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Left realism is “[o]ne of the most important critical criminologies in the world” ( Schwartz & Hatty 2003 : xii). Although there are variations in this school of thought, all versions begin with the assertion that inner-city crime is a major problem for socially and economically disenfranchised people, regardless of their sex or ethnic/cultural background. Further, left realists contend that chronic urban poverty and an exclusionary labor market are major symptoms of contemporary capitalism, which in turn spawn crimes committed in public housing complexes and other poor areas. However, for left realists, it is not sheer poverty and the absence of prized material possessions (e.g., cars, high-definition television sets) that motivate socially and economically marginalized people to prey on each other. Rather, it is a “lethal combination” of relative deprivation and market individualism ( Young 1999 ). Thus, as left realists remind us, it is not absolute poverty, but poverty experienced as unfair (relative deprivation when compared to someone else) that breeds discontent. The form of capitalism that is predominant in North America, individualism, takes such discontent to the extremes, where in the most exaggerated situations one finds the urban poor living in a “universe where human beings live side by side but not as human beings” ( Hobsbawm 1994 : 341). Crime, then, is an individualistic ... log in or subscribe to read full text