As Such, The Police Play A Key Role In Maintaining Social Control By

As such, the police play a key role in maintaining social control by establishing, maintaining and nurturing good community relations so as not to alienate the populace to whom they should be fully accountable (Kinsey, Lea and Young, 1986).
Many of the criticisms levelled against left realists were voiced by the radical theorists of whom the left realists themselves were so critical. For example, Lea and Young criticised radical theorists for their 'excessive' concentration of corporate crime and their marginalisation of 'real' crime that affects 'ordinary' people even though they accept that corporate crime is worse than working-class crime. Radical theorists counter by questioning why Lea and Young are prepared to view working-class crime as more serious merely because it is what ordinary people fear. Surely, it is argued, the actuality of crime is more potent and more serious than the fear of falling victim to a crime that may never occur. Left realists have no effective rejoinder for this criticism, other than to draw attention to the way in which fear of crime can have a real and negative impact upon ordinary members of society, by preventing them from going about their ordinary business, for example, or avoiding particular activities or places (Young, 1999).
The multi-causal approach of left realism can also be criticised for failing to explain all forms of criminal behaviour.
Feminist criminological theorists have also been critical of left realism in its tackling both of female criminal behaviour and of its failure to explain crimes that are traditionally seen as targeting women, such as rape. Just as it could be criticised for failing to provide an adequate explanation of different types of criminal behaviour, left realism can be accused of an overly one-dimensional focus on young, male, working-class criminal behaviour to the detriment of offenders from other socio-demographic backgrounds. Female criminality is largely unaddressed and, moreover, exposes a central weakness in one of the key principles of left realism; the reliance on relative deprivation as an explanation of criminal behaviour. For example, Lea and Young assert that crime results from the exclusion of a particular group from legitimate opportunities for success and material gain. In light of this, it would be expected that female criminality, which was always extremely low, would decrease even further as women gained greater equality in the workplace as this would ensure that they were less excluded from legitimate avenues of success. However, the converse proved to be true and the greater prominence of women in the workplace was mirrored by a growth in female offending; an outcome that is directly contrary to the explanation of criminal behaviour propounded by left realists (Smart, 1989).