Crime in the Perception of Right-Wing Criminologists - Essay Example

Crime in the perception of Right-wing Right-wing criminologists and Critical Theory ______________ Grade: ___________ Dated: May-18-2009 'Crime is a symptom of wider malaise'. Critically analyse this statement from the perspective of right wing criminologists and one other criminological theory. Crime as a social construction is created by the very processes that categorise certain behaviors as criminal. From this it is apparent that the beliefs we hold about crime, have a major influence on determining how criminal acts and actors (those who commit crime) are dealt with, in society. Most crucially, it is our understandings about crime that determine crime levels in our society on the basis of sentencing about punishment, treatment or deterrence for offenders. The critical analysis of crime takes into account the loopholes in controlling crime, which rests on the shoulders of our government and criminologists. Right-wing criminologists fears the uncertainty of criminal behavior on the ground of racism, ethnicity and inequality and labels crime on the basis of social settings. While it is certainly true that right-wing political efforts are not always vague to obey traditional values, it does not follow that right-wing promotes fundamental school of thoughts in ceasing crime. In the course of this paper, we will discuss critically on what grounds crime spreads malaise and to what extent right wing draws a distinct line between causes and efforts to control crime and right-wing criminologist and the moralist. This will be further analysed in the light of critical criminological theory, which elaborate and assesses various efforts done in order to prevent crime. The rest of the analysis will critically analyse right-wing perspectives on violence, thereby locating the roots of criminality in the individual. This analysis will center around the realist aspect of the right-wing criminologists, that categorise crime under the heading of 'right realism' and relates more to a realistic view about the causes of crime and deviance than to a particular set of methodological principles. Right-wing criminologists, being strictly conservative perceive criminality in the context of those attempts that control and prevent criminal behavior. Therefore they possess the opinion that suggests solutions to the crime problem as couched in terms of a clear distinction between criminals and non-criminals, such that the behavior of the former has to be visualised as punishable. The contemporary economic and political scenario of any society reveals the extent to which most people are law-abiding and some criminals experience fear and predict an anticipated economic collapse among individuals, during times of economic uncertainty. Since right-wing never consider the economic consequences as the causes to spread crime, they perceive crime as policy-oriented institution which works in the absence of common culture and ethics. While blaming that criminals are due to our permissive social policies that allow unnecessary freedom to our society, they blame immigrants solely responsible for spreading malaise. The claim that right-wing conservatives believe that individuals are solely responsible for their acts and must be punished accordingly, arise two notions. First, that individuals are the cause of events that effect them, and secondly, the fact that individuals are responsible for making the most of the situation, in which they find themselves suitable to commit any crime. This explanation fits into the 'non-native' immigrants' who, robs the social sector from white-collar jobs and social security. Right-wing explanations about crime includes social policies which provides the right-wing thinkers an edge to contemplate upon the notion that by invariably attaching considerable weight to changes in social conditions as methods of 'reducing' crime, we are able to cease crime. Now, 'reducing' crime refers to 'reducing' the number of foreign immigrants to a country, i.e., to strict the immigration policies. However, unlike left-wing, right-wing supporters perceive that crime control can only be possible if we keep an eye on our surroundings and on social causes of crime propagation. Of course, that includes the immigrants, who are already deprived and alone, but still always ready to get hold of jobs, education and shelter. What right-wing suggests is that though traditional evaluations have failed to do justice to the facts of criminal encounters, it does not follow that moral judgments in themselves should have no place in a society's approach to its crime problem. Right-wing criminologists only perceive crime at the societal level, where moral judgments are no more than the application of a society's values to particular objects and actions. It seems they expect an extra ordinary society where criminal laws are an outgrowth of informally applied rules, suffice to maintain peaceful relations in smaller, simpler societies. Right-wing, being more than just optimistic ignores the fact that in tribal societies in which every individual is known to the entire community, social order can be maintained by means that seem gentle in comparison with criminal sanctions in modern societies. If one man takes an unfair share of the proceeds of a communal hunt, for example, it will not be long before everyone in the community knows about the transgression. Unlike rural areas where victim is the subject of exclusion from participation in group activities (Claster, 1992, p. 8), crime in large cities not only require social control but are also entitled to take into account economic factors. Right-wing are not as much tough on crime, as they are supposed to be and do not take into account the informal measures to control crime, which the society needs as much as ever to have an effective way of dealing with threats to its welfare. It must be the role of right-wing criminologists in assessing criminology to stand outside such conventional wisdoms and to problematise each of crime seeming certainties. Instead of being lenient on criminal sociology, right-wing must visualise crime as a reality lacking coherence, a rhetoric invoked to ensure the domination of one group over another, a key instrument of social exclusion. Of course, safety measures are potent, but when safety is not sufficient and becomes a curtain for fear, the calculation of risks may not be up to expectations, then the denial of excitement towards outgroups, crime and anti-social behaviour act as social constructs which are bestowed by the powerful on disapproved behaviour but with no essential reality or core (Matthews & Pitts, 2001, p. 26). In fact, right-wing perceives criminal definitions frequently contested within localities and adherence to criminal values, that can even be a dominant aspect of same community setting, rather than to blame it on immigrants, or to various cultural settings living in a same community. While Right-wing understood the fact that crime begins with social factors as major causes, Diamond (1996) points out that it reminded the state about its proper role in regulating the flow of cheap labor across borders, in acting to redress economic inequality versus letting people fend for themselves, and in preserving cultural homogeneity and the supremacy of white, native-born citizens (Diamond, 1996). Right- wing perceived and blamed immigration as the main factor in crime, and prioritise it much higher than compared to the family values' issues, due to which instead of reducing crime, the Christian Right sought to integrate its ranks across racial lines and, therefore, attacked morally on immigrants of color because of not fitting the bill. Thus right-wing intellectuals organised a traditionalist view of society, according to which crime spreads from immigrants, for occupying all the benefits of whites. This could be a reason but must not be a key reason of being a threat to cultural homogeneity. Moreover, right-wing's claim that liberal elites use large numbers of immigrants from third world countries to increase the power of the state, is not a valid argument that according to them creates a new 'underclass' which increases social problems like crime, illiteracy, and inter-ethnic conflict that only a new class of elite bureaucrats is able to solve. Racism is the problem responsible for underlying crime, and what right-wing criminologists envisions is the crime that manifests itself in discrimination and social exclusion in the labour market, in segregation in the housing market and in unequal opportunities in the educational system. This way, racism rests upon the shoulders of crime to mark differences in general health and well-being between migrant categories and majority populations, and in differential access to power and influence. Criminologists blame that social stratification along these crucial variables is increasingly becoming determined by perceived race, culture, ethnicity and religion. Unlike left-wing to consider the economic clauses behind crime, it suggests that racism manifests itself in a new build-up of anti-Semitism, in popular demands to curb immigration and to repatriate migrants, and in the rise of National Front parties and it manifests itself in persecution of migrants and minorities, in threats and hostilities aimed at these people and in acts of political terrorism that include assault and even murder. No doubt, right-wing has taken many efforts to influence public opinion about racism (Maerkl & Weinberg, 2003, p. 272) but sill it has not been able to convince the critics and those supporting left-wing practical measures, against combating crime. Critical Criminology Critical criminology emphasises on taking into account two types of crime, those committed by the powerful and those by the less powerful. This way critical criminology views crime in a broader perspective of oppression of the political economy that affect both groups in distinct ways (Burke, 2005, p. 173). Many criminologists perceive that critical theory escorts from Marxist school of thought and is fragmented by differing conceptions of the role of the state in maintenance of capitalist inequalities. On the one hand, instrumental Marxists self-objectifying subjectivity assumes that the social form is taken by labour under capitalism, which as a consequence is manipulated by the ruling class. On the other, structuralists Marxists believe that a state plays a dominant role in subjugating in the vulnerable social deviations, like racism, class and society. As a mode of critical self-understanding, Marxism remains a master discourse as long as commodity production, with its defense of use-value as the primary means of social formation. Emphasising on the social factor, Marxist criminology at the end of the classical or modernist philosophy is not merely a matter of a shift in the mode of crime production, when an industrial emphasis on the rationalisation of labor gives way to the modification of the image and the need for hyper-reality, it is no longer necessary to produce and alienate what used to be defined as 'species-being' (Wexler, 1991, p. 71). If so, then Marxism has now been turned against itself because, as a modernist and not a universal discourse, he has perceived crime as an attachment to a mode of reality production that in a 'postmodern' era can no longer be sustained. A conservative Marxist marginalise crime as a process, what used to be the definitive internal critique of a social form called capitalism, the idea of socialist transformation has become increasingly unbelievable or has been progressively softened and diluted. Criminologists like Baudrillard have a modernist understanding of criminology that involves modernity as an individualistic and modern rationalist thought, for which the modern, centralised and democratic development of crime, means the expansion of science and communication as a rational means of production. Thus he perceives crime as an invention of productive modern management and organisation to which an intensification of human labor and of human domination over labor, both reduced to the status of productive forces. Critical criminologists does not avoid the etiological crises with politicians, and argue that an analysis of the processes and situations within which the labeling of certain individuals and groups takes place does not go far enough because it is necessary to examine the structural relations of power in society and to view crime in context of social relations and political economy. It was at this junction that much work was done by a Marxist perspective to identify the causal basis of crime and to make the link between dominant institutions and ruling-class interests (Burke, 2005, p. 175). But that does not mean that like right-wing criminologists, racism, class and ethnicity were to be blamed as the social determinants underlying crime causes, critical criminology focuses on the white-collar crime and crimes by the powerful. Critical notion believe that the financial loss from white collar crime, is less important than the damage to social relations, because white collar crimes violate trust and therefore create distrust which lowers morale and produces social disorganisation in the society (Carrabine et al, 2004, p. 194). That means critical criminologists perceive crime more than as a source to spread social disruption and injustice. References Burke Roger Hopkins, (2005) An Introduction to Criminological Theory: second edition, Willan Publishing. Carrabine Eamonn, Iganski Paul, Lee Maggy, Plummer Ken & South Nigel, (2004) Criminology: A Sociological Introduction: Routledge: London. Claster S. Daniel, (1992) Bad Guys and Good Guys: Moral Polarisation and Crime: Greenwood Press: Westport, CT. Diamond Sara, (1996) 'Right-Wing Politics and the Anti-Immigration Cause', Social Justice. Vol. 23. No. 3, pp. 154. Maerkl H. Peter & Weinberg Leonard, (2003) Right-Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century: Frank Cass: London. Matthews Roger & Pitts John, (2001) Crime, Disorder, and Community Safety: A New Agenda: Routledge: London. Wexler Philip, (1991) Critical Theory Now: Falmer Press: London. Read More