Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to episode seven of Crime and Deviants
Speaker 1: for the Sociology Show podcast. In this episode, we look
Speaker 1: at new right explanations of crime and deviants. We consider
Speaker 1: wider poor people commit more crime than others, and how
Speaker 1: is crime linked to intelligence and control. The first thing
Speaker 1: to remember about right wing viewpoints is that it's more
Speaker 1: of a political viewpoint. However, these viewpoints have been heavily
Speaker 1: influenced by functionalism. Remember, on the right we have the
Speaker 1: new right view and right realism. Right wing refers to
Speaker 1: those political viewpoints on the right, such as those held
Speaker 1: by the Conservative Party. They tend to believe that equality
Speaker 1: is neither possible nor desirable, and that the most talented
Speaker 1: work hard and should be rewarded for doing so. Remember
Speaker 1: this is called meritocracy. They argue that the state the
Speaker 1: government should not intervene and support those who are struggling,
Speaker 1: but instead individuals should take responsibility for lifting themselves out
Speaker 1: of poverty. In relation to chrime, new right theorists tend
Speaker 1: to blame criminals or deviance for their own situation and
Speaker 1: their own bad choices, citing issues such as poor socialization,
Speaker 1: lack of personal responsibility, and biology as possible reasons. Realists
Speaker 1: who are closely linked to the New Right but not
Speaker 1: exactly the same focus on how a lack of attachment
Speaker 1: to societal norms and a decline in community norms leads
Speaker 1: to crime. Will first focus on the theorist Charles Murray.
Speaker 1: And Charles Murray developed a cultural explanation for criminality by
Speaker 1: focusing on the idea of an underclass rather than subculture.
Speaker 1: Murray states that the underclass does not share the same
Speaker 1: values as other members of society and therefore sees them
Speaker 1: as responsible for a high proportion of crime. He explains
Speaker 1: that their criminality is a result of their rejection of
Speaker 1: mainstream values and norms. Murray states that the underclass's lack
Speaker 1: of commitment to regular employment among men, delinquency among children,
Speaker 1: and drunkenness is what leads them to criminal behavior. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the high birth rates outside of marriage found in female
Speaker 1: members of the underclass and the lack of a male
Speaker 1: role model leads to poor socialization of children that in
Speaker 1: turn leads to crime. Remember when Murray's talking about the underclass,
Speaker 1: he is talking about a group of people that are
Speaker 1: completely welfare dependent, those that do not have a job
Speaker 1: but purely rely on the income from the government. Murray
Speaker 1: has also worked with someone called Hernstein and Murray and
Speaker 1: Hernstein talk about criminality and intelligence in their book The
Speaker 1: Bell Curve. Murray and Hernstein suggests that criminal involvement is
Speaker 1: linked to intelligence. Low intelligence is linked with poverty, high
Speaker 1: rates of divorce, and illegitimate births. Low IQ is also
Speaker 1: associated with being unemployed, often being injured, and being welfare dependent. Finally,
Speaker 1: they argue that low IQ increases the risk of criminal behavior.
Speaker 1: They argue that people are more likely to commit crime
Speaker 1: if they are not socialized into acceptable behaviors in their
Speaker 1: childhood by their family, so that personal traits such as
Speaker 1: impulsivity and lack of empathy are less likely to be
Speaker 1: controlled and or changed. Murray and Hernstein would argue that
Speaker 1: this explains the high crime rates for members of the
Speaker 1: lower classes, as well as ethnic minoritized groups are found
Speaker 1: to have lower levels of intelligence measured through IQ scores,
Speaker 1: which lead to criminal and or deviant behavior. Of course,
Speaker 1: Murray and Hernstein's ideas on IQs have been heavily criticized,
Speaker 1: often seen as discriminatory and not really considering the basic
Speaker 1: factors of what drives people to score well or low
Speaker 1: in IQ tests. Anyway, we then have the ideas of
Speaker 1: Marsland and he builds on the idea of the underclass
Speaker 1: and those that are dependent on welfare benefits. Marslm believes
Speaker 1: that people who are on low income are a result
Speaker 1: of their state being too generous with their benefits and services,
Speaker 1: rather than the individual's inadequacy to work, thus pushing individuals
Speaker 1: to not be self reliant, and therefore they let the
Speaker 1: state take responsibility for their welfare rather than themselves going
Speaker 1: out to work. Marsland calls this a culture of dependency,
Speaker 1: which in itself is deviant because it only applies to
Speaker 1: a small proportion of the population. The overwhelming majority work
Speaker 1: and contribute to the economy through taxes. Marslan further stated
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight that crime and deviancy is linked
Speaker 1: to the breakdown of the moral fabric of society. Schools
Speaker 1: and religion have become less effective agents of social control,
Speaker 1: and they have less moral guidelines and less power than
Speaker 1: they used to have. They've lost their authority. It has
Speaker 1: gone according to Marsland. He believes that this has led
Speaker 1: to a decline in morality, and as a consequence, crime
Speaker 1: has increased. Functionists agree that institutions such as the family
Speaker 1: and education makes society and that without them, society breaks down.
Speaker 1: Over the years, the respect for people's positions has changed,
Speaker 1: and deference within society no longer has the impact that
Speaker 1: it used to. A final group of new rights theorists
Speaker 1: is Dennis and Erdos, and they talk about a lack
Speaker 1: of civility. It suggested that there has been a decline
Speaker 1: in civility and respect for authority in communities that are
Speaker 1: characterized by anime and cultural disorganization. Special mention is made
Speaker 1: of fatherless families or absent fathers and its detrimental effect
Speaker 1: on young men denied an appropriate role model. They see
Speaker 1: a decline in family values, in particular a lack of
Speaker 1: discipline both inside and outside the home. Dennis and Erdos
Speaker 1: focus on the decline in informal social control. In the past,
Speaker 1: adults would tut or shun individuals who are misbehaving. They
Speaker 1: tell children off who contravene social norms, But now anything
Speaker 1: goes and hence there is a decline of the social order.
Speaker 1: Civility refers to a society where people know one another
Speaker 1: and reinforce similar values. The right see multiculturalism and postmodern
Speaker 1: life having eroded our civility, leading to higher levels of
Speaker 1: crime and deviance. So the New Right the key words
Speaker 1: to remember are inadequate socialization, culture of dependency, the underclass,
Speaker 1: the Bell curve, welfare dependency, and lack of civility. Of course,
Speaker 1: the New Right has been heavily criticized, particularly by groups
Speaker 1: on the left. So left realists and Marxists in particular
Speaker 1: would say that the New Right does not consider the
Speaker 1: impact of society and individuals, and that those people who
Speaker 1: are born into poverty do not choose to be born
Speaker 1: into poverty, and that actually they have been let down
Speaker 1: by the system and structures of society, rather than just
Speaker 1: putting the blame all on the individual itself. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for listening to this episode. If you've not
Speaker 1: yet listened to episodes one to six, please do go
Speaker 1: back and listen now. Thank you.