The group saw themselves as facing up to the challenge thrown down by Ian Taylor in Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism for the left to take crime seriously.
(1986), Young and Lea set out three main policies of left realism: "Realists would argue for alternatives to prison", they would advocate "measures such as community service orders, victim restitution schemes, and widespread release from prison" which would stop "the severance of the moral bond with the community.
Such a demand is not humanitarian idealism - it is based on the simple fact that the result of prison experience is to produce pitiful inadequates or hardened criminals"[6] Left realism however, did not isolate itself completely from Critical Criminology.
[7] According to Young, "For Left Realism, the social survey is a democratic instrument: it gives a picture of consumer demand and satisfaction.
If we were to draw up a map of the city outlining areas of high infant mortality, bad housing, unemployment, poor nutrition, etc., we would find that these maps would coincide and that further, the outline traced would correspond to those areas of high criminal victimization... Further, this compounding of social problems occurs against those who are more or less vulnerable because of their position in the social structure.
"[9] Left realists conducted local victimisation surveys in Islington, Hammersmith and Fulham, Broadwater Farm and Merseyside.
Expanding on "The basic triangle of relations which is the proper subject-matter of criminology [is] - the offender, the state and the victim" (Young, 1986), Young proceeded to add the public (civil society) to this to create the four corners of a square, with the offender and victim at one side (the actors) and the state and civil society at the other (the reactors).
All of this, particularly in terms of willingness (and wariness) to report to the police, affects the official crime rate and the possibilities of clear-up.
or made the fundamental mistake of believing that ameliorating deprivation quantitatively in an absolute sense (e.g. raising standards of education, housing, etc.)
Indeed, criminal behaviour could be characterised as the operation of capitalist principles, i.e. the investment of labour for a return, but in an illegitimate form.
"[12] Young argues that relative deprivation is the most probable cause of criminality because people whose progress towards fulfilling expectations has stalled grow more aware of the injustice and unfairness in a society that allows inequality to arise, and this in turn breeds political disenchantment.