NCJ Number
151966
Editor(s)
P Rock
Date Published
1994
Length
665 pages
Annotation
The essays in this collection reflect the principal phases of the evolution of criminology.
Abstract
Part I contains two writings from the period of "ur- criminology:" a characteristic description of the cheating underworld of Elizabethan London that hints at possibilities of subcultural analysis and a pamphlet of Daniel Defoe's that attempts to place the roots of criminality in the moral workings of a hierarchical society. The phase of social engineering is represented in the essays of Part II. They include Bentham's proposals for a new house of correction, Colquhoun's tally of the indigent and criminal classes of Great Britain, and Sir Samuel Romilly's plans to reform the penal law. The third phase of the evolution of criminology is described as "the new administered state" in Part III. The new statistical science and its statistics are represented in Joseph Fletcher's Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales, an impressive attempt to apply Guerry's and Quetelet's methods to the moral conditions of the United Kingdom. The other stream of administrative criminology, the medical, is shown in other essays. Part IV presents essays on criminology as an academic pursuit. They reflect the 20th-Century blossoming of the medical model of crime and criminology in the work of Hamblin Smith and Burt. The final section narrates the rise and partial demise of theoretical criminology under the weight of a new practicality hostile to any theory that seems to lack utility. Chapter notes and a name index