Explain the seven points of agreement between realist criminology and cultural criminology presented by Matthews.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(1) An agreement that a greater understanding of the cultural dimensions of attitude and behavior is critical to the formation of effective policy. (2) Each argues that interventions are likely to work only to the extent that they connect with the sensibilities and propensities of those to whom they are directed. (3) That both perspectives express deep reservations about the use of inferential statistics and the positivistic tendency to turn complex social relations into dry mathematical formulas. (4) That both approaches have a commitment to naturalism and engaging in the lived experiences of those studied because there is a need to establish a congruity of meaning between researchers and their subject (combined with a need to understand their experiences, emotions and aspirations). (5) Each shares a mutual distrust of overly rationalized conceptions of man as found in rational choice and routine activity theory. (6) The approaches agree that forms of regulations themselves can contribute to an offence in question, meaning in part that the nature of crime and deviance is not reducible to individual motivation or opportunity but is created to some extent by modes of regulation directed toward it. (7) A commitment to the development of a critical or radical criminology (although there remain some differences in what is critical about these two approaches) that problematizes the notions of crime and deviance.