While Right Realism is clearly related to NewRight Administrative criminology, it offers atheoretical explanation for offending lackingfrom the latter, based on three fundamentalassumptions:

1. Criminal behaviour is a developmentalprocess: minor disorders, allowed to gounchallenged, lead to major disorder, or asWilson and Kelling (1982) argue, "Oneunrepaired broken window is a signal no-onecares, and so breaking more windows costsnothing".

2. Crime is a problem of order:▪ unchecked criminality leads to disorder withina community.▪ This, in turn, feeds into the development ofmore and greater criminality

As Kleiman (2000) argues, where people fearcrime they take steps to avoid it, to thedetriment of community life; the streets, forexample, become the preserve of lawbreakers.Establishing order, therefore, breaks this "cycleof disorder" and reduces both crime and thefear of crime.

3. People make rational choices aboutoffending / conforming and this translates into a‘cost / benefit’ explanation of offending.Potential offenders rationally weigh the:

▪ likely benefits of crime, in terms of moneyand status, for example, against:▪ likely costs, such as being caught andpunished.

Possible punishments, however severe, are notin themselves deterrents since no-one commitsa crime believing they are going to be caught.

Wilson (1983) notes individuals don't alwaysact rationally, in their own best interests,because they may have no real idea about thechances of being arrested for a particular crime.

Rational choice, therefore, operates at ageneral level, where beliefs are propagatedthrough the media, community, family and peergroup – sources that, Wilson suggests, “supplya crudely accurate estimate of the current risksof arrest, prosecution, and sentencing”.

D3. Right Realism

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Offenders are likely to have a good workingknowledge of situational variables, such as thebest places and times to commit crimes withthe least possible risks. Wiles and Costello(2000) provide empirical support for this ideawhen they note convicted burglars gave threemain reasons for their choice of target:▪ poor security.▪ unoccupied premises.▪ somewhere isolated / quiet.

For Wilson, crime control involves:▪ increasing the risk for offenders in order to▪ raise the costs of crime to outweighany possible benefits.

If a community deploys highly visiblemeasures to deter crime it makesoffenders think rationally about thegeneral risk of being caught.

EvaluationOne criticism of this overall approachinvolves questioning thedevelopmental link between minorand major disorder on the basis itinvolves a form of exception fallacy:the idea that something characteristicof an individual can be extrapolated toall similar individuals.

Someone who allows their room to accumulatelitter will find this rapidly escalates from a minorproblem of tidiness to a major problem ofinfestation - an example of minor disordercausing major disorder.

We can't, however, simply extrapolate thisprinciple from the individual to a communitybecause communities contain people, such asthe police, who help prevent disorder.Communities may experience low-leveldisorder, such as teens hanging around thestreets without this ever developing into majordisorder precisely because it is kept in check.

Further criticism involves questioning the RightRealist argument that the direction of causalityis from crime to disorder: if low-level crime goesunchecked a neighbourhood declines intodisorder; property prices fall, the middle classesmove away, criminals move in and so forth.Removing crime, therefore, removes the causeof disorder.

Lea (2007) however suggests this causality isactually reversed; disorder creates crime.There is more crime in working-class areas notbecause it is allowed to go unchecked butbecause crime is a consequence of disorderedsocial relationships, such as unemploymentand single-parenthood caused by inequality.

Remove the causes of disorder and youremove the causes of crime. This interpretationalso solves a problem not adequately explainedby Right Realism, namely why people engagein crime in the first place?

Social Order and Social PolicyThe New Right and Right Realism generallyhave a symbiotic relationship in the sense thatwhile they can be marked-out as theoretically-separate approaches there is a great deal ofoverlap between them in terms of the kinds ofsocial policies on crime that have developedout of each approach.

It’s important to note, however, that one crucialdifference between the two approaches is theweight each gives to the question of socialorder.

For Right Realist approaches the focus is onmaintaining order through a range of offender-centred policies, one of which - zero-tolerancepolicing - has come to epitomise a “brokenwindows” approach to policing.

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In basic terms zero-tolerance policing involvesevery deviant or illegal act being acted upon bythe police: arresting even trivial offenders setsclear behavioural boundaries for potentialoffenders and the law-abiding alike.

Some versions have, for example, been appliedin both America (Bratton in New York) and theUK (in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough),although, as Pease (1998) notes, there is somedebate about what it precisely involves andwhether "zero-tolerance" actually has anymeaning outside of how it is represented in themedia: Bratton, the main architect of zero-tolerance, does not recognise the term.

Criticism of zero-tolerance policing points to thefact the long-term fall in New York crime wasmirrored by similar falls in other American citiesthat did not use the strategy. Two reasons havebeen suggested for this across-the-boarddecline:

1. Demographic change in the shape of a fall inthe number of young males - the social groupmost-likely to be involved in crime - in the USpopulation.

2. A fall in the availability and use of crackcocaine.

Corman and Mocan (2002) further argue thatzero-tolerance policing has little or no effect onlow-level criminality and does not influencecrime rates for more serious offences such asrobbery or murder.

This follows, they argue, because low-leveloffences (misdemeanours) only involve veryshort prison sentences at worst and there is nooverlap between low-level offenders and more

serious types of criminality. They did find,however, that by targeting police resources atmore-serious offenders crime rates fellsignificantly.

Kelling (2016), however, has arguedmaintaining social order is not simply a case ofemploying more police officers or being “toughon every crime”. He argues order maintenanceis a matter for negotiation between a range ofcooperative stakeholders (such as the police,local and national politicians and members ofthe local community).

He’s also argued that while Right Realistpolicies don't always lower actual crime rates,they demonstrably lower the fear of crime.People, in other words "feel safer" in theirhomes and on the streets. These claims have,however, been disputed:

Irving (2001) points out fear of crime isnotoriously difficult to measure, not leastbecause it's based on subjective feelings ratherthan objective conditions; "fear of crime" meansdifferent things to different people, such that itmay not relate to crime at all: people interprethow they feel about their community and thepeople around them in terms of unhappiness,which is translated into a general fear of crime.

Ditton's (2000) study of the introduction ofCCTV surveillance in Glasgow found both thefear of crime and crime itself actually increased,findings he attributed to electronic surveillancereducing levels of "natural surveillance" by thepublic. CCTV lead to a retreat from “collectiveand individual responsibility to self interest anda culture of fear".

Zero-Tolerance PolicingThe general strategy has claimed some levelof success in reducing crime; over the past 20years:▪ crime in New York fell by around 40%▪ murder in New York fell by 50%.▪ in Hartlepool crime fell by 40% in 3 years▪ in Middlesbrough crime fell by 20% in 18months.▪ in London, "Operation Zero Tolerance"targeted petty crime around King's Crossstation and 80% of residents reported "feelingsafer".

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Zero-tolerance policing is not always effectivein reducing crime. It has more success in high-density urban areas with high levels ofcommunity style policing and a large amount oflow-level crime.

In low-density areas with relatively lower levelsof petty crime it doesn't influence crime (asopposed to offending) rates. Criminalising largenumbers of young people for relatively minorpublic order and opportunistic offences canhave the unintended effect of creating largenumbers offenders "hardened" by theirexperience of prison; this leads to higher levelsof disorder than if the "problem" had beentreated in a less retributive way (which Kelling(2016) has also been at pains to point out).

In Britain a range of social policies have beenintroduced over the past 30 years that,somewhat ironically, are much closer to Wilsonand Kelling’s (1982) original Broken Windowsthesis than their American counterparts -particularly attempts to prevent persistent, low-level, "anti-social" / criminal behaviour amongstthe young through a range of measures:

▪ Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs): 40%of these issued in 2007 were to those under 18..▪ Curfews: named individuals must stay in theirown home between certain hours.

▪ Dispersal zones: groups in a named area canbe ordered to disperse by police or face arrestsimply for being in that area.

These have met with varying degrees ofsuccess - partly because they risk contributingto a deviancy amplification spiral, where minoracts of deviance become more serious criminalacts, and the creation of what Becker (1963)called deviant careers; by drawing youngpeople into the judicial system there is a risk of"confirming individuals" as criminals.

Closer still to the Broken Windows ideal issomething like Crime and Disorder ReductionPartnerships (1998) that require localauthorities to work in partnership with:

▪ Police▪ Health authorities▪ Local residents and▪ Local businesses.

The objective here is to devise and implementan overall strategy for reducing crime anddisorder in their community.

For some this has meant the development ofcommunity policing, where the police, aided bycommunity support officers (established in2002), are integrated into and trusted by thecommunity. The objective here is to developinformal self-regulation, such that the membersof a community learn ways to protect it.

In 2012 the first elected Police and CrimeCommissioners were introduced in an attemptto provide a central focal point for community-led policing initiatives.