What is Conservative criminology?

NeoConserative criminology is on the one hand committed to preservation of the traditional values of society and on the other hand to the promotion of technocratic rationalities. The main protagonist of Neo-conservative criminology is James Q Wilson who was extremely influential on the criminal justice policies in the US. He had numerous advisory roles in the Regan and Bush administrations. Neoconservative criminology should be understood as as a specific application of social engineering. According to neoconservative thinking the economic, technical and managerial systems of modernity should be safeguarded and extended. However, this does not apply to its ethical and moral components and hence the call to 'back to basics' and 'traditional family values'. Central to neoconservative thinking is that crime and deviance is committed because people are not committed to self-control or self-regulation. Neoconservative criminologies are not concerned with the causal theories of crime as they do little to change the crime problem. They have abandoned attempt to tackle the root causes of crime. (poverty, inequality, class, gender Etc). Hence they argue that the welfare state has created a culture of the feckless, lazy, and state dependent whose moral values have been lost. Instead focus should be placed on practical and cost effective policy making. Hence neoconservative criminology pays attention to the moral culture of contemporary society as a major cause of rising crime levels. Related Control Theories. Broken Windows theory. Rational choice theories. Situational crime prevention. Administrative criminologies.