Left-wing social policy and crime
Structural changes in society
Structural changes are recommended mainly by left realists, who suggest that the economic system that makes up modern capitalist societies needs to be radically overhauled, otherwise it is only the symptoms rather the causes of crime that get treated.
Left realists argue that politicians need to remove the economic and social conditions that motivate the poor to commit crime in the first place.
In particular, left realists focus on the reduction of inequalities in wealth and income and investment by governments and companies in education and jobs in deprived neighbourhoods to lift the poor out of poverty.
There is some evidence from the USA that the more that is spent on education and jobs for the poor, the more money is saved later in terms of benefits and prison.
However, Marxists argue that capitalism is ultimately responsible for inequality and lack of meritocracy.
They claim that the crime problem can only be resolved by abolishing capitalism altogether and adopting a fairer socialist economic system.
Social and community crime prevention and punishment
Left realists argue that racial discrimination needs to be addressed across all areas of society but especially in policing.
Institutional racism and racial profiling need to be abolished so that ethnic minority communities have more confidence in the police and so that police–community relationships become more cooperative
Left-wing views see the social structure as the main cause of crime, focusing on issues such as inequality, deprivation and social exclusion.
Their approach to crime prevention is therefore long-term, focusing on structural changes to tackle the social causes of crime.
This may include pursuing policies such as:
- Reducing income inequalities, for example through a more redistributive taxation policy, raising the minimum wage and increasing benefits
- Raising the living standards and quality of life for poorer families, for example, by building more affordable and social housing and improving leisure and recreational facilities in deprived areas.
- Reducing unemployment, for example through investment in apprenticeships and training initiatives.
- Improving education and training opportunities and reducing educational inequalities, for example, through compensatory educational schemes
There are two main approaches to punishment:
- Retribution – which aims to making the offender pay or suffer for what he or she has done, and can be seen as a punitive approach, or form of revenge.
- Rehabilitation – or reform, which aims to reintegrate the offender back into society, having addressed the causes of the offending
Right-wing views tend to support retributive justice strategies, whilst left-wing views focus more on rehabilitation.
To understand the rehabilitation approach to justice, it is useful to consider the affect of a punishment of the offender and their self-concept.
Crime, shame and reintegration, John Braithwaite (1989)
Braithwaite discusses two types of ‘shaming’ which can be created through punishment:
- Disintegative shaming, which is prevalent in the traditional retributive framework of justice.
This involves the labelling and stigmatisation of the offender, affecting their self-concept: ‘You are a bad person’.
This can be linked with Becker’s idea of ‘master-status’ and the self-fulfilling prophecy, and Braithwaite argues that it is likely to lead more reoffending.
- Reintegrative shaming, in contrast, focuses on the offender’s behaviour, rather than the offender themself: ‘You did a bad thing’.
The aim is to reaffirm the offender’s membership within the law-abiding society, encouraging remorse by making offenders face up to the consequences of their actions.
This approach avoids labelling, and seeks to explore ways in which the offender can make amends and avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
Left-wing views, such as left realists, would favour ‘reintegrative shaming’
They argue that helping the offender to address the issues which caused the offending and to recognise the damage that their offending has done to the victim and the wider community are the best way to prevent reoffending.
This approach may include the promotion of more community sentencing, such as unpaid work and treatment programmes for addiction or mental health problems.
Such sentences have much lower reoffending rates than custodial sentences, arguably because they address the causes of the original offending.
Another left-wing approach to punishment, which has gained momentum and popularity in recent years around the world, is restorative justice.
Restorative justice (RJ) is an approach which recognises the impact of offending on the victim, the community and the offender themself.
This can be related to the concept of the square of crime
This approach recognises that both offenders and victims of crime benefit by taking an active role in the justice process.
In addition, by encouraging offenders to take responsibility for their actions, both the victim’s and offender’s personal needs are addressed, so RJ can be characterised as an inclusive as opposed to exclusive approach.
According to Braithwaite (2004) ‘… restorative justice is about the idea that because crime hurts, justice should heal.
It follows that conversations with those who have been hurt and with those who have afflicted the harm must be central to the process.’
Restorative justice programmes that foster dialogue between victim and offender show a high rate of victim satisfaction and offender accountability, and also show considerable success in reducing reoffending.
RJ can be seen as a set of principles, rather than a particular practice, and its forms vary. Some restorative justice schemes replace a custodial sentence with a community based one, and may allow the victim and/or the community to have a say in what happens to the offender. This may be more appropriate for minor offending, and has been particularly pioneered in the area of youth offending.
At the other extreme are interventions involving more serious offenders who are already serving custodial sentences.
Victims may be asked if they wish to embark on restorative justice, which usually involves a face-to-face meeting with the offender, in a controlled setting.
The victim has the opportunity to explain to the offender the impact their crime has had, and the offender is encouraged to consider their reasons for offending.
Such programmes are becoming more common, and have even been used in serious crimes such as rape and murder
Control
Left-wing approaches to the control of crime tend to focus on relationships between the police, the criminal justice system, and the community and other agencies
Policing
Left realists Lea and Young (1993) challenge what they see as flaws in current policing.
They argue that the public lack confidence in the police and believe them to be prejudiced.
This stems from a drift which has been seen towards ‘military policing’ (conflict policing), rather than consensual policing.
A vicious circle is created, particularly in some communities, where military policing leads to less co-operation with the police, which in turn leads to even more military style tactics.
Lea and Young argue that the relationship between the police and the community needs to be improved, by ‘minimal policing’, characterised by trust and co-operation.
The ‘over-policing ‘of certain crimes, such as minor drug offences and delinquency, is part of the problem and other crimes, such as domestic violence, racially motivated crime and white-collar crime, are ‘under-policed.
Multi-agency working
Another left-wing idea relating to community crime prevention concerns improving cooperation between social and government agencies such as the police, the local council, social services, the media, religion, community groups, the school and education authorities, and the family. Lea and Young argue for a more coordinated approach between these agencies, including more communication regarding individuals and families seen to be ‘at risk’ of offending and/or victimisation, allowing for early interventions.
Another left-wing policy is the promotion of more co-operation between the agencies in society which affect and control individuals’ behaviour.
The police, the local council, social services, the media, religion, community groups, the school and education authorities and the family all have roles to play in improving the ‘moral context’ in which crime is committed.
Lea and Young argue for a more co-ordinated approach between these agencies, including more communication regarding individuals and families seen to be ‘at risk’ of offending and/or victimisation, allowing for early interventions.
Recent examples, such as the sexual exploitation and abuse of vulnerable young people within gangs and institutions, suggest that failures in communication between such agencies can have serious consequences.
Restorative justice
Braithwaite (1989) suggests there are two types of shaming available to the criminal justice system.
The most commonly used is disintegrative shaming, which involves the replacement of an offender’s usual set of statuses with the master status of ‘criminal’ or ‘ex-con’, which shapes all future interactions with that person and essentially excludes that person from ‘normal’ society. The status they occupied before being found guilty of a criminal offence has totally disintegrated.
However, Braithwaite argues that disintegrative shaming should be replaced with re-integrative shaming, in which the deviant act — a bad thing — is shamed rather than the individual who commits it, that is, the notion of a bad person should be abandoned
Braithwaite argues that the focus should be on helping the offender to realise that bad things have negative consequences for others.
This approach is referred to as restorative justice.
This makes it easier for the victim, the offender and the community to separate the offender from the offence, to forgive them and to re-integrate the wrongdoer back into mainstream society.
If the offender is not negatively labelled and discriminated against, this may prevent their involvement in criminal subcultures and further crime.
Evaluation of left-wing policies
The long-term crime prevention strategies outlined above can be challenged as being unrealistic and ineffective in practice.
Murray (1994) points out that the USA attempted such policies in the 1960s and 70s, including pre-school socialisation programmes and programmes that provided guaranteed jobs for young people without skills and on-the-job training.
He argues that such policies were all ‘notorious failures’ which did not produce long-term group results that survive scrutiny.
The long-term nature of such schemes also means the likelihood that they will be fully funded and followed through by successive governments is slim.
Limitations of restorative justice include the fact that it relies on the co-operation of all parties, and thus more formal justice systems will always still be needed in cases where this co-operation is not forthcoming.
However, Marshall (1998) points out that the majority of individuals offered the chance to participate indicated that they would like to do so, and later failures to carry out agreements reached are actually much lower than failures to pay court-ordered fines, for example.
In 2001, the UK government funded a seven-year research programme looking into the effectiveness of restorative justice.
In her report, Shapland (2008) found that the majority of victims chose to participate in face-to-face meetings with the offender, and 85 per cent of victims who took part were satisfied with the process.
There was a significant decrease in the frequency of reoffending and cost savings of up to £9 per £1 spent on RJ were seen.
However, there are those who see RJ and other rehabilitative approaches to punishment as a ‘soft option’, and there is public support for more and longer custodial sentences and a more retributive approach to punishment, which is supported by the right-wing views considered below.
Left realist views of community policing have been challenged by Gilroy (1982) as being simplistic, and under-estimating the deliberate racist strategies which he argues underpin the policing of some communities
Right-wing social policy and crime
Murray argued that crime could be reduced only if welfare payments to the poor were reduced or abolished altogether in order to motivate members of the underclass to seek legitimate work. There is little evidence for Murray’s ideas though there is a great deal of political support for them — hence, the Conservative government’s Troubled Families programme and austerity cuts, which have hit the poorest sections of society the hardest.
Prevention
Clarke (1980) argues that criminality is usually a conscious choice, and the criminal opportunities available and the likelihood and the potential consequences of being caught are significant factors affecting criminality.
A right realistic approach to crime prevention focuses on making crime more difficult to commit and making capture and punishment more likely.
Situational crime prevention
Situational crime prevention (SCP) policies focus on increasing the costs or risks in a particular situation so that the benefits of crime are significantly reduced.
They include the following:
- Designing out crime or target hardening.
Right-wing views tend to focus on the individual taking more responsibility for their welfare and homes.
In this view, it is the responsibility of the householder, the car owner and businesses to take action against the criminal by designing crime out of their lives through investing in security systems Individuals are therefore being encouraged to make themselves harder targets.
- CC T V.
The UK has the highest number of CCTV cameras in the Western world — an estimated 4.2 million, which is one for every fourteen people.
However, some criminologists are critical of SCP policies for six reasons:
- These strategies over-focus on street crimes and burglary, and ignore white-collar, corporate and state crimes which are more costly and harmful.
- Most crime is probably opportunistic and fuelled by alcohol and drugs rather than taking place after a rational weighing-up of the costs and benefi ts of crime.
- The root causes of crime such as poverty and inequality are ignored.
- Surveillance infringes people’s right to privacy.
- Surveillance may also be guilty of stereotyping and negative labelling because it tends to focus disproportionately on young males or black people.
- SCP may displace crime rather than reduce it because criminals deterred by tough security simply move to where the security does not exist.
This often means moving to working-class areas where people cannot afford to invest in security.
The concepts of situational and environmental crime prevention are often used interchangeably, but situational crime prevention can be seen as specific measures making particular crimes harder to commit or capture more likely, whereas environmental crime prevention can be seen as wider measures, generally relating to the public environment, which can make any deviant behaviour less likely.
A key situational crime prevention technique is ‘target hardening’.
This refers to the increasing of the security surrounding the ‘targets’ of crime, such as houses, cars and other property.
This may be achieved through installing alarms and better locks and encouraging safer practices, such as locking cars at petrol stations.
Specific examples of target hardening show success in the reduction of certain crimes.
Clarke (1980) cites the following examples:
- Theft from telephone boxes was virtually eliminated when aluminium coin boxes were replaced with steel ones which were harder to break into.
- Car thefts were reduced dramatically in Germany when steering column locks were made compulsory on all cars in 1963.
An updated example of this could be that newer cars today have built in security devices as standard, which greatly reduces thefts.
Environmental crime prevention
Environmental crime prevention (ECP) is also based on right-wing ideas, especially Wilson’s broken windows theory.
Wilson suggests that environmental deterioration sends out the message that the community does not care what happens to the neighbourhood which attracts more antisocial and deviant elements. In order to avoid this, ECP recommends the following:
- The authorities need to take more responsibility for improving local neighbourhoods by repairing broken windows, cleaning graffi ti, towing away abandoned cars and so on.
- Neighbourhoods should be fl ooded with police offi cers, who should be encouraged to be intolerant of any deviant or criminal activity including antisocial behaviour, aggressive begging, dealing in and open use of drugs, being drunk in public, graffi ti, dog fouling, littering and vandalism.
This aggressive policing policy is known as zero tolerance and is aimed at increasing the certainty of capture, thereby making the cost of crime greater than any benefi t.
Wilson believed that zero-tolerance policing would result in communities taking more responsibility for the informal policing of their neighbourhoods.
Such policies were supposedly responsible for the massive decrease in crime in New York in the 1990s.
However, two criticisms of ECP are worth highlighting.
First, it overemphasises the control of disorder, rather than tackling what left realists see as the underlying causes of neighbourhood decline, such as governments and businesses failing to invest money in inner-city areas or tackle poverty, or even the criminogenic nature of capitalism.
Second, zero tolerance encourages the police to stereotype and discriminate against what it sees as ‘problem groups’, which on the basis of past experience are likely to be members of ethnic minorities, the poor and the homeless
Environmental crime prevention measures include the design of public housing estates and town centres, street lighting and the use of CCTV.
Security professionals and town planners are aware of environmental crime prevention, and often focus on the concept of ‘defensible space’.
Areas are designated as ‘public’, ‘semi-private’ or ‘private’, with the recognition that public areas are the most vulnerable to crime, since no-one has direct responsibility for them, and surveillance and control is more difficult.
Surveillance is another important environmental crime prevention measure.
This can be direct, through the use of CCTV or security guards, or more subtle, such as using clear rather than opaque doors and barriers in flats, and minimising closed spaces.
The use of CCTV continues to increase in the UK, and the British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) estimated in 2013 that there is one surveillance camera for every eleven people in the UK.
Another environmental crime prevention strategy is improved lighting.
Studies suggest that this can have a significant effect on crime reduction, both directly by making deviant activities more visible and thus discouraging them, but also indirectly, as more people are encouraged out onto the streets, since they feel safer, further reducing criminal opportunities.
For example, Painter and Farrington (1999), in their study in Stoke-on-Trent, showed that the incidence of crime decreased by 43 per cent in the experimental area where street-lighting was improved.
Additionally, rather than displacing crime to less well-lit areas, they found a ‘diffusion of benefit’, since crime also decreased in the adjacent area.
Right-wing criminologists generally favour harsh and punitive sentences, pursuing the aim of retributive justice, often based on the idea that the punishment must fit the crime.
Longer prison sentences and harsher prison regimes have been popular policies in recent years, particularly in the USA.
The ‘three-strikes and you’re out’ policy, involving life imprisonment with no parole (release) for a third offence, even if relatively minor, was introduced in America in the 1990s.
This policy has contributed to a quadrupling of the US prison population, the second highest per capita in the world.
It was mimicked by a watered-down version, involving mandatory minimum sentencing, in the UK, though human rights legislation means that such sentences were rarely upheld.
As well as deterrence and retribution, a key role in harsh penalties lies in the shaming and stigmatisation of the behaviour, which acts as a form of public denunciation.
This links to functionalist ideas of ‘degradation ceremonies’ and their role in reinforcing the collective conscience and the acceptable boundaries of behaviour
On a practical level, imprisoning offenders for life takes them off the streets and means that issues of rehabilitation and reoffending become irrelevant.
Murray argues that this is a choice which has to be made – incarcerating large sections of the population is inevitable if crime rates are to be reduced.
Right realist Wilson (1975) disagrees somewhat with the above views on retributive punishment, because he feels that the certainty of capture is more of a deterrent than the potential harshness of the sentence.
He suggests that if potential offenders do not believe they will be caught, then the potential penalty becomes largely irrelevant.
Certainty of capture must be achieved by changing the role of the police
Retributive justice
Retribution means ‘paying back’ via punishment.
Some right-wing sociologists argue that one of the reasons crime increased in the latter half of the twentieth century was that punishment, particularly prison, was regarded by criminals as too soft and therefore it had lost its deterrence value.
Van den Haag argues that the criminal justice system needs to be harder, that is, more punitive and retributive, in terms of both the length of prison sentences and the actual experience of imprisonment.
The best examples of this sort of approach are to be found in the USA — many US states have capital punishment and prisoners have to do ‘hard labour’, for example breaking rocks or working in the fields, as part of their prison programme.
Punitive punishment and control Van den Haag argues that if criminals can clearly see that if they are caught they will receive long prison sentences, they will see that the costs always outweigh the benefits and this will deter future crime.
Van den Haag recommended the adoption of the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy (established in California), in which offenders are jailed for life for a third offence, whatever it is. He also recommended that parents who could not control their children should be sent to prison The retributive approach is based on the idea that ‘prison works’ because fear of it increases the cost of crime in terms of losing one’s freedom.
It is also suggested that prison works because it takes criminals off the streets.
However, despite the UK locking up over 80,000 people in 2012, there is little evidence that prison works.
Left realist Matthews notes that they often act as ‘universities of crime’ and that they are often an expensive way of making bad people worse.
Moreover, about two-thirds of people in prison reoffend when they are released.
Matthews suggests that a large proportion of prisoners need treatment (for mental illness and drug addiction) rather than punishment.
The anti-retribution argument suggests reform and rehabilitation through education, training for jobs, anger management and restorative justice are better for ensuring prisoners do not return to crime.
Control
Right-wing ideas on social control are linked to the crime prevention approaches discussed above, such as increased surveillance.
Other direct forms of control involve more direct police and State interventions into community and family life.
- Policing, order maintenance and zero tolerance– The view of policing put forward by right realists such as Wilson and Kelling (1982) involves prioritising the police’s role in ‘order maintenance’, for example by increasing foot patrols.
Their ideas seem to be supported by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales, Tom Winsor, who set out his ideas for policing in 2013.
He argues that the police should focus more on preventing crime than catching criminals and that a greater focus on targeting would-be offenders and potential crime hotspots will save money and reduce crime.
‘Zero tolerance policing’ is a related policy, which refers to the aggressive policing of minor and anti-social crime, including littering, vandalism, drugs offences, begging, prostitution and graffiti to ‘clean up the streets’.
For example, tackling vandalism immediately, to show that it is not tolerated, re-emphasises shared norms and values and reinforces the certainty of capture.
The theory is that the incidence of more serious crime will then be reduced as social control is increased and a law-abiding culture is reinforced.
This policy was famously pursued in New York in the 1990s.
Zimring (2011) showed that between 1990 and 2009 the homicide rate in New York declined by 82 per cent, and rates for other crimes also fell dramatically.
It is difficult to prove how much of this decline is directly attributable to zero tolerance policing strategies.
However, the combination of zero tolerance policing, situational crime prevention strategies and harsher punishments is widely argued to have had a significant effect on crime rates in several US cities.
- The welfare state and the family – Another approach to controlling crime, associated with the New Right, focuses on the family and the benefits system.
Murray (1984, 1990) argues that an over-generous welfare system encourages ‘feckless’ behaviour, and prevents families and individuals from taking responsibility for their actions.
He argues that benefits should be cut, and that if families cannot afford to bring up their children, then they should be adopted.
Extreme versions of these ideas include compulsory sterilisation programmes, a form of eugenics.
Murray argues that stigmatisation can also be very effective, involving the community sanctioning reckless behaviour rather than tolerating it.
Evaluation of right-wing policies
Right-wing policies are often criticised for not addressing the underlying causes of crime.
Simon (1988) points out that ‘changing people’ is difficult and expensive, which can explain why policy-makers have abandoned this approach, focusing instead on restricting people’s movements and actions.
However, because the original causes have not been addressed, if such restrictions are relaxed, crime will increase again.
Additionally, any apparent crime reduction may just be a form of ‘displacement’.
This is the idea that because the criminal behaviour’s causes have not been addressed, it will just be ‘displaced’ (moved) to somewhere else.
Clarke (1980) accepts this risk may apply in some cases, but argues that some crime will be prevented completely by removing the temptation.
He also points out that the public, police and politicians are largely in favour of situational and environmental crime prevention measures.
The growing trend towards social control is portrayed by Cohen (1985) as catching-up more and more people in ‘ever-larger nets of ever-finer mesh’ as punishment extends from prison through the community, and the variety of sanctions keeps on growing.
Davis (1994) presents a similarly bleak picture of segregated cities and a culture of fear created by the right-wing influenced policies discussed above, leading to a form of social engineering which may have ‘ominous racial overtones’.
However, given the blight on deprived communities caused by crime, some argue that more control is a price worth paying.
Additionally, a common response to concerns about increasing control is that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
However, CCTV in city centres, security patrols in shopping malls, expanded electronic data collection and strengthened asylum and immigration controls target the innocent as well as the guilty according to Hudson (1997).
Harsh punishments, such as the death penalty, are also challenged.
Though it is often argued that they act as a deterrent, there is little evidence to support this. Jurisdictions which use the death penalty generally have higher crime rates than those which do not.
reoffending rates following custodial sentences are generally much higher than for more rehabilitative sentencing options.