What are the Major Features of Radical Criminology

Major Features of Radical Criminology

The major features of radical criminology are described as under:

1. Radical criminologists reject the individualistic approach to crime causation. They hold that not only the personality maladjustment theories (like biological, psychological) have to be rejected but even those sociological theories cannot be accepted which are dependent on notions of an individual’s defects owing to inadequate socialisation or peer group pressures.

The question is not of identifying those objectively-determined characteristics which distinguish criminal from non-criminal but of determining those social processes which stigmatise some individuals by labelling them as criminals but not others.

2. The radical criminologists question the rightfulness of law. They even describe that assumption as unrealistic according to which criminal law expresses a widely shared set of values. Richard Quinney maintains that we cannot accept Michael’s and Adler’s view that most of the people in any society would probably agree that most of the behaviour prescribed by the criminal laws is socially desirable.

We cannot accept the view that all laws promulgated by a government, which is considered legitimate by almost all people, represent the collective moral judgments of society. The operation of legal agencies in fact is based on the self-conscious use of the law to maintain the status of those who hold power in society.

Activities of legal agencies aim at self-interest and careerism. Criminal law and its enforcement are deliberately designed for the control of one social class by another.

3. The radical criminologists instead of explaining the fact of deviance with reference to the society, within which it occurs, give importance to the social power.

4. The radical criminologists do not believe in the accuracy of government figures relating to crime because government officials either overstate or understate figures. Peten Manning has also said (Cf. Douglas, ed., Crime and Justice in American Society, 1971: 169) that the crime rate is simply a construction of police activity and the actual volume of crime is unknown and probably unknowable.

Richard Quinney (The Problem of Crime, 1970) submits that actual criminality is not the issue. The crucial question is: why societies and their agencies report, manufacture, or produce the volume of crime that they do. We must look for a systematic distortion that is part of the machinery for social control.

5. The radical criminologists hold that the law is used only against the poor, the illiterate, the powerless and the members of the minority groups. The ruling class uses legal apparatus mainly with three objectives: (a) to impose its morality and standard on the society; (b) to protect their persons and property from the depredations of the poor; and (c) to compose such definition of criminal behaviour which may enable them to maintain dominance over the poor and the middle classes.