Critical and Conflict Theories

Theories that treat crime and its definition as products of power, class and gender conflict rather than as a fixed category everyone would agree on, from Critical Criminology's account of law as an instrument of the powerful through Left Realism's practical reform response and Feminist Criminology's account of gender in both offending and victimization. Belongs here: any theory whose central claim is that who gets defined and punished as a criminal reflects structural power rather than only individual conduct. Does not belong here: theories that accept the existing definition of crime and explain individual offending within it, grouped under any of the other subcategories here.