- Young argues that in late modern society, the problem of working class crime is worse, due to:
- Harsher welfare policies, increased unemployment, job insecurity and poverty.
- Destabilisation of family and community life, weakening informal social controls.
- Young notes other changes in late modernity
- Crime is now found throughout society and not just at the bottom, there is a resentment for the undeservedly high rewardsg. of footballers and bankers.
- There is now ‘relative deprivation downwards’g. resentment against the unemployed as spongers; more hate crime e.g. against asylum seekers.
- There is less consensus about what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and informal controls are now less effective as families and communities disintegrate.
- The public are less tolerant and demand harsher formal controls by the state. Late modern society is a high-crime society with a low tolerance for crime.
Solutions to crime
- The LR solution to crime involves two policies: democratic policing and reducing social inequality
Democratic policing
- Kinsey, Lea and Young argue that policy rely on the public for information, but they are losing support, so the flow of information dries up and they must now rely on ‘military policing’, such as swamping an area.
- To win public support, the police must become more accountable to local communities by involving them in deciding policing policies and priorities.
- Crime control must also involve a multi-agency approachg. social services, housing departments, schools, not just the police.
Reducing inequality
- For LRs, the main solution to crime is to remove its underlying cause: social inequality.
- They call for major structural changes to tackle discrimination, inequality of opportunity and unfairness of rewards, and provide decent jobs and housing for all.
Criticisms of LR
It draws attention to the reality of street crime and its effects, especially on victims from deprived backgrounds. However, it is criticised on several grounds.
- It accepts the authorities definition of crime as being the street crimes of the poor and ignores the harm done on the poor by the powerful. Marxists argue that it fails to explain corporate crime.
- It over-predicts the amount of working class crime: not everyone who experiences relative deprivation and marginalisation turns to crime.
- Understanding offenders’ motives requires qualitative, but LR relies on quantitative data from victim surveys.
- Focusing on high-crime in inner city areas makes crime appear a greater problem than it is.