Thinking Critically about Rural Crime

Like all criminological schools of thought, left realism emerged within a particular political economic context. Its life began in the 1980s during the Thatcher years, and as Hayward (2010: 264) observes, the writings of British progressives Jock Young, John Lea. and Roger Matthews sent 'shock waves through radical criminology, opening up personal disputes and ideological cleavages that endure to this clay' These tensions are not limited to the United Kingdom. For example, left-wing attacks on the Canadian realist project range from being accused of 'an exercise in dubious politics and the cult of personality' (O'Reilly-Fleming 1995: 5) to fostering 'a form of intellectual colonization where junior Canadian critical criminologists can be more familiar with developments overseas than with what has happened in their own country' (Doyle and Moore 2011: 7). Such criticism is evidence that left realism has made its mark on progressive ways of thinking about crime and will continue to do so long into the future.