Crime and Justice since 1750

Barry Godfrey, Paul Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134618125
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book provides a comprehensive, introductory text for students taking courses in crime and criminal justice history. It covers all of the key historical topics central to an understanding of the current criminal justice system, including the development of the police, the courts and the mechanisms of punishment (from the gallows to the prison). The role of the victim in the criminal justice system, changing perceptions of criminals, long-term trends in violent crime, and the rise of surveillance society also receive detailed analysis. In addressing each of these issues and developments, the authors draw on the latest research in this rapidly expanding field to explore a range of historiographical and criminological debates.

This new edition continues its exploration of criminal justice history right through to the present day and discusses recent events in the criminal justice world. Each chapter now ends with a 'Modern parallels' section - a detailed case study providing historical analysis pertinent to a specific contemporary issue in the field of criminal justice and drawing parallels between historical context and modern phenomenon. Each chapter also includes a 'Key questions' section, which guides the reader towards appropriate sources for further study.

The authors draw on their in-depth knowledge and provide an accessible and lively guide for those approaching the subject for the first time, or those wishing to deepen their knowledge. This makes the book essential reading for those teaching or studying modules on criminal justice, policing and youth justice.

Chapter 1

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Introduction

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In the course of their work, both detectives and sociologists must gather and analyse information. For detectives, the object is to identify and locate criminals and to collect evidence to ensure that the identification is correct. Sociologists, on the other hand, develop theories and methods to help understand social behaviour.

(Sanders 1974: 1)

Historians, like the sociologists described in the quote above, also seek to understand human behaviour, but place greater emphasis on uncovering how and why things happened in the past, and then applying that knowledge to explain how and why things are ‘as they are’ in the present. As detectives of the past, our concern in this book is to examine, analyse and critically appraise the history of crime. Like us you are interested in modern history, criminology or sociology, and you will probably be questioning which areas of knowledge are important to you and your work and which are not. Disciplinary boundaries may be important. For example, the ‘science’ of criminology, which developed from the late nineteenth century, has done much to increase attention on crime and criminality and forms part of some social science courses. Criminology itself has a history that stretches back to the late nineteenth century (see Garland 2002a: 7–50). As the ‘science’ became more sophisticated and developed more nuanced and less crude theories to explain crime, some authors began to chart its progress (and still do; see Godfrey et al. 2007b). However, the history of criminology is a different thing from a history of crime and the focus of history modules and criminology modules may also differ, so in this book we concentrate on the history of crime rather than the history of criminology. Nevertheless, the fact that criminologists also study the history of crime, and that historians are becoming more familiar with social science methodologies and criminological theories, means that students of both disciplines should both be interested in the subjects included in this volume.

Our primary task, then, is to explain why historical events in the past 250 years continue to affect crime and criminal justice in the present (and will do for many years to come). The criminal justice system that we experience today has many acknowledged faults. We have a prison system that does not reform inmates (the reconviction rate is considerable, especially for those offenders who serve short sentences and end up in prison time and time again). Senior officers have recently described police forces as ‘institutionally racist’. Police forces are struggling to accommodate all of the tasks demanded of them in the face of severe financial cutbacks. If we were designing a criminal justice system to meet the needs of today’s society, would it look like the one we actually have? Almost certainly it would not, because the institutions of criminal justice – the police, prisons and the courts – have all been shaped and influenced by events and ideas over a long period of time. For example, a preventative, publicly funded police force in distinctive uniform did not come out of nowhere in 1829. It emerged from models of policing that were much older; property recovery associations and local watchmen of the eighteenth century, for example. We can only fully understand why the police force works the way it does (prioritizing the maintenance of public order, being organized in counties rather than being ‘The British Police Force’, being largely unarmed, etc.) by looking at the changes made over 200 years of history.

In addition to institutional changes, historical research can also reveal attitudinal changes towards crime and risk in contemporary society. For example, youth crime appears to be a persistent problem for modern society. Media debates about joy riding and the drug/rave culture have recently given way to controversies over Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) and their effectiveness (or otherwise) against youth ‘yob culture’. However, when did juvenile delinquency become a pressing problem, what particular sets of anxieties or events made it so, and are those factors still present today? Was delinquency always waiting to be discovered, or was it ‘invented’ – can crime be ‘manufactured’ in this way? If so, what are the conditions that allow us to manufacture crime and do fears about particular types of offenders reflect rising crime or do they feed a system that creates rises in crime?

Do we live in a safer society now than our parents and grandparents did? Statistics tell us that violence fell to its lowest prosecuted level about a century ago and that the rates of violence are now much higher (they peaked around the 1990s and are currently declining). Why is this? Are we safer now? Do we care more about violence now? Are we more worried about violence than we ever were? We are not going to find the answers to such questions by just looking at the situation as it stands today. We need to find meaningful comparisons with the recent and far distant past. We also need to question the assumptions that people readily make about the past – that it was a ‘golden age’ when police officers clipped unruly teenagers around the ear and people did not need to lock their doors. Was that really true and, if so, how do we know? Why do we imprison women and children in separate prisons to men? Why are men and women sentenced in different ways? What is it about the persistence of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century constructions of femininity that means that we still feel their impact today? These kinds of questions remain relevant to modern criminology and social policy, and they remain pertinent to anyone wanting to understand the social world.

The structure of the book

This book has been written for historians, sociologists and criminologists studying crime and criminal justice at all levels, including A Level students, undergraduates and postgraduates. It intends to give a broad historical overview of crime, policing and punishment within the context of historical processes such as urbanization and industrialization, and it will present different perspectives on a number of ‘issues’ and debates in current criminological and historical research. Each chapter concludes with a case study (‘Modern parallels’), which discusses continuities and discontinuities and draws parallels between the most recent events and their historical contexts. The book itself is divided into two main parts. The first part describes changes to the criminal justice system since 1750. It explores the development of the main institutions and charts procedural and legal changes – from the means of detection, through the changing prosecution and court formats, onto the punishment of offenders. The second part describes how conceptions of crime and criminals altered over time, specifically in relation to the urban poor, female and juvenile offenders and ethnic groups such as Irish, Jewish and West-Indian immigrants. It also discusses more wide-ranging subjects such as the amount of violence and surveillance in society. The two thematic parts are, of course, closely related. Each chapter poses key questions and we suggest some of the main texts you may need to answer the questions, but you should also consult the bibliography at the end of the book. Additionally, there is a glossary of terms (with brief explanations of legal and historical terms used in this book) designed to make a difficult and complex subject easier to navigate. Each glossary term is highlighted in bold on first mention in the text.

Following this introduction, Chapter 2 describes the development of policing in England since 1750. During this period there were three phases of development. Initially, from 1750 up to about 1850, there was an amateur or semi-professional parish system organized by local authorities, a system that varied in quality. Then, following the setting up of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, a more consistently professional system of uniformed New Police was developed. It took almost 30 years of experimentation to consolidate this new style of policing and there have been numerous debates about its purpose among historians. Some argue that it was a rational response to rising crime in rapidly growing cities, while others claim that it was in fact a tool via which the middle classes ensured the sanctity of their newly earned property and point to its ‘social control’ function. By 1870, however, the new system was firmly established, leading eventually to what has often popularly been conceived of as a ‘golden age’ of policing, between about 1890 and 1950. Yet police forces were also challenged in the decades following the Second World War by political and industrial disturbances on the streets and by battles with their Home Office masters over their own autonomy. Did this period mark the end of the ‘golden age’, even if it had ever existed? How should we explain the problems with modern policing (the controversial policing tactics employed during G-20 protests, the ‘kettling’ of anti-war and anti-austerity demonstrators and so on) in the light of the golden age?

After Chapter 2 has considered these issues, the following chapter examines another role that the police played in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – representing the victims of crime in the courtroom. Chapter 3 starts by examining the part that victims themselves played in choosing either informal reactions to victimhood – demanding reparation from offenders, treating them to a form of ‘rough justice’ – or the formal route of taking them to the courts for judgement. The chapter then explores how the police then took over the prosecution of offenders first on behalf of victims of crime and later on behalf of a notional community of the law-abiding. Police control over which and how many offenders were prosecuted in court gave them enormous influence over crime rates and, ultimately, as the case study in the ‘Modern parallels’ section shows, this led to crises in policing, and to declining public confidence in criminal statistics in the twenty-first century.

The following chapter on the court system is also concerned with legitimacy, and also with accessibility and efficiency. The major question in Chapter 4 is whether the courts acted as unbiased arbiters of justice or whether they primarily served the interests of a small, privileged elite. If the latter, how long did that situation persist? Marxist assertions that the courts simply dressed up raw power in legal language and mystique in order to legitimize class relations have given way to more nuanced explanations as to why many began to view the court as independent arbiters of justice. This first section of this chapter provides a broad overview of some of the main changes that occurred in the administration of justice since 1750. The chapter goes on to examine whether the image of the courts as primarily the preserve of a privileged elite changed significantly during the nineteenth century. The concluding part of the chapter explores what happened to the public performance of justice in the courtroom in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

As with Chapter 4, the following chapter on punishment explores the rapidity and extent of change since 1750. In the late eighteenth century, execution or transportation (initially to the American and then to Australian colonies) were the norm for serious (and even minor) offences. Prisons were used sparingly and then only to detain offenders before and after trial or to imprison debtors who could not pay their fines. By 1850, however, prison was used almost exclusively for all serious criminal cases. While the death penalty was not finally abolished until 1969, public executions had ended in the 1860s, along with transportation, and imprisonment had long been the primary punishment inflicted by the courts. For much of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the prison population never exceeded 20,000. However, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, England and Wales would have their highest ever prison population – over 80,000 people. Historians, criminologists and social commentators have all debated these dramatic changes. They question whether the rise of the prison indicates a growth of ‘humanitarianism’, or just a switch to a different (but similarly severe) method of discipline. Was there a relationship between changing modes of punishment and the rise of industrial society, and, later, the emergence of the welfare state? When precisely did the ‘rise of the prison’ occur? Chapter 5 provides a basis for answering these questions by first outlining the extent of the changes in managing offenders before exploring why these changes took place. It concludes by examining the role that early release schemes (ticket of leave or licensing) played in making the prison system financially viable, even if the scheme itself has not always been popular with the general public or the media.

Some of the most important and interesting questions that we can ask about ourselves involve ‘violence’. How violent are we as a society and how do we compare with other countries? Is violent crime rising or falling? Is aggression against others innate – a biological imperative – or an effective and convenient means of communicating power and authority over others? Who can use legitimate violence and does violence have ‘rules’, as some suggest? Does the experience of war make society more violent in the aftermath? Is terrorist violence qualitatively different from other types of violent crime?

Chapter 6 examines how we might go about answering these questions. The media and older generations of society constantly tell us that violent crime and public disorder are now much higher than they were at some (usually undefined) point in the past. We are also familiar with historical reconstructions of Victorian streets where murderers lurk around every murky, fog-laden London street corner. Neither myths of a putative ‘golden age’ in the ‘peaceable kingdom’ nor media depictions (past and present) of ever-escalating social violence seem entirely convincing or particularly analytical. This chapter will take a more rigorous approach. The first part of the chapter consists of a consideration of changing rates of violent crime since 1750, including the statistical measures taken from 1857 onward. It goes on to question the reliability of those statistics and offer suggestions as to why the statistics should be treated critically. After discussing whether levels of violence in society have changed, it will discusses whether the ‘meaning’ of violence has also changed. After this review of a number of the different theoretical and empirical explanations for changing levels of violent crime, the final part of the chapter offers some historical perspectives on two very specific aspects of violence, both closely related to any consideration of the criminal justice system – war and terrorism.

One constant in discussions of criminality over time has been the view that crime is usually committed by ‘others’. Chapter 7 discusses why and in which ways conceptions of criminality (who was responsible for crime, and what sort of crime) changed over time. In the eighteenth century, criminality was thought to indicate a deficiency in morality. Criminals were seen as simply too greedy or lazy to control their most base desires, as individuals who chose to steal rather than earning money through honest work. Those who did not work, or who worked in low-earning occupations, were associated with crime, but the role of poverty in engendering crime often went unacknowledged. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, this view of crime as a ‘choice’ taken by rational individuals had declined. Instead, early criminologists, psychologists and social commentators had shifted towards the view that crime was often the product of either inbuilt hereditary deficiencies, or the exhausting and degrading urban environment in which much of the population now lived. This change in turn altered the dominant perceptions of criminals themselves and this chapter initially considers the different ways in which criminals and criminality were conceptualized and represented. Specific (often marginal) groups within society have often been particularly associated with criminal behaviour. So this chapter considers how and why women and particular ethnic communities have been singled out as problematic since 1750. Although complex, it is important to consider these developments, as the views that prevail in society regarding the essential nature of criminality have a strong influence on the ways in which laws are written and policing is organized.

Chapter 8 examines another kind of criminal ‘other’, the juvenile delinquent. In addition to considering the ‘reality’ of juvenile offending, this chapter discusses how conceptions of ‘ideal childhood’, changes in legislation, and the processes of industrialization and urbanization ‘created’ the problem of juvenile delinquency. It then explores how offending children were punished and which factors decided whether children ended up incarcerated, or in care institutions. Of course the distinctions between juvenile institutions of care and control were blurred for children who had committed offences, were ‘beyond parental control’ or who were simply alone and vulnerable. The chapter also discusses the differential treatment received by girls and boys and concludes with an examination of the longer history of gangs. Gang-related violence is a major focus of popular concern about young people in the UK, as is reflected in the intense media focus on the issue, and hence this chapter explores changes in attitudes towards youths and youth delinquency since 1750.

Chapter 9 begins by trying to identify the roots of the widespread state surveillance we have now become accustomed to. The introduction of the factory system in the 1840s has been seen as a key weapon in the employers’ fight to control workers in their employ, and the system relied not only on a private form of policing, but also on increased surveillance over employees. While these techniques were used to control those inside institutions (factories), other forms of control were introduced from the 1860s over those leaving institutions (prisons). Ex-convicts and habitual offenders were subject to regulations designed to watch over them and to prevent re-offending. In some ways these forms of control paved a way for the general surveillance of all citizens. However, in the late twentieth century, there was a massive increase in the use of CCTV and the intrusive electronic monitoring of communications and email. This surveillance was not just over those who repeatedly broke the law, or those suspected of being a danger to the public (terrorists, paedophiles, violent offenders), but also over protestors, activists and just ‘normal’ people. The concluding part of the chapter therefore discusses whether the impulse of the state to control citizens has created a ‘Big Brother’ society?

Does crime history have a history?

Crime history itself has created a history – a ‘historiography’. Since the subject began to develop out of the general upsurge in popularity of social history generally – mainly through the work of Leon Radzinowicz (1948–86), Doug Hay et al. (1975) and Edward Thompson (1975) – it has now grown to be a substantial sub-discipline in its own right. Whether the subject is properly situated within ‘history’ or ‘criminology’ is an interesting question, and you will find crime history articles in both historical and criminological journals. A growin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Frontmatter
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to second edition
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Institutions and processes
• 2 The development of policing
• 3 The role of the ‘victim' since 1750
• 4 The law and the courts
• 5 Punishment since 1750
• Part 2 Crime and criminals
• 6 Violence, war and terrorism
• 7 Criminal others
• 8 Youth crime and gangs since 1750
• 9 Control and surveillance since 1750
• 10 Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index