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Essay / Critical Criminology - 913
Critical criminology, also known as radical criminology, dates back to the concepts of Marxism. Although Fredric Engels and Karl Marx were the founders of contemporary radical criminology, neither of them explicitly focused on crime. William Bonger (1876-1940), a Dutch criminologist, was a more direct founder of this concept. He gained popularity in the early 1970s when he attempted to explain the causes of contemporary social chaos. He used economic explanations used by critical criminology to analyze social behavior arguing that social and economic inequality was the primary reason for criminal behavior (Henry and Lainer, 1998). This view reduces the focus on individual criminals and clarifies that existing crime is the result of the capitalist system. Much like the conflict school of thought, it asserts that the law is biased since it favors the ruling class or upper class and that the legal system that governs the state is supposed to maintain the status quo of the ruling class. Critical criminologists believe that political, corporate and environmental crimes are not only under-reported, but also insufficiently punished by the existing criminal legal system. Conflict criminology strives to locate the root cause of crime and attempts to analyze how status and class inequalities influence justice. system. The study of the causes of crime by radical criminologists developed between the 1980s and 1990s, which led to the emergence of many radical theories such as Marxist criminology, feminist criminology, structural criminology, critical criminology, left-wing realist criminology and peacemaking criminology (Rigakos, 1999). Despite a critical criminology that encompasses many general theories, some common themes are shared by radical scholarship. The core themes show how macro-level economic structures and crime are linked, the effects of power differentials, and political aspects in defining criminal acts. Drawing on the principles of Marxist theory, critical criminology believes that crime results from the capitalist mode of production and the economic structures they have created. Social classes have been divided into two: those whose income is ensured by property; and those whose income is ensured by their work. The resulting class structure influences an individual's chances of succeeding in life and their propensity to commit crimes. Although it encompasses macroeconomic factors that are rarely included in microeconomic analysis of crime, it does not replace these macro factors, such as unemployment, with micro factors, such as unemployment. However, it combines macro and micro factors to analyze how micro factors of crime are integrated into macro structures...