Rediscovering the Relative Deprivation and Crime Debate: Tracking its Fortunes from Left Realism to the Precariat

Abstract

This article revisits the concept of relative deprivation and asks whether it is still useful for criminology. The article traces the way relative deprivation has been used in the past to understand crime and how it has connections to other, more recent, additions to debates on social justice. I argue that relative deprivation has disappeared even in the place that it had become the key explanation for crime—left realism. In so doing, I explore the resurrection of left realism in criminology—what I refer to as “post-millennial left realism”—first, by those who were associated with it originally, and then with Hall and Winlow’s (2015, 2017) shift in emphasis to what they term “ultra-realism.” I maintain that relative deprivation is still a powerful concept for bridging several related areas that should still be central to the concerns of criminology—in part, because it is still a major concern in popular social science and social psychology. Why has it disappeared in criminology? I present an argument that suggests that the absence of certain research methods, such as ethnographic and qualitative or small-scale survey methods, has impoverished our understanding of the lived reality of people experiencing the social transformations of a networked, precarious society. The massive polarization and disruption in politics and social discourse, as well as the worldwide economic, public health, and social transformations (ranging from the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter protests to the COVID-19 global pandemic) have demonstrated the continued relevance and analytical power that relative deprivation, in its elaborated form, brings to questions of crime and justice.

Social inequality and mass imprisonment

“…Abandoning legislative policy and aggressive practices of law enforcement what resulted in criminalization of the most endangered social groups requires the reinstatement of the issue of social justice as an essential one. Social justice should become question of essential importance for critical criminology with the aim to remove not only the harm of crime but primarily harm which leads to criminality (Webber, 2021). Power of privileged social classes through penal policy and institutions is conducted through control and disciplining socially disadvantaged and disenfranchised citizens to whom educated, social and penal neoliberal reform meant neither brighter perspectives nor freedom but marginalized, pauperized and criminalised them.…”

“…However, the relationship between belonging to certain class and criminality is postulated in the theories of critical criminology, partial to leftist ideas, as causative and one-dimensional. Poverty is interpreted as a motivation for crime capitalistic activists being considered responsible for criminalization (activities) of the poor (Webber, 2021). In addition to the absence of underprivileged social groups like women and ethnic minorities (insufficiently nuanced understanding of underprivilege and discrimination), this approach has associated belonging to some class with the class identity from outside (objective class position) which can be in discrepancy with self-denying class belonging (subjective class belonging).…”

“…It was seen that self-perception of the inhabitants of the areas shown as extremely criminalized in political campaigns and state statistical records does not match the image created about them. Local population expressed the need for better social, cultural, educational and health policies which would mean democratic and decriminalized approach to solving their problems with crime (Webber, 2021). Relevancy of complex factors of social environment on the variations of crime rate according to the theory of relative deprivation comes from structural characteristics (structural relative deprivation, deepening the disparity between the rich and the poor, employment uncertainty, unequal earnings) and the level of social capital and social cohesion.…”

The degrowth movement and crime prevention

“…Relative deprivation as an explanatory criminological concept is said to be more relevant now than ever before, particularly owning to the hyperconsumerism of the current time (Webber, 2021;Hall and Winlow, 2015). Put in a different way, the causes of conventional crime may be proximate or ultimate (Roth, 2009), the former associated with particular times and places, the latter connected to enduring social conditions.…”

Is the neoliberal era coming to an end?

“…The left's acceptance of the perverse logic of austerity (Blyth, 2015;Ellis, 2019;Webber, 2021) seemed to suggest either its inability to understand how national economies work or its willingness to disguise economic truths from ordinary voters in order to maintain a status quo that enriched a tiny elite at the expense of everybody else. Identifying which of these two options best fits the mainstream left during these years is quite a difficult task, but, given that the quality of political debate had descended to levels never before seen in the modern age, it is entirely possible that the left's acceptance of austerity was suggestive of both.…”