Assessing New Right Criminology

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Assessing New Right Criminology

In the piece on 'How to sweep beggars from our streets' by David

Marsland, he likens them to menaces in society and an 'eye sore'

littering the streets of towns and major cities. His somewhat archaic

view in that a need to adopt a more Victorian approach to tackling the

problem of begging mirrors the right realist view on crime. John Major

in his 'law and order' debate talked about going 'back to basics' and

with a rise in crime their explanation was to blame a 'decline in

moral values' as the main factor. Marsland believed that beggars had

no moral fibre and that the problem did not stem from capitalism or

poverty but their mere existence was a 'blot on the complex but

orderly copy-book of a modern civilised society'

The right realist perspective was particularly connected to J Q Wilson

whom in the early 1970's in the US claimed that 'crime resulted from

selfish and wicked people who were undeterred by the criminal justice

system which had gone 'soft' on criminals' Wilson believed that in

order to combat crime there needed to be a remedy, he suggested that

through increased education, encouraged community organisation,

modernising poor housing and provision of counselling for young

trouble delinquents there lay the answer. Marsland takes a similar

view on combating begging. His remedy for the situation was the

toughening up of laws that were perhaps to lax and return to the

Victorian invention of work houses. Beggars needed to know the value

of hard work, self reliance and respectability. The causes of begging

in Marsland's opinion were 'The hand-out culture of the decaying welfare state' basically to

mean that the government were to quick to give out benefits and

therefore creating a society that relies on money handouts and causing

people not to want to work for a living. Secondly he states that

'turning a blind eye' and selfishness on the part of teachers and

political leaders is also a fact of why we have high rates of begging

in this country.

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