There’s a left/liberal fantasy that crime is just a name we give to desperate poor people seeking to get their needs met. There is an implicit respectability politics here, which tries to make the case that those committing crimes are perfect, innocent victims who we can conjure middle-class sympathy for. But it’s out of touch with the realities of criminality in our society, since it tries to conveniently bypass the prospect that many individuals are flawed (*we made them that way*), and that crime is a truly destructive force in our society.
A more rigorous approach comes from the “left (criminological) realists,” who recognize that crime disproportionately affects the poor and the working class, and that, because of this, conservatives have gained a lot of traction among working-class constituents by being “tough on crime.” Left realists do not downplay crime or its consequences (like left idealists tend to do), *nor* do they ignore its causes (as right-realists do). They continue to be “tough on crime,” *but* this does not necessarily mean being tough on *criminals*. It means changing the economic and social factors that tend to lend themselves to high crime rates.
A related part of left realism is a willingness to acknowledge that the victims of injustice and oppression are often not spontaneously just or virtuous, as many left/liberals wish they were—essentially deserving, innocent victims with good intentions. Here, I really value Slavoj Žižek's position, which is basically that one of the *worst* things about oppression is that it actually tends to create flawed, traumatized, hurt, dependent, self-interested people (with many exceptions, of course). A lot of people steal to afford luxury goods (and this shouldn't be surprising given the cultural value that we place on these), and commit violence for narcissistic and/or passionate reasons. Lots of violent crimes are basically abuse and domestic violence. Because of this, the respectability politics that tries to conjure middle-class sympathy for those committing crimes has been super easy for conservatives to rebuke. But it does not pose a threat to a left-realist program of tackling crime at its deep, structural sources. The fact that people who are caught up in cycles of harm are not always virtuous isn't justification for ignoring their needs; indeed, it points to an even more urgent need to make sure that everyone in our society is looked after!
What I'm trying to say is that we need a more resilient foundation for our bid to create universal care—one that can swallow up the conservative cultural critique, rather than ignoring it, and one that can supersede the failed, individualizing version of “tough on crime” that has, if anything, exacerbated the problem.
References:
Article on left realist criminology: https://revisesociology.com/2016/09/06/left-realism/
Podcast episode on the left "ultra-realism": https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/e/65-bunga-gets-ultra-real-ft-steve-hall/