What are the central tenants of radical criminology? What are its shortcomings?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The central tenants of radical criminology, as put forth by Chambliss and Seidman, include:

• The conditions of one's life affect one's affect one's values and norms
• Complex societies are therefore composed of highly disparate and conflicting sets of norms
• The probability of a given group having its particular normative system embodied in law is not equally distributed but is related to the group's political and economic position
• The higher the group's political or economic position, the greater the probability that its views will be reflected in laws

Radical-critical criminology has been criticized for its nearly exclusive emphasis on methods of social change at the expense of well-developed theory. It also has been criticized for failing to recognize what appears to be at least a fair degree of consensus about the nature of crime. In addition, Marxist thinkers appear to confuse issues of personal politics with social reality. Another criticism revolves around the view that it falls short in appreciating the multiplicity of problems contributing to the problem of crime. Finally, Marxist criminology has been criticized for its inability to explain low crime rates in some capitalist countries or social problems in communist countries.