Introduction.

The polemical debate in understanding why crime occurred in society had invited a cornucopia of theoretical ideas based on ideology, pragmatism, and concomitant paradigmatic shifts. This debate, sometimes vitriolic and vexatious in equal measure, had resonated across the centuries mostly via philosophical thought. In the last two hundred years, however, the debate had become increasingly interwoven and complicated by newly-developed and derivative theories (sometimes polar or diametrically opposed) through the complex entanglement of modern societal development and socio-political thought. Insodoing, unpacking and defining the etiology of crime has proved to be a noteworthy adversary. This essay would seek to examine this unfolding drama of etiological proportions by addressing one of these key modern-day ideological polarities: right realism and left realism. It would critically discuss the relational polarity between these two theories by first examining and then comparing their respective etiologies. Second, it would examine and critique the interplay between ideology and British crime policy.

Left Realism (LR): Etiology.

“Left realism was explicitly, although not exclusively, concerned with the origins, nature, and impact of crime in the working class” (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2007: p.191). It was a radical criminology and a very British development (Newburn, 2007). It was ‘Left’ as crime was envisaged as endemic owing to the class and patriarchical construction of advanced industrial society, and ‘realist’ in its aetiology and appraisal of crime (Young, 1997).

Its theoretical and criminological roots could be traced back to neo-classicism and social positivism as epitomised by Cesare Beccaria and Adolphe Quetelet during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries respectively (ibid). Unsurprisingly, it was seen as a reaction to the