Left and right wing sociologists have both attempted ‘realist’ approaches to crime and deviance, both offer practical solutions in dealing with the issue. However, the way these two approaches go about this is radically different, as right and left realism are from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. Although like all sociological explanations, they have their limitations and flaws, both approaches have proven useful in understanding crime and deviance for a number of reasons.
The origins of left realism lie in the desire to move away from “pure theory” to something which can be utilised and applied practically in order to solve the problem of crime in Britain. Left realism is particularly useful in understanding crime and deviance because it avoids the age old divisions between structure and action. Instead, left realism sets out an agenda which contains all levels of analysis. Young, Lea and Matthews for example, suggest that in order to truly understand and deal with crime, the interplay between macro and micro factors need to be considered alongside each other in what they call “the square of crime”. This means that when investigating the problem of crime, sociologists should consider the roles of the state (as they have the power to define what is criminal), the offender (i.e. what motivates them), the public (because they are an agent of informal social control, and fear of public stigmatisation is viewed as one of the most powerful determinants of behaviour) and most importantly, the victim, because it is ultimately the victim which decides whether a crime has occurred. Such an approach is extremely detailed and complex, and provides a sophisticated way of analysing crime.
Despite its complexity however, left realism has failed to “deliver the goods” in terms of empirical research. How good is a theory if it can’t be tested? Furthermore,