NCJ Number
128698
Date Published
1991
Length
42 pages
Annotation
This examination of the early modern age in English history -- from the end of the Middle Ages to the onset of the modern industrial world in the 19th century -- focuses on the evolution of crime, policing, and punishment in institutional contexts.
Abstract
The analysis of criminological research on this period examines crime, policing, and punishment in relation to social, economic, political, and cultural (ideological) structures. Much of the research on crime is concerned with property offenses, since they accounted for the vast majority of charges brought before the main criminal courts in England over the period studied. Crime patterns are placed in the context of historical socioeconomic conditions. A crucial issue raised in recent research on the period addresses who used the criminal law and for what purpose. This concerns the machinery available for apprehending suspected offenders and bringing them to trial as well as the work of magistrates and the nature of policing. Quality research pertinent to the trial process targets jury composition and function, since the criminal trial jury played an important role in the administration of a criminal law that depended for many centuries on capital punishment as a crime deterrent. The history of punishment has been dominated by accounts of the movement to reform the criminal law and of the rise of the prison and the sanction of imprisonment. The essay concludes that in the late 18th century, there was not a sharp break of old-regime institutions under the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Rather, changes in crime, policing, and punishment were long-term, continuous, and piecemeal. 405-item reading list