Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s

Steven R. Hewitt is a graduate history student at the University of
Saskatchewan.

In recent years, Western societies have become increasingly fixated on
crime. However, as this book demonstrates, crime does not affect
everyone equally. Women, minorities, and members of the working class
are overrepresented among its victims. This truism forms the basis of
“left realism,” a recent development in modern criminology.
Eschewing both the denial of the impact of crime by “left idealists”
and the political exploitation of crime by the right, “left
realists” have carved their own criminology path, albeit one still far
to the left. In essence, as one contributor defines it, realists
“emphasize empirical rather than purely theoretical concerns.”

Seventeen essays of varying quality appear on the subject of realist
criminology. With two exceptions, the essays primarily deal with
crime-related issues in Britain and Canada. Critiques of realist
methodology and purposes are offered from left idealist and feminist
perspectives. Most of the essays are comprehensible to the
nonspecialist, despite the repeated use of technical terminology. The
book raises a question it apparently fears to answer. Left realists
spend considerably more time identifying the real victims of crime than
they do identifying the immediate victimizers. Often people are
victimized by those from their own class and/or racial group, an
unpopular reality to many academics and activists. Still, the book
raises important questions about crime, a subject that regrettably will
become even more prevalent throughout the 1990s.