Left_Realism

Left Realism Introduction Left Realism in Britain originated as a call to socialists to \'take crime seriously\' (Lea and Young 1984, Young 1986) under conditions in which criminality and other social problems facing the working class were worsening, while many radical criminologists remained obsessed with a social constructionist view of crime as simply a reflection of media orchestrated moral panics or political diversion (Hall et al. 1976). However such an inspiration to take a problem seriously does not of itself constitute a new or an adequate theorization of the problem. The survival of Left Realism as a coherent criminology is dependent on its capacity to elaborate a body of theory which distinguishes it from other perspectives. The development of theory in Left Realism in Britain in recent years has been largely concerned with the elaboration of a framework in which crime is analyzed in terms of the interaction between four key variables: the state, social structure, offenders and victims. This framework has enabled Left Realism to establish a relationship with existing traditions of criminological theory by seeing much of the latter as partial perspectives focusing on particular elements of the interaction rather than the process as a totality. Thus labelling theory tends to focus left, realism, theory, framework, social, society, process, existing, criminal, crime, young, system, state, justice, way, victim, structure, societies, simply, set, reflection, rather, question, problem, priori, pose, perspectives, offender, much, latter, labelling, itself, interaction, further, external, elaboration