Cultural criminology has provided a much needed energy and diversity within academic criminology. However, it has been criticised for its notion of ‘culture’, its tendency to romanticise deviance and for its lack of engagement with policy development. Realist criminology, on the other hand, has expressed a commitment to taking crime and victimisation seriously and to being policy relevant. The question that this paper addresses is whether these two strands of criminology can be combined to produce an approach that is both critical and useful. This was a question that Jock Young raised in his later writings.