Neo-Marxist perspectives of crime

By Chris Thompson sociologytwynham.wordpress.com

Neo-Marxist perspectives

Neo-Marxist approaches are otherwise known as Radical Criminology

This approach starts with Marxist ideas but says it’s far too simplistic as there are wider cultural factors which lead to recidivism

Taylor, Walton and Young (1973) merged Marxism with interactionism and labelling (these latter two areas in effect cultural)

Neo-Marxist- ‘full social theory of deviance’

Taylor, Walton and Young (1973) created a new model of crime which they termed a ‘fully social theory of deviance’

This model locates crime as being a product of the social system the person is immersed in

They identified 7 characteristics evident in their ‘full social theory of deviance’, which are evident in Stuart Hall’s work

Stuart Hall – Policing the crisis

Stuart Hall’s ‘Policing the Crisis’ is a study of a moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the 1970s

In the 1970s a moral panic over mugging happened in Britain

Mugging is a concept which was imported from the US in the 1970s and tended to refer to being robbed by black men

During the 1970s several newspapers repeatedly reported incidents of mugging

Hall –’a crisis of capitalism’

This moral panic was built upon the idea of a collective fear of an ‘enemy within’

Stuart Hall’s ‘full social theory of deviance’ looked at the idea of the Black mugger as a scapegoat for other social ills of the period

Between 1945 and the late 1960s Britain had prospered with full employment and improved living standards.

However the 1970s brought about an economic decline – a ‘crisis of capitalism’

Black Muggers

During this period rapidly rising global oil prices brought high unemployment and a fall in living standards

Wave after wave of strike action brought about civil unrest and the subsequent challenge to social order and the power of the state

Stuart Hall’s point is by making the Black mugger someone to fear, it solidified a fractured UK society around the state

Societal reaction

Subsequently society allowed the state to randomly stop and search Black youths

This labelling of Black youths led to a process of deviancy amplification

Therefore Hall’s idea are more comprehensive as they merge labelling, societal reaction, moral panics and deviancy amplification into a complete ‘social theory of deviance’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mnijoDVu0

Another example is Paul Gilroy’s: ‘There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’

Gilroy rejected the view that Blacks’ resorted to crime due to poor socialisation, he said it was a result of ethnic minorities defending themselves against an unjust society

Gilroy saw the resultant riots in Toxteth and Southall in 1981 as political acts

The riots did remove of the ‘sus’ laws brought in by 1970s ‘muggings’

Synoptic

Hall & Gilroy’s perspective is a neo-Marxist one because it examines the influence of culture on law & order policies

Remember neo-Marxists cut the superstructure into two

Gilroy & Hall’s approach emphasises a crisis of capitalism and how political society used civil society (particularly the media) to get its own way

Critics

Some critics point out that some laws like traffic laws cannot be seen as being created by a capitalist class

Lea & Young – Left Realists say Hall’s ideas say nothing about the victims of crime

Neo-Marxist perspectives

By Chris Thompson Sociologytwynham.wordpress.com