ‘military’ (For example, their stop and search methods) and wanted to change this view. Due to this philosophy of theirs, they viewed crime as social issues which affect all types of backgrounds.
Voluntarism&Determinism:
On one side of the spectrum, voluntarism is similar to positivism, with the belief of free will. As stated in the name, we act on how we wish too, or volunteer to do these acts, apposed to Determinism, which believes that everything we do is pre-determined. This is not an actual theory but a branch off of other criminology theories such as positivism and labelling.
Task 2&3:
The conservative party, between the years of 1979-1997 (the ruling of Thatcher), had made some adaptations within their government in oder to aid and prevent crimes within the country. Some examples of this is the extreme use of CCTV cameras throughout the streets. Not only did this begin to divert the criminals from committing the crimes, but it also caught them in the act, if they pursued in committing a crime. They also used Zero Tolerance, which enforced punishment for even the smallest of crimes. These were all sought from the ‘right realism’ policies. One policy that the party introduced was ‘situational crime prevention’.
This involved ‘5 ways to modify a situation’. Firstly you are to increase the effort it takes. This involves target hardening. Secondly, you increase the risks for the criminals, by adding surveillance such as CCTV. Thirdly, you reduce the rewards, For example, money tracking devices, where banks put ink within packs of notes, which leak over the notes and devalues them in order to prevent the offender from gaining reward from his crime. Fourthly, you reduce any temptations the crime may have which will lead them into acting in a criminal way. Finally, you remove any excuses they may have in order to justify why they have acted in the way they did.
Situational crime prevention measures were based off of routine; which explains that each crime involves three elements (The offender, the target and an unprotected environment in order for the criminal to commit his crimes. Rational decision making, which can divert the criminal from wanting to commit any crime in the first place and finally it focuses on the offender themselves. Offenders only act as they are given a set of cues from their targeted environment, which allows them the opportunity to commit offences. By eliminating these three main factors, it was to believed to help reduce crime within these areas.
Situational Crime Prevention techniques were directed at specific types of crime. It involved designing or manipulating the society in non-reversing ways. This was to increase efforts and reduce rewards which offenders believe that they receive. Right Realism influenced the conservative party as it originated from Ronald Reagan’s former policy advisor. Both Reagan and Thatcher were in power at this time and held a close relationship, which influenced the conservatives policies as they believed in not changing their psychological ways but only the physical environment in which criminals wished to act within.
On the other side, the Labour party between the years of 1997-2010, decided to adopt another approach, the Left Realism approach to helping reduce criminal activity. These were ‘Social Crime Prevention’ tactics rather than Situational. A firm belief from the Labour party is to continuously try to help and work towards a better community, which is why the Labour party were so deeply influenced by these crime prevention measures as they focused directly on that; helping communities and society feel safer, by tackling the cause of crime and aiming to change not only the mindset of the offender but also their families by changing the ways of the community.
Some of these measures included the neighbourhood watch, which was the act of members of each neighbourhood coming together to look out for one another, and reporting anything that they believed to be suspicious activity within their areas. They also introduced community police officers, which were volunteers from the community who acted as ‘police’ but held no real. authority, apart from the ability to detain somebody until the police arrived to deal with the situation, but also reported any suspicious behaviour.
Social Crime Prevention can be split into 5 separate categories;
Early childhood or developmental prevention
Community development approaches
Preventions which can target schools
Prevention for more ‘risky’ social groups
Media changing their views on how to change social value.
There were a multitude of programs set in place which enabled these steps to be met, such as childhood youth groups which helped with childhood training, giving support for children which are less fortunate than others, with disadvantages due to their social background, ethnicity etc. The main focus for the policy was to allow those who had previously offended to feel more integrated within their community, whilst also helping to prevent the series of new generations to commit crimes by making their community feel like something to be proud of.
Task 4:
The positivism theory had many weaknesses to its theory. Firstly, Lombroso’s physical type theory lacked good quality scientific evidence which would support his theory. A reason for this is because he failed to use the correct control groups and he opted to often use large groups of soldiers within his work. He also used a large proportion of criminals which were mentally ill, this is unethical due to the fact that they would be unaware of what they are allowing him to conduct on them, and therefore it can almost be considered taking advantage of them.
He assumed that a physical feature that appeared within a number of his group would link to them being criminals, which is hugely incorrect as we cannot base a facial/body feature to a criminal as many innocent people would be in-prisoned and many criminals would be walking free to the fact that they do not fit the ‘criminal body shape’.
This has since been rejected for a couple of reasons; firstly, poverty could be a reason for physical disfigurement or a defect from birth, not due to the possibility of them being a criminal in their future. The second reason is that society has changed since the 19th century, nowadays, society has the technology and scientific evidence to prove that physical appearance has no correlation to criminal activity, whereas Lombroso had only recently discovered this in his time, which can explain why he has a large gap of knowledge within his study.
Realism replaced Positivism as it is modern. It fits in within todays society as not only has society changed, but crimes and the severity and the volume of crime has dramatically changed within the last two centuries. Within the 19th century, the main worry of crime was sex crimes, which were soaring globally, however once into the 20th century, more social crimes, such as muggings, break ins, robberies and pick pocketing were on the rise, which made for a change in crime prevention and control to the different types of crimes being committed. In the 1970’s the government believed that by expanding welfare, that it would reduce the numbers of crime.
The theory proved to be successful as the two strains (left realism and right realism) together managed to reduce crime, both in the long run and in the short run as they both impacted different aspects of crime. Left Realism, looked into the root of the crime, as well as the criminal and their surrounding family. This allowed them to fix the problem at the room and within the society, giving the community a sense of safety. They introduced policies such as the neighbourhood watch patrol, which gave a sense of togetherness for the community and made them feel safer without putting more strain onto the government funding. They also introduced community patrol officers, who held the ability to detain suspicious looking people within their community.
On the other side of the spectrum, Right Realism targeted the offenders aim, with preventing them from attempting the crime with the addition to CCTV cameras, ASBO’s and the Zero Tolerance policy with prevented the allowance of even the smallest crimes from being unpunished. This targeted the offender themselves, with enabling policies which deterrent offenders from these areas, it prevents them from committing crimes and the aim was to lower the crime rate within society.