Radical Criminology Research Paper

The radical criminologists focus their attention on social arrangements of society, politically and economically of structures and institutions of capitalism. (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) The radical criminology sees crimes as a result of unequal distribution of wealth, power and other resources that make people winners and losers that prey on the weaker people. “The radical criminologists believe that the more unevenly wealth is distributed in society, the more likely people can find a person weaker than themselves” (Bohm & Vogel, 2011, p. 125). The main reason behind the radical criminology is that poverty and discrimination build up frustration in the minds of the people, and crime is the result of this frustration. However, with this being said, “the radical criminology is a conflict ideology which bases its perspectives on crime and law in the belief that capitalist societies precipitate and define crime as the owners of the means of production use their power to enact laws that will control the working class and repress threats to the power of the ruling class” (Bernard, 1981, p. 362).

While the Working class suffers under the consequences of the power inequalities and this class is believed that capitalism is in their best interest. However, the radical criminology assumes that criminal law is often manipulated to benefit particular interests to the detriment of others, which should be defined as a violation of human rights in forms of uneven wealth and power. The radical criminologists explain that deviance, criminal behavior, and state responses to crime are socially constructed, which utopianism directed at the radical theory, whereas socialism is the solution to the crime problem in capitalist