Why Crime Rises: A theoretical perspective

In 20th century, my theorists denied the increase in crime. Despite of it many circles also accepted this rise and began efforts to explain it. These efforts can be categorized as follows:

1. Left-wing idealist criminology
2. New administrative criminology
3. Right-wing realist criminology
4. Left-wing realist criminology

Thus, criminology will be analyzed from these four perspectives.

All four of these aspects of criminology explain crime through the integration of interpretations that were prevalent up to 1960. For example, left-wing interpretations emerged from labeling theory, while new administrative criminology developed from theories of social control. Modern positivism is the source of right-wing realism, whereas left-wing realism originates from subcultural theories.

However, there are also some common features among these four aspects of criminology:

• All four give little importance to the role of the police.
• But they attach great importance to the informal role of the public.
• All of them criticize the existing prison system.
• All these perspectives reject traditional positivism and classicism.

For their comparison and clearer classification, they will be examined from the following angles:

• Their concept of human nature and social organization
• Causes of crime
• Impact of crime on society
• Role of governmental institutions
• Role of the public

Left-Wing Idealism

Left-wing idealism in criminology explains crime as a result of social inequality, class conflict, and the influence of powerful institutions rather than individual behavior. It argues that the state, media, and criminal justice system shape people’s thinking and maintain existing inequalities. This approach views crime as exaggerated to hide deeper issues like poverty and exploitation. Overall, it emphasizes that social conditions, not just individuals, are the main cause of crime. In practice this meant treating ordinary street crime among the working class as a minor concern next to white-collar crime and structural exploitation, since the theory’s central worry was that dwelling on burglary or assault only handed the state and the media an excuse to expand policing and punishment. It was exactly this move that later critics, including some of the idealists’ own former allies on the left, pointed to as the theory’s central weakness: victims of ordinary theft and violence were disproportionately poor and working-class themselves, and a perspective built to defend that same class ended up minimizing the crime that actually hurt it most.

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New administrative criminology

Administrative or New Bureaucratic Criminology focuses on controlling crime rather than understanding its causes. It emphasizes practical measures like prevention and cost-effective policies instead of deep theoretical analysis. This approach highlights the role of social control and believes police have a limited impact on overall crime rates. However, it is criticized because it ignores root causes and often only shifts crime from one place to another. Its technocratic character – measuring success mainly through crime statistics and cost-benefit calculations rather than through any real theory of why crime happens in the first place – is exactly what critics from both the right-realist and left-realist camps later seized on as its deepest flaw, arguing that a perspective with no account of causes could offer nothing but displacement dressed up as prevention.

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Right-Wing Realist Criminology

Right-wing realist criminology, led by James Q. Wilson, focuses on controlling crime through practical measures rather than ideal solutions. It emphasizes maintaining social order, strong informal social control, and early socialization instead of relying only on punishment. The approach highlights that crime can be managed by targeting habitual offenders and increasing visible policing. Overall, it prioritizes realistic, cost-effective strategies to reduce crime rather than eliminating its root causes. Its starting point was a direct rejection of the criminological relativism that had dominated the field before it – the assumption, shared by idealists and much of mainstream sociology alike, that crime was too bound up with social causes and unequal definitions of deviance to be tackled head-on. Right realism answered that by treating deterrence and individual responsibility as the practical center of crime control, on the reasoning that whatever its deeper social causes, crime still has to be managed day to day through the choices offenders make and the consequences placed in front of them.

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Left-Wing Realist Criminology

Left-wing realist criminology critiques traditional crime theories as incomplete and emphasizes understanding crime through all its elements—offender, victim, act, and social reaction. It views crime as a real and persistent social problem that must be addressed through practical and comprehensive analysis. The approach highlights the importance of social control, especially the relationship between police and the public, in managing crime. Overall, it promotes realistic, integrated strategies rather than idealistic or one-sided explanations, while also acknowledging similarities with thinkers like James Q. Wilson. The perspective took shape in Britain in the 1980s under Jock Young, John Lea, and Roger Matthews, developed explicitly as a reaction against left idealism’s reluctance to take street crime seriously. Where the idealists located the problem mainly in the state’s response to crime, the realists located it in relative deprivation itself – the gap people feel between their own circumstances and those of others visibly around them, rather than poverty in any absolute sense – which they argued explained why crime concentrated so heavily in poor and marginalized communities without requiring any exaggeration of the state’s role in creating it.

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