crime and criminology

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3
INTRODUCTION
The validity of crime statistics is a long-standing one in both historical and
criminological circles. Police governance, however, has drifted in and out of
fashion as a topic of study. Chapter 4 explains how local control over police
forces has been eroded in recent years – and is far from the structure envisaged
by nineteenth-century models of governance. Yet, the topic is set to re-emerge
in the near future, with the reorganization of police forces into larger administrative
units that cross County jurisdictions, and with the possibility of a
national force controlled by the Ministry of Justice.
Chapter 5 explores a subject that has been debated by psychologists, psychiatrists,
social investigators, criminologists, historians and cultural theorists for
over 100 years. These debates over the persistent or habitual offenders have been
given a new twist latterly with New Labour’s determination to stamp down on
‘the hard core of offenders who blight our inner cities’ within a general rhetoric
of inclusivity and social welfare. This chapter, and Chapter 6, both chart the
processes of exclusion for the poor, marginalized and immigrant members of
British society. They show how conceptions about the nature of criminals, and
about ethnic minorities, have directed the criminal justice system towards iniquitous
and unjust dispositions.
Chapter 6 attacks the idea that the settled peaceable kingdom has been periodically
unsettled by waves of unruly, uncivilized violent immigrants (Irish and
East European Jewish settlers in the nineteenth century, the West Indian and
Commonwealth immigration of the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, again,
fears about Eastern Europeans). The chapter unpicks attitudes towards social
change, and how the criminal justice system has often been the instrument used
to control ‘problem’ communities.
Chapter 7 also takes a long view, this time of the growth of surveillance in
society. It outlines some prevailing models of surveillance and control that
evolved in the nineteenth-century factory system. It then traces the faltering
steps of CCTV to the point where there are now 4 million cameras in the UK –
more than there are in the whole of the United States. Lastly, it re-evokes and
re-examines Bentham’s Panopticon, the ‘ideal prison’ of the eighteenth-century
imagination, and one that has proved influential over social theorists in recent
decades.
Chapter 8 concludes the book with a examination of mass imprisonment –
how did we get to the position of having the highest ever number of people
imprisoned in this country in 2007, and one of the highest per capita rates of
imprisonment in the Western world? It traces the development of forms of punishment,
together with the aims of deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation
that drove them. It ends by questioning whether, at the seemingly height of the
power and use of the prison, we are actually about to enter a period when
decarceration and community penalties can actually dominate the punitive
landscape?

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2
History, Criminology
and ‘Historical
Criminology’
Chapter Contents
The history of the criminology 10
Histories of crime 16
Overlap, collision or convergence? 19
Summary 21
Study questions 22
Further reading 22
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OVERVIEW
Chapter 2:
• Provides an introduction to the history of criminology and the development of historical
studies of crime.
• Questions whether historians and criminologists are now beginning to use similar methodological
and theoretical models to study crime and policing.
• Asks whether the relationship can be characterized as an overlap, collision or convergence
of interest; and what the implications are of the growing relationship between history and
criminology. This chapter attempts to answer this question with reference to extracts of
criminological and historical writing.
KEY TERMS
criminology crime history historical criminology discipline
Despite the fact that interest in the topic of crime and policing has developed significantly
within the discipline of history during the last 20 years, and that
many criminologists have also come to appreciate the value of a historical
approach to their own discipline, there has actually been very little published
which considers the mutual advantage of association between these two ‘disciplines’
or ‘sub-disciplines’. The underlying rationale for this chapter is to answer
or at least begin to answer a set of questions – have crime history and criminology
grown closer together as they have evolved, and do they now share many of
the same methods, theories, concepts and aspirations? If they have (to some
extent) converged or overlapped, where do they meet? And do they meet? What
would be the advantages of ‘historically contextualized criminology’, and what
are the advantages for ‘histories of crime’ that are informed by criminological
theory?
First, however, it is valid to ask whether criminology and crime history have
anything in common at all. After all, both criminology and crime history have
employed very different empirical and theoretical frameworks, and used them
at different levels, in different ways, and for different purposes. Neither use the
same terminology for apparently similar research methods – the ‘oral history
interview’ seems remarkably similar to the ‘survey interview’, for example. Both
groups of scholars seem to have been imprisoned in their own silos, or parishes,
as Burke puts it:
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HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
Historians and social theorists have the opportunity to free each other
from different kinds of parochialism. Historians run the risk of parochialism
in an almost literal sense of the term. Specializing as they usually do in a
particular region, they may come to regard their ‘parish’ as completely
unique, rather than as a unique combination of elements each one of
which has parallels elsewhere. Social theorists display parochialism in a
more metaphysical sense, a parochialism of time rather than place, whenever
they generalize about ‘society’ on the basis of contemporary experience
alone, or discuss social change without taking long-term processes
into account. (Burke, 1992: 2)
However, as Burke states, both groups can substantially benefit from appreciation
of the other. Both disciplines seek similar insights into the functioning and
regulation of past and present societies, and just as most historians have become
familiar with theory, most criminologists would now say that an understanding
of historical contexts is essential. As C. Wright Mills stated in The Sociological
Imagination in 1959, ‘Every social science – or better, every well considered
social study – requires an historical scope of conception and a full use of historical
material’ (1959: 145). The caveat is essential. There are some criminologists
who, although very good on their own ground, are a bit shaky when they think
historically. Loose phrasing by criminologists – ‘our forebears’, ‘in times gone
by’, or ‘in the [unidentified] past’, for example – are likely to make historians
wince (King, 1999). In many criminological studies and criminology textbooks,
the history of crime merely provides an introduction to the ‘main’ chapters that
follow. There has been a prevailing sense that historical studies can be bracketed
off, left behind – their authority and explanatory power contained within
‘the past’ and its historically specific conditions – before modern studies then
explain crime and its control. As Burke lamented, historians have been perceived
as antipathetic to theory, with only a few exceptions:
Relatively few historians utilize theory in the strict sense of the term, but
larger numbers employ models, while concepts are virtually indispensable…
The distinction between practice and theory is not identical with the
distinction between history and sociology… some students of these disciplines
produce case studies in which theory plays only a small role. On the
other side some historians, notably the Marxists, discuss theoretical issues
with vigour. (Burke, 1992: 1)
Historical studies are accepted as providing context, but the ideas they contain
are somehow presented as less relevant; as dead issues. At least that has been the
case until recently: because crime history and criminology seldom spoke the
same language, and did not constructively interact until the late twentieth century,
the relationship was characterized as a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ (Braudel, 1958;
see also Skocpol, 1984) which neither ‘side’ wanted to change. For example, Hay
HISTORY & CRIME
stated that: ‘Recent histories of crime and criminal law make little use of criminology,
partly because it is noticeably indifferent to what interests historians
most: cultural, political and economic change. More importantly, much criminology
still seems to be infected with the belief that the civilised legal order
must represent the healthy, or the collective conscience, or some more recent
formulation of the norm’ (Hay, 1980: 45). However, that comment was written
over a quarter of a century ago, and perhaps we can now suggest that historians
and social scientists, particularly criminologists, are at last learning to listen to
each other. ‘Despite not being the “best of neighbours” historians and sociologists
are both concerned with the study of human behaviour’ (Burke, 1992: 2).
In fact, we can be more specific: the vast majority of historians and social scientists
are both concerned with the way society is constructed, operated, functions,
fails to function, changes, alters, interacts and otherwise affects human
beings. We can also be more positive: they may be more like neighbours chatting
over the garden fence, to borrow Burke’s analogy, than lovers entwined in
each other’s arms, but historians and criminologists do now seem to be beginning
to share a common framework, use similar methods and, in many cases, to
reference the same social theorists (Elias and Foucault notably). Where empirical
approaches are concerned, while striving for quasi-scientific rigour, both disciplines
have been required to address the problems of objectivity and
interpretation of evidence. Historians now think of the ethical considerations of
their work much more than they once did, and both sets of scholars are sometimes
required to submit their research proposals to ethics committees of one
kind or other. Moreover the ecumenical instincts of many modern crime historians
and criminologists have meant that their intellectual enquiries have begun
to significantly interact in the last few decades. Crime history often has its own
stream at criminology conferences (The British Criminology Conference, and
the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Conference), and crime
history is now taught on the vast number of criminology and criminal justice
studies courses – each year Keele University teaches crime history to 250 undergraduate
criminologists, for example.1 The pace of convergence seems to be
gathering. However, because conversations between crime historians and criminologists
are such recent features, it is appropriate that this chapter first provides
a lengthy overview of the separate development of modern crime history
and of criminology; only then will it consider how the two disciplines are coming
together, and what elements of each discipline are necessary for a rigorous
‘historical criminology’ to flourish (if that is indeed possible and desirable).
Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon.
It includes within its scope the processes of making laws, of
breaking laws, and of reacting towards the breaking of laws. (Sutherland
and Cressey, 1955: 3)
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HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
This statement by Sutherland and Cressey established the modern conception of
criminology, detaching it from a scientific format and ushering it into the social
sciences – into the realm of norms, transgressions, processes, institutions and
policy. Yet even this expansive if fairly prosaic description of criminology seems
constraining for the subject of criminology today.
Before the development of undergraduate criminology courses, dedicated academic
journals and criminological textbooks, the teachers and theorists of criminology
were drawn from geography, history, biology, psychology, political
sciences, law and economics. Indeed they still are. Criminology as a discipline,
a subject, a practice, a set of intentions, once again interacts with a broad range
of social sciences and humanities. What it has lost in disciplinary cohesiveness
it may have made up for in a healthy diversity and interaction of empirical,
methodological and theoretical discussions. Possibly. That is perhaps a topic for
a different debate. This chapter will contribute to discussions by describing the
progress of criminology as a distinct subject from the nineteenth century onwards;
and by describing how crime history has made its own distinct contribution to
criminology, especially in recent years. It describes the rise of classical criminology
and its adherents (Beccaria, Bentham) through to the ‘scientific criminology’
(Lombroso) of the late twentieth century, but ends before the penal-welfarist
more pragmatic/administrative criminology changed the field in the early to mid
twentieth century.2 This is a somewhat traditional history of the criminological
enterprise, but the chapter will also include (albeit to a limited extent due to
space3) the tradition of inchoate English amateur social inquiry into crime which
has been rather ignored by orthodox histories (Plint, 1851; Pike, 1876; Mayhew,
1851–61).
A sub-discipline itself, crime history, like criminology, is also diverse and
tends to interact with broader histories of the social, with political and economic
history, geography, literary and cultural studies. Like criminologists,
crime historians come in many shapes and forms – those who favour quantitative
analyses; qualitative, literary and oral historians; empiricists and theorists;
modernists and post-modernists; those concerned with the institutions of
criminal justice, the penal-welfare complex, the agencies of control; those
focusing on social order, regulation and surveillance; those who study legislation
or particular types of crime; and those that study the offender, or the victims
of crime. In describing how crime history developed, this chapter will
chart the optimistic Whig histories that described the inevitable progress of
the criminal justice system and its power to deliver peaceful society
(Radzinowicz, 1948; Critchley, 1967, 1970; Reith 1943). It then describes the
challenge that arose to those views in the 1970s and 1980s by radical or
Marxist historians (Hay, 1975; Thompson, 1975; Linebaugh, 1991), before
showing how the field ‘exploded’ in the last few decades, with crime history
for the first time both producing a critical mass of researchers and research
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10
students and also reaching out to criminology in a way which should propel
the field forward into new and exciting areas.
A word or warning: this chapter reflects our personal and possibly idiosyncratic
history of the intellectual area that the authors inhabit and explore. Some – on
both sides: criminologists and historians – will take issue with our characterization
of our joint disciplinary history, and some will be surprised to find Henry
Mayhew (the Victorian social investigator and journalist) and Thomas Holmes (the
late nineteenth-century police court missionary) contained within the history of
criminology; whilst Michel Foucault (the influential French social theorist) is
enlisted as a historian. Crime history, unlike criminology in this respect, has not
quite yet coalesced into a distinct sub-discipline with those who guard its intellectual
borders. That process has begun, with review essays and crime history textbooks
beginning to rule some topics in, and some topics out. Even broad churches
have walls, but whilst crime historians are still inclined to continue expanding
intellectual horizons, we will press on with our characterization of the development
of crime history, and be prepared to continue discussions on this and other
points.
The history of the criminology
As Garland has noted (2002), the division of criminology into periods such as
classicism and positivism is a common feature of textbooks, but the application
of such labels is misleading. The periods that historians might prefer to call, say,
‘the Enlightenment’ and ‘fin de siecle’ (there are a number of terms that could be
applied with equal validity) are labels that can only be applied retrospectively
when layers of intellectual endeavour and historical conditions have been identified
and ‘named’. Since the criminological project can only be really clearly
identified as beginning in the late nineteenth century (Lombrosian positivism
especially), the corralling of writers like Beccaria and Bentham into a neat history
of the discipline is particularly problematic. This chapter does not seek to
comprehensively document the history or pre-history of criminological theory –
there are a hundred textbooks that can do that. In general we can say that early
modern writers were concerned with vagabonds, unruly apprentices, lawless
mobs and highway robbers. In the eighteenth century, those concerns largely
continued but they were joined by social commentators who were advocating
change to the arbitrary use of power, and the greater calibration of punishment
to the offence caused. It is these commentators that have received the greatest
attention from modern criminologists and for that reason they have been dragooned
into some histories of criminology. We do it ourselves in this book, in
fact, when discussing Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (see Chapters 6 and 7).
We do try to remember, however, that although the theories of Beccaria and
Bentham are given prominence by modern criminologists, the vast number of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contemporaries perceived crime as a moral
issue and therefore saw greater or harsher punishments as the answer to criminality
(Bailey, 1993; Godfrey and Lawrence, 2005). Criminologists have ignored
these views largely because they are not ‘progressive’ in any sense, and are a
dead-end in criminological theory. Historians, however, have been keener to
take into account those commonly held opinions, and those that researched
them – social investigators such as Henry Mayhew.
Henry Mayhew (1812–87) was a journalist and sometime editor of Punch magazine,
who published three volumes intending to document the lives of
London’s working classes in the 1850s. He carried out interviews with a wide
range of street workers and street dwellers which showed the labouring poor in
the main to be hard working, uneducated but well-meaning. Although the chapters
were formed using the words of the interviewees, Mayhew’s editorializing
shines through, and he has cut, clipped and trimmed interviews to form a narrative
that (largely) supports social reform of the kind he advocated – relief and
support for the deserving poor and the respectable labouring classes. The last
volume in his series, however, focused on those who were even further at the
margins of polite society than the domestic servants, costermongers, street
traders and street entertainers he had previously encountered:
To show the class of characters usually frequenting these lodging houses,
I will now give the statement of a boy – a young pickpocket – without
shoes or stockings. He wore a ragged, dirty, and very thin great coat…
designedly made – in the outer garment were slits through which the hand
readily reached the pockets of the inner pockets of the inner garment, and
could there deposit any booty. (Mayhew, 1861)
The 15-year-old boy described his apprenticeship in a pottery, and his life living
on the streets after being dismissed from work for clumsily breaking pots. He
therefore fitted Mayhew’s theory that misfortune led to crime, and that orphans
especially were prone to becoming thieves. After being recruited and trained in
the ‘art’ of pick-pocketing, he was imprisoned 13 times.
Every time I come out harder than I went in. I’ve had four floggings; it was
bad enough – a flogging was – while it lasted; but when I got out I soon
forgot it. At a week’s end I never thought again about it. If I had been better
treated I should have been a better lad. I could leave off thieving now
as if I had never thieved, if I could leave without. (Mayhew, 1861)
Mayhew comments in the text that he doubts the veracity of that last sentence.
Mayhew, like his contemporaries, saw crime as a moral failing, a weakness in
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HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
HISTORY & CRIME
the character of those who fell into gambling, drunkenness, prostitution and
theft because they lacked the will to lead an honest working life (Mayhew’s volume
on criminals, London’s Underworld, published in 1862, was originally entitled
‘Those who will not work’.) The boy expected to be transported to a penal
settlement, a device supposed to sweep criminals away from Britain’s shores
rather than have any rehabilitative effect. Mayhew interviewed one ex-convict
who made the long trip back, with old age, rather than the penal experience,
bringing the end of his criminal career.
I was two years and a half at this same trade. One week was very like
another – successes and escapes, and free-and-easies, and games of all
sorts, made up the life. At the end of the two years and a half I got into the
way of forged Bank-of-England notes… I saw Cashman hanged for [robbing]
that gunsmith’s shop on Snow-hill, and I saw Fauntleroy hanged [the
last man to be hanged for forgery, in 1824], and a good many others, but
it gave me no uneasiness and no fear. The gallows had no terror for people
in my way of life. (Mayhew, 1861)
Despite casting doubt on the effectiveness of contemporary systems of transportation,
corporal and capital punishment, Mayhew was influential in helping
to cement the idea of a criminal ‘class’ who lurked in urban areas, and who were
essentially unreformable, but he was only reflecting a new zeitgeist.4 For example,
a decade before Mayhew’s volume was published, the Leeds social reformer,
Thomas Plint, described the criminal class in Crime in England (1851) in similar
terms and Charles Dickens, who was an important social reformer as well as successful
author, disseminated ideas about the criminal class to a large middle-class
audience. The ideas of Mayhew, Plint and a mass of newspaper writers who took
up their ideas, helped to create a conceptual divide between those who deserved
help from government and philanthropists, and those who had placed themselves
beyond society – a group who only necessitated punishment and constant surveillance
(see Chapter 6).
The ‘criminal class’, and changing perceptions of criminality, are described
more fully in Chapter 4. However, with hindsight, one could identify the 1850s
and 1860s as the start of the ‘othering’ process which created a cultural milieu
where criminals were defined as separate from respectable society – and when
the criminology of the other, rather than the criminology of the self truly began.
It could be said, therefore, that Mayhew, and others like him, have been unduly
written out of the history of criminology.
Socio-historical processes of identification and categorization that Mayhew
employed were reinforced and accelerated by the new ‘science’ of criminology
and the scientific/historical conjunctions that supported it between the 1870s
and the First World War. As the ‘science’ developed and recruited more adherents
across first Europe then the world, it coalesced into a form of enquiry
12
substantial enough to warrant its own historians, and to regularly feature in
standard histories of criminology. Let us briefly chart the history of scientific
criminology – which as we shall see relied on the measurement of physical characteristics,
and taxonomic categorization. Those people who were being ‘left
behind’ or ‘left out’ of a dynamic Victorian economy were attracting attention
from medical psychologists, biologists and social policy-makers as much as they
were from criminologists. The ‘residuum’ of nineteenth-century society caused
such concern both to those who wished to give them a helping hand up the
social scale, and those who wanted to keep them down.5 Those poor devils – the
insane, the vagrant, the homeless, the criminal, the disillusioned, the downtrodden,
the poor – that were chewed up and spat out by mature capitalism in the
Victorian period, the lowest and most unproductive members of society, that
Karl Marx considered the non-productive working class. That is where the criminological
gaze started to fall.
In 1876, Cesare Lombroso of Turin University produced his best-known work,
L’uomo delinquente, and one frequently cited as the origin of scientific criminology.
The conclusions he drew from his series of autopsies on criminals drew
heavily on the theories of Charles Darwin. His book On the Origin of Species
(1859) suggested a biologically determined path of human development rather
than one of ‘divine creation’. The erosion of religious authority that Darwin’s
work implied was first taken on board by scientists. Lombroso’s views were that
criminality was not a rational choice or a moral failing but could be the result
of a hereditary trait passed through the generations, reinforcing the inability of
some to adapt to civilized society – their physical appearance and the criminality
and vice being the proof of that theory. Lombroso’s theories struck a chord
with many influential thinkers across Europe (and particularly with continental
European police forces). Darwin had asserted the importance of hereditary and
environmental factors in the sphere of biology, and had implied that such factors
were potentially more important than ‘the will of the individual’ in the
development of humanity. Lombrosian theory therefore seemed to fit well with
modern understandings of biological determinism, and consequently his theories
on criminality achieved credibility. His belief that certain physical stigmata
were apparent within national groupings, and in prostitutes and criminals (e.g.
a deviation in head size and shape from the types common to ethnic groups, eye
defects and peculiarities, pouches in the cheeks like those of some animals, the
abundance, variety and precocity of wrinkles) promoted an anthropocentric
criminology which lent itself to scientific investigation, measurement, categorization,
cause and effect. Scientific criminology seemed to offer the opportunity
to identify criminals before the crime had been committed; it therefore
appeared (however fallaciously we now view those theories) to be a hugely valuable
weapon in the Victorian and Edwardian war against crime. Although they
never wrote about the darker possibilities of their theories, Lombroso’s and
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Darwin’s theories were as unsettling as they were reassuring because they also
fitted frighteningly well into emerging theories of degeneracy in the 1890s.
If, as Darwin had proved, the course of human history was not divinely
ordained, then ‘progress’ was not assured. If mankind could evolve, could it not
also ‘degenerate’? As Godfrey and Lawrence note:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in 1851, and the concomitant discovery
of ‘entropy’ (the idea that the universe had a finite life, and that energy
could eventually be dissipated), while obviously having no immediate implications
for Victorian society, did perhaps augment the notion both that
‘progress’ was not assured in human affairs, and that the ‘will of the individual’
was insignificant when set against the environmental constraints
acting upon him/her. Certainly, the impact of the development of notions of
‘degeneration’ is vital to an understanding of changing perceptions of criminals
in the nineteenth century. Degeneration theory was a diffuse current
of social thought. It was, broadly speaking, concerned with the underbelly
of progress, with the notion that modern, urban, industrial life was inherently
unhealthy (both mentally and physically) and would eventually produce
a ‘degenerate’ race of humans, weak, debilitated, morally corrupt and
incapable of decisive social interaction. (Godfrey and Lawrence, 2006)
Psychiatry, as well as criminology and a host of other social sciences, was
developing in this period, and much of what has been written about degeneration
has come from practitioners seeking to use degeneration as an explanation
for the ‘feeble mindedness’ of inmates in mental institutions. For example, the
work of Henry Maudsley, who emerged in the 1870s as the leading psychologist
of the era, was very influential. He noted that:
in consequences of evil ancestral influences, individuals are born with
such a flaw or warp of nature that all the care in the world will not prevent
them from being vicious or criminal, or becoming insane… No one can
escape the tyranny of his organisation; no one can elude the destiny that
is innate in him, and which unconsciously and irresistibly shapes his ends,
even when he believes that he is determining them with consummate foresight
and skill. (Maudsley, 1873: 76)
The theories promoted by Maudsley, as a psychiatrist, were almost indistinguishable
for proto-criminologists like L. Gordon Rylands for example (Rylands,
1889: 35; Wiener, 1990; Leps, 1992; and see also Chapter 4).
The theory of degenerative genetic criminality was not monolithic, nor was it
static. For example, in 1906, Dr. T.S. Clouston, President of the Royal College of
Physicians, explained that inherited conditions did not lead directly to criminality,
but that over time, problematic inherited characteristics could allow temptation
to overwhelm the weak of will.
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HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
A bad nervous heredity means mental unresistiveness to the causes of mental
weakness and ill-health. The margin of security is less. While a man who
has good heredity may with impunity take many liberties in the way he uses
his brain, this is not safe if he has a bad heredity. There are modes of upbringing,
of education, and of conduct in life that should be avoided where a man
is handicapped by bad heredity… While heredity implies a potentiality
towards good and evil it commonly needs a special exciting cause or combination
of causes to bring out visible effect. Take the excessive use of alcohol
as an example – the father and mother of a boy have indulged in it before and
during his life in utero, he has been poisoned in embryo, they have both
acquired an uncontrollable craving for it, the boy has thereby acquired a weak
constitution, probably neurotic in its character, and his development of body
and mind has not been perfect. Few students of heredity would say that he
had necessarily acquired the special craving for alcohol from his parents. All
that is affirmed is that his power of mental inhibition would probably be weak
and his defences generally below par. He would not be able to withstand
social temptations, and alcohol would have a quicker and worse effect on him
than on his parents. But on the other hand, if his health in childhood and youth
were specially attended to, and his body and brain thereby strengthened, if
his education were made a specially suitable one, if he selected an open-air
occupation, if he took no alcohol, if during adolescence especially he were
guarded from severe temptation, all these influences would be likely so as to
strengthen his mental inhibition and antagonise his heredity that he would not
fall into the alcoholic condition, and might even procreate mentally healthy
children. (Clouston, 1906: 61–62, emphasis added)
So there we have it, in brief. Until scientific criminology came along with all
of its faults, particular views on criminality privileging moral failings as the
cause of vice were given credence by religious figures, and a range of dispersed
voices occasionally ventured ways that the authorities could prevent the spread
of immorality. New scientific criminological discourses in the 1890s then placed
authority in the hands of a small group of experts: psychiatrists, geneticists and,
yes, ‘criminologists’. We could continue the history of scientific criminology up
to the present day with discussions of the criminal gene, and how it may or may
not cause or enable criminality in particular individuals. Indeed it is the central
platform of this book that debates that have taken place in the past continue to
have a resonance today. However, let us now leave the progression of criminological
theory, to instead pose some different and perhaps provocative questions.
In reviewing the orthodox history of criminology, it is clear that criminology as
a discipline could not claim a common methodological approach – Lombroso
employed scientific rationalism, Beccaria and Bentham were philosophers who
developed their ideas on punishment without empirical research (as will be seen
in Chapter 6). This is unsurprising, and criminologists today employ a wide range
of methodologies – ethnography, participant observation survey, and interviews.
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16
This last method was also employed, of course, by Mayhew; and so we return
again to ask why Mayhew has not yet found a regular spot within criminology
textbooks. Second, the development of criminology as a discipline does not seem
dissimilar to that of the disciplines of medicine, psychiatry, psychology and sociology,
and yet the histories of those professional groups (and the development of
ideas associated with those expert groups in their formative stages) are all contained
comfortably within the province of traditional history syllabuses. Why
should the history of criminology remain so resolutely outside the realm of social
history and its researchers? If historians of crime are not writing about the history
of criminology, then what on earth are they writing about?
Histories of crime
Historians of crime – particularly low level and non-political crime – have been slow
off the mark. Crime seldom rates an entry in the contents (or even in the indexes)
of general histories of British society before the 1980s, even the 1990s. Crime history
has attempted to understand the processes and interactions between how people
perceived crime and its impact at particular moments in history; how it was
represented in sources of information (such as newspapers, pamphlets, and popular
songs); how the authorities reacted; and what changed over time. But the interest in
these issues has been slow to grow, and has developed in particular directions, as
the following paragraphs will illustrate, starting with the Whig view of crime.
In 1948 Sir Leon Radzinowicz published an authoritative history of the criminal
law and its operation. In his preface to A History of English Criminal Law, he implicitly
identified three key concerns of ‘early’ crime historians – progressive reform
(from the eighteenth century onwards); presentism (that the lessons of the past can
assist the modern criminal justice system); and the close relationship between
criminal history and wider contexts of social history. The chapters that followed his
Preface kept to these guidelines, and his description of the development of policing
and the law is bathed in the golden light of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment:
Child of the Common Law, nourished and moulded by Statute, the criminal
law of England has always been sensitive to the needs and aspirations
of the English people, and it has continuously changed under the impact
of the predominant opinion of the day. Yet while it has never been static,
its rate of growth has been uneven, and the main features which it presents
today were built up from the movement for reform which began in
the middle of the eighteenth century. To that development the forces of
morality, of philosophical thought and of social consciousness all made
their contribution. (Radzinowicz, 1948: ix)
17
HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
There is no doubt that this work stood alone as an important work which
would substantially influence and inform post-war historians. It formed part
of what has come to be known as the Whig view of history. This form of history
is usually portrayed as championing the inevitable progress of the United
Kingdom towards refinement, order, social contentment and peaceable living.
The police were pictured in this theory as key instruments of the State which
could bring this desirable and contented situation about. Whig history is now
often parodied, but its adherents were not simply viewing the world through
rose-tinted glasses, nor were they bad or inadequate historians. However, they,
like all scholars, were products of their time, personal educational and occupational
backgrounds, and social conditions. Reith was writing when German
bombs were falling, and notions of English civilization and progressive reason
were everywhere juxtaposed against brutal totalitarianism. Critchley
wrote his works when the post-war consensus was virtually intact. He saw
the 1950s and 1960s as the era of ‘Dixon of Dock Green’, when police efficiency
was such that constables could arrest the odd bad lot who didn’t fit
into the generally law-abiding citizens of the 1950s and 1960s. No wonder Reith
(1943), Critchley (1967) and others looked back at eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury
policing agencies as earlier, inferior, but essentially recognisable versions
of the twentieth-century police force. They looked to the future with
optimism, looking forward to building on the strong foundation provided by
past successes.
The Whig view was not so much revised as swatted away by the radical
historians of the 1970s and 1980s. Marxist scholars used studies of the eighteenthcentury
Bloody Code and eradication of customary rights in the countryside
and in the workplace to illustrate the class bias they believed permeated the
criminal law (and society as a whole). Brilliant scholars (Doug Hay and
Raphael Samuel especially) ripped apart the consensual positivistic views of
crime history. Peter Linebaugh (1991) and Doug Hay showed how the discretionary
nature of capital punishment empowered local elites, and how the
criminal code generally supported ‘the ruling classes’. Edward Thompson
demonstrated with clarity and powerful arguments that industrial capitalism
had reconfigured the customary world, and that the criminal justice system
was the motor for increased discipline in society. We could not mention discipline
without considering the contribution of Michel Foucault who provided a
different but equally challenging view of the relationship between crime,
knowledge and power.
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975) examined power in relationship to
both knowledge and the physical body, focusing on what he saw as the coercive
technologies of control over it. He argued that institutions such as the
army, the factory and the school disciplined bodies thorough surveillance
HISTORY & CRIME
techniques (either real or merely assumed to exist). He mapped the emergence
of a disciplinary society and its new articulation of power by analyzing
Jeremy Bentham’s infamous prison design, the Panopticon (see Chapter 7 and
Chapter 8).
Somehow these histories – ‘Albion’s Fatal Tree’ (1975), ‘Whigs and Hunters’
(1975), ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1977) – suited the times. However, the ideological
direction that crime history had been thrust in had tended to limit the horizon. For
example, the decline of the customary world was blamed on the industrial organization
of labour and the increasing power of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
disciplinary institutions, but few were interested in empirical studies of factory
discipline (aside from Thompson’s 1967 article). Foucault’s work was criticized
for lacking not only a gender perspective, but also much of the empirical evidence
that could support the theoretical model. Whilst some types of crime
(poaching, workplace theft) and some punishment types (capital punishment,
prison designs) had received considerable attention, the everyday offences –
property offences, interpersonal violence, low-level nuisances – had been
ignored. The daily traffic of magistrates courts (which dealt with virtually all
offenders then as now) seemed to have been ignored. However, at the end of the
twentieth century, the idea of crime history caught the wind.
It would be reasonable to speak of an explosion of crime history in the 1990s
and the 2000s. A cohort of Ph.D students in the 1990s produced detailed empirical
studies of crime and policing in various towns and cities across Britain. To
these were added important studies of juvenile offending (Shore, 1999), policing
in Victorian towns (Taylor, 2002), gender and victimisation (D’Cruze, 1998), gangs
(Davies, 1998), interpersonal violence (Wood, 2004) and the criminal justice system
(King, 2000). We have limited ourselves to a small indicative list, and the
fact that we have left out references to a huge number of important works
merely supports our point that the field has expanded so dramatically. Modern
crime problems also seemed to inspire historical research. The recent concern
over predatory paedophiles must surely have provoked some to investigate the
past (Brown and Barratt, 2002; Jackson, 2000). If the evidence of piles of books
and hundreds of crime history articles are anything to go by, there is therefore
no reason to think that interest in crime history will subside over the next few
decades.
Crime historians have now begun to define themselves and the boundaries of
their subject. Reviews of the field have been published – three editions of Clive
Emsley’s Crime and Society in England 1750–1900 have appeared between 1986
and 2004 – and they have been joined by Taylor (1998), Rawlings (1999) and
Godfrey and Lawrence (2005). How the processes of defining the subject and the
topics within it affect the growing relationship between crime history and criminology
remains to be seen, and is indeed the focus of the next section of this
chapter.
18
Overlap, collision or convergence?
In the previous two sections we have produced a chronological categorization of
crime history and criminology. We suggest in this section that the development
of crime history and of criminology have intertwined significantly in recent
years. We hope to show now that crime history is part of a living and vital criminological
tradition which presents historical data along with, not to prove or
support or challenge, modern research. We therefore place historical enquiry on
an equal footing with social scientific research.
It seems to us that crime history and criminology have now come to terms with
each other, and are now creating their own history of interaction. For example, it
does not make much sense to classify John Lea’s work as criminological or historical,
as they are so closely interwoven in his study of crime and modernity
(2002). The same could, quite obviously, be said for Garland’s Punishment and
Welfare (1985) and other books (Sim, 1990; and Loader and Mulcahy, 2003, for
example). Pearson’s (1983) study of cyclical fears of youth crime and ‘hooliganism’
weaves together historical evidence to debunk the myth of the British
Golden Age in a book which is read equally by historians and criminologists:
This book aims to cast some old light on new problems. It is about street
crime and violence. But it is also about myth and tradition: the myth of the
‘British way of life’ according to which, after centuries of domestic peace,
the streets of Britain have been suddenly plunged into an unnatural state
of disorder that betrays the stable traditions of the past. What I hope to
show, by contrast, is that real traditions are quite different: that for generations
Britain has been plagued by the same fears and problems as today;
and that this is something which should require us to reassess the shape
of our present difficulties and the prospects for the future… But the
English have been blaming their violence on someone else for a century or
more, and in the past street crime and disorderly conduct have been
foisted on to any number of alien influences – ‘street Arabs’, ‘hot-blooded’
ruffians, the ‘offscouring of the Continent’, discharged Foreign Legionnaires,
‘Americanised television violence’, and so on – with a particularly fixed tradition
of groaning English fears about Americanisation which stretches
back to the mid-nineteenth century as part of this effort to uphold the illusion
of a peaceful inheritance in which violence is entirely foreign to the
English national character. Indeed, it is wonderfully apt that in a key
moment of this tradition, when late Victorian London christened its own
unruly offspring… an ‘Irish’ name was chosen, providing the key term in
the discourse: hooligan. (Pearson 1983: ix–xi)
Without historical perspective Jock Young could not achieve his aim to trace
‘the rapid unravelling of the social fabric of the industrialized world in the last
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HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
HISTORY & CRIME
third of the twentieth century, charting the rise of individualism and of demands
for social equality which emerged on the back of the market forces that have permeated
and transformed every nook and cranny of social life. It notes the slow
but steady erosion of deference whether it is in politics, in public life, in the classroom
or in the family’ (Young, 1999: vi). Nor would John Pratt’s study of social
and penal policy make much sense without historical data: ‘dangerousness, as it
were, is a concept of risk and its strategies of management found their way into
the social fabric of the late nineteenth century. From that time onwards, dangerousness
has been given a continuous momentum by the fears and anxieties attendant
upon the conditions of modern life’ (Pratt, 1997: 6). A last example is
Godfrey et al.’s (2007) exploration of the impact of structural factors experienced
at individual level, particularly employment opportunities and relationshipformation,
to desistence from offending. They use historical data sets running over
long periods of time and criminological theory to try to piece together the lives of
offenders with results they hope are relevant to social policy-makers today:
Naturally, we were constrained to considering only those factors that we
had access to data about, and these, of course, were ‘social’ (rather than
psychological or psychosocial) in nature. Marriage and having children, as
modern commentators have found, appear to act as mechanisms for
reforming men who wish to please or win approval from their spouses or
who generally accept the responsibility that parenthood brings. We suggested
that in times when gender inequalities are less pronounced than
they were in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, females are
able to exert (willingly or otherwise) a greater degree of control over their
boyfriends and husbands (and for that matter, maybe over their fathers
and brothers too). However, our data led us to conclude that because the
nature of marriage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was
different to its modern meaning, the impact it had on male behaviour was
not so strong, not so persuasive…
…we seek to draw lessons from our studies of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries which may be of use to those studying these issues in
the contemporary. But why, first of all, ought criminologists studying desistance
using contemporary data be concerned with what was happening
around 100 years earlier? We think that there are a number of reasons why
they might wish to take an interest in studies such as our own.
…Crewe in 2004, just as we commenced our fieldwork, was in some
respects little different from Crewe in 1904. The railway is still an important
part of ‘what’ Crewe was (even if it had been severely cut back in the
1990s). The Works are, along with Rolls-Royce/Bentley, a major employer
(although with a much reduced number of employees), and Crewe is still a
major hub for train travel in the North West and along the west coast main
line from London to Glasgow. There is still a sizeable locomotive depot to
20
the south of Crewe station and a large set of sidings further south still.
Much of the housing stock is still Victorian terraces, although this too is
changing as new houses are built to meet local housing needs. Many people
in Crewe live and work there or in the immediately surrounding area and
there are still parts of Crewe where crime appears more likely to occur, and
still places where it is less likely to occur – and these regularities appear to
have changed little over 100 years or so. Many of the buildings built by or
at the time of the Works’ ascendancy are still standing (the market, Lyceum
theatre, and Town Hall, for example). On the other hand, it is a very different
place. There are fewer jobs related to the locomotive building industry,
fewer public houses, less rented accommodation, more police officers, a
university campus and a host of other social changes.
…These changes help us to make sense of crime and offending as part of
a social process as well as simply the outcome of a series of individual
choices. Societies change, and ‘change’ at that level is often about change
in structural factors foremost and individual-level change which follows it.
As societies change they reveal continuities and discontinuities which can
help us to make sense of the processes at play when individuals desist from
criminality. This is not to suggest that we ought to exclude from our consideration
all individual-level processes, but rather that when we are able to
explore processes of desistance over 100 years ago, it is inevitably the
structural factors which will draw our focus. (Godfrey et al., 2007)
Therefore, society is, one could state, always part way through one kind of structural
change or other, or more usually a plethora of simultaneous structural
changes. Consequently, perspective helps to clarify and monitor the direction as
well as the dimensions of ‘change’. Godfrey et al.’s use of criminological theory
and historical data will hopefully become part of a larger collection of studies
and publications that take a similar line. Time will tell.
Summary
We have, in this chapter, outlined the development of crime history and criminology.
Although they have experienced different intellectual forces, somewhat
but not wholly different methodologies, and been preoccupied with different
forms of criminality and formations of social order at times, it is clear that the
disciplines have grown closer together. Whether the subjects approached in this
book (see Chapters 3 to 8) should properly be situated within a ‘history’ or
‘criminology’ book is an interesting but ultimately fruitless enquiry. Indeed we
have asserted that some recent studies of crime cannot be solely categorized as
criminology or history, the extent of convergence is that great. That situation,
21
HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’
HISTORY & CRIME
22
we believe, will become more and more common, as seems to be the wish of
both historians and criminologists. Perhaps the last word should go to Gary
Lafree in his 2006 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology:
I argue that our field would be strengthened by expanding the domain of
criminology in five directions: 1) by providing more emphasis on historical
data and analysis, 2) by broadening the scope of emotions we test for
among offenders, 3) by doing more cross-national comparative analysis,
4) by bringing situational variables into our research, and 5) by making
criminology more interdisciplinary. (Lafree, 2007)
We could not agree more.
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 What have been the main developments in criminological theory from the eighteenth to
twentieth centuries?
2 How has crime history developed from the Second World War to the twenty-first century?
3 How and in what ways have the two disciplines grown closer together?
4 What are the future possibilities for historically informed criminology and criminologically
informed history?
FURTHER READING
Emsley, C. (2005) Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900, 3rd edition, Longman: Harlow.
Garland, D. (1985) ‘The Criminal and His Science. A Critical Account of the Formation
of Criminology at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, British Journal of Criminology,
25(2): 109–37.
Godfrey B. and Lawrence, P. (2005) Crime and Justice 1750–1950, Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Rock, P. (1988) A History of British Criminology, Clarendon Press: Oxford.
Rock, P. (2003) ‘Sociological theories of crime’, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner, The
Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press: Oxford, pp. 51–83.
Notes
1 Where once one would struggle to find a course containing a history of crime element, it is now
extremely common for criminal justice and criminology courses to include modules on crime
history or the history of deviance, as well as on the foundations of criminology itself. History
degree courses too, even when not specifically addressing the issue of crime, usually include modules
on large-scale disorders (industrial disputes and labour relations; food riots and the economy;
political movements which were heavily policed, and so on).
2 It is not our intention to describe a complete history of criminology from early developments
through scientific criminology, to post-modern criminology. A visit to any academic bookshop will
reveal many textbooks which give adequate attention to the history of criminology.
3 For a more fulsome description of the contributions made to the discipline by proto-criminologists,
see Mannheim, 1960; Fattah, 1997; and Garland, 2002.
4 The existence of such widely held ideas about a criminal class should not be taken to mean that
such a ‘class’ ever actually existed. In fact, most historians would now argue, as Bailey (1993: 246)
does, that ‘whatever Victorians thought, very few Victorian criminals were full-time “professionals”’.
Emsley (2005: 177) agrees that, ‘the more historians probe the reality of such a class, the more
it is revealed to be spurious’. Rather than the bulk of crime being committed by small, professional
gangs, it is far more probable that most crimes were committed by ordinary working people who
needed to supplement their paltry wages. It is also unlikely that most offenders were culturally or
socially very different from other members of the working class. See Chapter 4 for a greater understanding
of ideas on the ‘criminal class’.
5 Although mainly associated with the 1880s and 1890s, the idea of an unproductive ‘social problem
group’ which included the mentally ill, the criminally divergent and the physically disabled actually
continued in one form or another up until the Second World War. For example, the Wood
Committee on Mental Deficiency concluded in 1929 that, while ‘low grade defectives’ (defined as
idiots and imbeciles) were evenly distributed throughout society, what it termed the ‘higher-grade
feeble minded’ were concentrated at the bottom of society, in a ‘social problem group’ clearly distinct
from the bulk of the working class (Macnicol, 1987: 302).
23
HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY AND ‘HISTORICAL CRIMINOLOGY’

THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
25
3
The History of
Criminal Statistics
Chapter Contents
Different sorts of crime 27
The birth of criminal statistics 28
‘Cuffing’: police efforts to conceal crime rates 31
Ways of looking at statistics: positivist,
interactionist and pessimist 35
Statistics that measure ‘labelling’ 39
Statistics and spin 40
Victim surveys: a new departure 42
Summary 48
Study questions 49
Further reading 49
OVERVIEW
Chapter 3:
• Provides the history of statistical collection of crime data. It asks, which crimes were statistically
recorded and why? The chapter explores how statistics also increasingly came to be
manipulated by a variety of agencies.
• Analyses the nature of British historical criminal statistics. What credence can we place in the
statistics? How much spin was involved in presenting statistics? What part did labelling play
in distorting the crime statistics?
• Reveals problems in interpreting crime data. How can criminologists and historians explain
what the statistics ‘mean’? We consider positivist, interactionist and pessimistic approaches
towards criminal statistics.
• Concludes by examining how and why past debates about criminal statistics continue to hold
their relevance today.
KEY TERMS
criminal statistics positivism pessimism
crime trends interactionism
Many of the most important questions in historical criminology are quantitative.
Is crime, as an indicator of wider social problems, on the rise? Did crime, particularly
violent crime, decline during the nineteenth century, and is it rising
now? Have the aggregated characteristics of criminality remained the same
throughout history? Just about all the discussion of the state of criminal justice
in the present makes an explicit reference to the past. Almost always this is to
point to a relatively crime- or violence-free past and contrast this to the present
(Pearson, 1983; Hitchens, 2003).. Another thing that many social commentators
have done is to talk about ‘rates’ of crime. Whether they mention actual numbers
or not, they are making claims about the total amount of crime: a measure
that we can only arrive at through adding up lots of discrete incidents to produce
a total. ‘Statistics’, defined as ‘the science of collecting and analysing
numerical data’ (The Concise Oxford Dictionary), are what we end up with when
we aggregate together large numbers of events. Naturally then, there is a constructed
aspect to all statistics. However, for the last 200 years, statistics of
all kinds have been a central element in the way that advanced societies are
26
HISTORY & CRIME
27
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
governed, and the way that political adjustments to that governance have been
advocated and justified. Statistics tend to be taken to be scientific, independent
and therefore accurate.
This chapter will look at the ways that criminal statistics have been defined
and used; both by contemporaries who published them and discussed them, and
later by historians who have tried to see what conclusions can be drawn from
them. It will begin with an overview of the genesis and development of data
about crime and criminality, consider in detail some of the many debates which
crime statistics have engendered, and raise some sceptical questions about the
validity and authenticity of crime statistics.
It is tempting to perceive the history of criminal statistics as one of progress
and growing sophistication, but is this actually the case? From their inception
(which happened in 1805 in the UK), crime statistics have been used to support
specific policy aims, and this chapter will consider the many ways in which the
concerns of those gathering data about crime may have shaped the nature and
reliability of the information collected.
Rather more than many of the other chapters in this book, this one will talk
explicitly about the debates among historians over statistics of crime. These
debates arise from the difficulty in agreeing what the official figures mean, and
what genuine lessons we can learn from them. The main lesson to come out of
these debates between historians is ‘beware’: the official returns certainly do not
give us an obvious and accurate picture of the levels of crime in the past. A few
historians have argued that certain sets of official figures (but not all of them)
can tell us some things about crime rates at some times. Most, though, take the
position that official statistics are most useful for telling us about the activity of
the criminal justice system, rather than the ‘state of crime’. But whatever we
choose to use them for, the more we know about why and how they were collected,
the better our conclusions will be. The use of criminal returns to calculate
‘objective’ crime rates has been, and remains, fraught with difficulty and
only with the relatively recent arrival of large-scale victim report surveys, such
as the British Crime Survey, can a reasonable (though still imperfect) estimate of
real crime rates and trends be made.
Different sorts of crime
In order to understand how crime has been counted in the past, we need to
appreciate that in Britain there were two different ways that suspects could be
dealt with. The first was the simple way, generally reserved for the less serious
crimes, of dealing with them via summary means, through the action of a justice
or justices in a local magistrates’ court which sat daily or weekly. This was quick
HISTORY & CRIME
and cheap, but the penalties that could be handed down were limited. More serious
crime was dealt with ‘on indictment’. The suspect would be held until the
next county Quarter Sessions (where s/he would face a bench of justices), or for
very serious crimes the next county Assize Court. Some crimes, notably assault,
could be tried in either way.
Before the middle of the nineteenth century, there was no system of public
prosecution in England: it was the responsibility of the victim to initiate the law’s
pursuit of the offender, and once they had been caught, to finance a prosecution.
If successful, they would be paid reasonable expenses from public funds, but the
expense of mounting a prosecution naturally deterred many victims from doing
so. Historian Peter King has exhaustively studied the way that the criminal justice
system worked in the eighteenth century, and has come to some startling
conclusions about the proportion of crime that was ever followed up with a prosecution.
Working from diaries and personal papers, he estimated the number of
times that victims of theft (a serious crime with harsh penalties, but one which was
difficult and expensive to prosecute) ever reported the crime to the authorities, and
pursued their suspects through the courts. He concluded that fewer than 1 in 20
(5%) of thefts resulted in a prosecution (King, 2000). This is just one example of
what has become notorious as the ‘dark figure’ of unknown crime, a problem
which has stalked crime statistics since their inception.
The birth of criminal statistics
The word ‘statistics’ first appeared in the late eighteenth century, referring to
knowledge used to improve the running of the state (Hoppit, 1996: 517). Its
modern meaning, of specifically numerical knowledge, developed in the early
nineteenth century when the first statisticians to apply mathematical techniques
to the analysis of data concentrated initially on crime and criminality. Thus it is
unsurprising that policing, a vitally important exercise of state power, has always
been bound up with statistics. The criteria and forms of collection have changed
many times over the years. Nevertheless, despite the changes, studies of criminal
justice statistics maintain common themes: the ways that counting crimes
has served as a spur to reform of policing and punishment; the ways that statistics
have then been deployed by police forces and prison authorities to justify
their existence; and the way that numerical information has been used within
the criminal justice system as a means of control and supervision of employees
as well as of inmates.
In England and Wales, the first nationally collated set of figures related to
crime was instituted in 1810, when the House of Commons ordered the collection
of details of all those committed to trial for indictable offences: the first run
28
of numbers went back to 1804. Comprehensive statistics of the criminal justice
system in France were published by the Department of Justice from 1827, and
these became the model for Belgium, Sweden, Austria and several German and
US states. These appear to have helped prompt the UK’s Home Office to collect
more information. In 1834 they grouped the offences for which they were
recording committals into six broad categories, which were used until the 1980s:
crimes of violence against the person; non-violent property crime; property
crime involving violence; forgery and offences against the currency; malicious
offences against property (e.g. criminal damage); and miscellaneous crimes. Also
prompted by the French returns in the 1830s, the Belgian statistician Adophe
Quetelet began to combine the collection of information with the advanced
mathematical techniques that could be used to analyse it. Quetelet publicized
the idea of the normal distribution of measurements of natural phenomena
around a mean, as derived from the annual reports of crimes and the courts’
responses to them. He summed this up in a much-quoted phrase:
We can count in advance how many individuals will soil their hands with the
blood of their fellows, how many will be swindlers, how many poisoners,
almost as we can number in advance the births and deaths that will take
place… Here is a budget which we meet with a frightful regularity – it is that
of prisons, convict stations, and the scaffold. (Quetelet, 1831: 80–81 cited
in Radzinowicz, 1965: 1047).
Quetelet’s prominence in the international statistical movement, and the central
place of crime in his analysis, meant that for much of the nineteenth century
it was this movement that shaped the demand for changes in the ways that
crimes were recorded, and the ancillary information that was also gathered.
There was often a greater concern to obtain information that would enable the
emerging science of criminology to identify the environmental predispositions
towards crime, or the ‘criminal type’, than there was attention to the activities
from which these numbers were derived. Nevertheless, it was the demands of
the International Congress of Statisticians which led to the centralization and
publication of police (as distinct from court) statistics in the UK from 1857.
Through the second half of the nineteenth century, successive international
conferences of statisticians and penologists advocated that criminal statistics be
collected on a firmer basis in each state, and on a comparable basis internationally.
This was one reason why in Britain the 1857 format for returns went
beyond the recording of the activity of the criminal justice system. The desire to
define and fix the ‘criminal type’, deriving from the work of the Italian criminologist
Lombroso, found expression in the returns which each police force had
to make, giving the number of thieves, prostitutes and other ‘bad characters’ at
large in their jurisdiction, and the numbers of their haunts. Reflecting the nineteenth
century’s re-discovery of juvenile delinquency, these numbers were
29
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
HISTORY & CRIME
divided into those under and over 16. Although the numbers of miscreants at
large were the basis for many contemporary pronouncements about the extent
of crime, these ‘labelling’ returns of dangerous people and places were the product
of subjective judgements by police officers that varied markedly from place
to place.
Because it appears to be closest to the figure of real crime, and thus the most
accurate guide to the state of the problem, many commentators throughout the
last two centuries have focused on the number of serious (indictable) crimes
reported to the police. This figure is bound to include some crimes for which
nobody was charged, and thus gives a bigger number, and one closer to ‘real
crime’ than can be derived from the numbers of people actually charged. For the
nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, the crimes that were counted in
the ‘reported crime’ figures were mainly property offences – overwhelmingly
non-violent theft. In the UK, this figure was first compiled nationally in 1857,
and thus it forms what appears to be a very full run of crime rates. However,
this data is notoriously uneven. Analysis of comparable data in large British
cities in the late nineteenth century has shown that changes in the rate of
indictable crime correlate best with changes in the person occupying the office
of Chief Constable (Tobias, 1967: 296–308).
All methods to record statistics about crime and criminals need to confront a
number of fundamental problems. The most basic is that the process of defining
an action in a certain way is not automatic but depends heavily on the discretion
of the relevant witness – be they a police officer or a member of the
public. The police role is unique in the extent to which it gives discretion to the
officer at the bottom of the organization’s hierarchy. One of the ways in which
this discretion is exercised is in the process by which the complexities of social
reality are fitted into one of the many ostensibly watertight legal definitions of
‘crime’ or ‘offence’. This process of labelling is necessarily open to manipulation
in the interests of the individual officer or of the organization to which they
belong. Events can additionally be manipulated; for example, in the 1960s,
British police were loath to arrest perpetrators of domestic violence for assault
charges which were unlikely to be substantiated (Jackson, 2006). On the other
hand, if a drunken participant in a domestic quarrel could be lured outside, they
could then be arrested for being drunk in a public place: an offence for which
no other witnesses were required. This produced an arrest, but no statistical
measure of action taken against violence (Young, 1991).
For national or international comparisons to have any validity, they must be
based on the application of a consistent standard, which is difficult when only
one police force is involved, but even more so when multiple agencies, often with
different immediate operational concerns, is involved. Once the definition of the
action has been arrived at, other questions remain, notably those of multiple
offences. If a number of different offences are committed as part of the same
30
incident, are all counted, or just the most serious? To take one example, which
shows why comparative international studies can be misleading, the US federal
crime recording standards recorded an event that involved a number of different
perpetrators as several different crimes – but if just one of those suspects was
ever brought to justice, the entire event would be labelled as ‘solved’. So should
crimes involving more than one person be enumerated according to the number
of different perpetrators or the number of victims? Counting systems designed to
monitor the internal work of the criminal justice system tend to favour the former,
while the more recent move towards the greater involvement of victims
implies that the latter measurement ought to be the basic building block.
A Home Office Departmental Committee met in 1892 and concluded that the
counting rules regarding reported crime were highly inconsistent between different
police jurisdictions, which cast doubt upon the value of this measure as a
means of comparison. Throughout the twentieth century, each central government
intervention in Britain was designed to impose comparability by tightening up the
counting rules. Inevitably, all the moves in this direction – each one accompanied
by expressions of confidence in the resulting figures – had the effect of raising the
‘official’ crime rate. Another factor which may have led to an increased propensity
to report crime is the rise of the domestic insurance business from the 1930s
onwards. Insurance companies will only pay out if a crime has been logged with
the police. In addition to the increase in the rate of indictable (serious) offences, as
proportionally more resources were allocated to the criminal justice system, police
had time to record more minor crimes. This was encouraged in part by the emerging
disciplines of probation and social work, which created minor punishments for
some offences and thus had the effect of drawing into the criminal justice system
events which would previously have been regarded as too trivial.
‘Cuffing’: police efforts to conceal crime rates
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in most advanced countries, rates of
reported crime were very low by modern standards. Perhaps low reported rates
were produced by low crime rates, but another explanation is an official unwillingness
(largely on the part of police forces) to record crimes. In these countries,
the rise in official crime rates that began in the second quarter of the twentieth
century was in part a consequence of more ‘honest’ recording procedures. In
some jurisdictions, notably the USSR, official crime rates were kept at a low
level by dint of more overt official fiat. Despite their presumed position as the
measurement closest to the figure of ‘real crime’, the figures for serious crimes
reported to the police are so problematic as to be unusable as a guide to the
number of crimes committed.
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Let us consider one aspect of this process – the historic reluctance of British
police to record crimes, in order to produce a reassuringly high clear-up rate. In
the 1960s and 1970s, Malcolm Young worked in the Criminal Investigation
Department (CID) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne City Police. While a policeman he
studied anthropology, and, after retiring from the police as a senior detective,
used his anthropological training to analyse his career. One aspect of CID work
which he saw as very important was the fact that detectives are judged on their
‘clear-up’ rates – the proportion of officially reported crimes on their patch which
are solved in one way or another. A detective’s working life was thus a constant
battle to get results on paper which will satisfy the force’s statistical office.
There were a number of processes that could be used to construct a high
clear-up rate. These involved bureaucratic manoeuvres such as recording an
incident as one offence if nobody was arrested for it, but as several different
offences if they had ‘a body’ – a suspect in custody. For example, take the theft
of milk bottles from the door-steps of 50 houses on a street: a minor crime common
in the 1960s. This could be logged as a single crime, or as 50. If there was
a suspect in custody, the detectives would be inclined to count it as 50 separate
solved crimes. If there was no suspect, the detectives would resist attempts to
record it at all, or if necessary write it up as one unsolved crime. At the
extremes, ‘cuffing’ offences involved such practices as burning old report sheets,
or persuading criminals to admit to offences which they may not have committed.
But the key to the process was an extreme reluctance to record reports of
crimes as crimes unless it was clear that they would be cleared up. As Young
puts it in this account of the mid-1950s:
My first instruction on my first day as a cadet on the CID front desk was
given to me by a seasoned detective, who often left me to ‘hold the fort’
for long periods while he adjourned to a nearby pub: ‘remember kid, nothing
is stolen unless I say … everything is “lost”, so send them all downstairs
to lost and found property’ – unless of course there was a possible
‘body’. By such straightforward omissions in recording, the incidence of
‘crime’ was kept artificially low and although the victim still reported the
‘crime’ and saw the particulars written down on a message pad, the lost
property register or some other document, it never became a crime statistic.
How the report was ‘recorded’ was considered immaterial to the
injured person, but it was crucial to the institutional presentation of social
reality. It was simply not something the public needed to know about.
Whether the report was eventually counted as a crime in the annual lists,
or was omitted to present an acceptable level of local villainy was of no
public concern. (Young, 1991: 319)
Later, Young concluded that very little had changed between the start of his
police career and its end in the 1990s. The detection rate – now much lower
32
because counting was more honest – remained the number one test of detectives’
effectiveness, and a key indicator of how the force was perceived in public:
These [Home Office] counting rules have created a growth industry concerned
with counting, measuring and classifying relatively petty and
minor criminal acts, and then presenting them in such a way as to create
the best statistical impression of efficiency... [T]he newly-emergent management
oriented hierarchies in the forces… have found themselves hamstrung
by the cultural strength of the numbers game and the significance
of the detection rates. For this system of counting what policemen do has
such a hold on the culture that it seems impossible to dislodge from its
central place as the primary means of determining practical effectiveness.
(Young, 1991: 267)
Was this practice unique to the 1960s? Hardly: in 1855 the Sheffield Watch
Committee (the police authority of the time) conducted an investigation into the
working of the town’s police force. Among other recommendations, they
ordered that all reports of crime be written up into a book, rather than on loose
sheets (Sheffield Watch Committee Minutes, 1855: 6). It is obvious from this
instruction that they were concerned that reports of some crimes were getting
‘lost’. The effects of cuffing were not confined to English cities either: many ‘low
crime’ rural areas in the UK appear to have attained this status as much through
the deliberate suppression of official awareness of crime as through the repression
of crime itself. In the late nineteenth century, an Assize judge (a senior
judge based in London, who periodically travelled round the country to hear the
most serious criminal cases) arrived in a Welsh court to find that he had no criminals
to try. Such an event was called a ‘maiden Assize’ and the judge was
expected to celebrate it by wearing white gloves. But this judge was not
impressed, and addressed the local grand jury (local landowners who had to vet
all prosecutions for legal accuracy) thus: ‘Gentlemen, I would willingly congratulate
you on the non-existence of crime in your several counties IF it did not
exist, but as I believe it does exist, though, by some means it is not brought
before me, my congratulations must assume a modified form’ (Jones, 1992: 3).
If the tendency of the criminal justice system to suppress the reports of crime
was consistent across time and space, we could allow for it and be confident that
the figures that we had were a constant percentage of ‘real crime’, and thus
still use them as good guides to which areas had high or low crime rates.
Unfortunately, we know that this is not true either. Since records began in the
1850s, Nottinghamshire has historically recorded a high crime rate, and in the
1980s its recorded crime was twice that of its neighbouring counties. In 1985,
criminologists launched a research project to try to find out if this was because
crime was twice as prevalent or not (Bottomley and Pease, 1986: 39–41). First
they conducted a survey of a random sample of the local population, to see what
33
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HISTORY & CRIME
proportion of them had been victims of crime. This was a local version of the
British Crime Survey, which was already in existence on a national basis. The
survey suggested that most categories of crime were higher in Nottinghamshire
than in the rest of the country, but only by 25–30%: not nearly enough to explain
the discrepancy in reported crime. The researchers also analysed the way that
crimes initially came to light in the various counties in the area and discovered
that in Nottinghamshire a quarter of the known crimes were the result of admissions
of guilt by suspects directly to the police. In the neighbouring county of
Leicestershire, less than 5% were identified in this way. Nottinghamshire police,
therefore, were putting much more effort into recording crime which had not
been reported by the public. They also looked at the value of items reported
stolen in Nottinghamshine compared to neighbouring counties, and found
that in that county, 25% of stolen property was valued at less than £1, whilst in
Leicestershire, the proportion was just 5%: the obvious conclusion was that in
Nottinghamshire, minor thefts were recorded more often, whereas in neighbouring
counties, police would not record thefts of items which had – to them –
a trivial worth. The researchers concluded that differing police willingness to
record crime could account for the majority of Nottinghamshire’s apparent
propensity for crime.
Nottinghamshire police clearly set a lower limit on the value of stolen property
which was worth enough to be worth reporting. But the fact that most items
have a monetary value means that this kind of analysis is at least possible in the
case of theft: theft is a crime which is easy to define, the definition of which has
not changed at all in the last few centuries. In this, it is a rarity – most other
crimes have been subject to shifting legal definitions and many are additionally
at the mercy of shifts in social mores and values. This is particularly the case for
crimes of violence.
There is strong evidence that levels of violence which were felt by most
Britons to be acceptable in the early nineteenth century were subject to a successively
harsh clampdown by the forces of law and order over the next century
and a half. This action involved the progressive criminalization of the ‘fair fight’,
the suppression of duelling among the wealthy, and the increasing unwillingness
of the state to overlook (some) domestic violence. Perhaps most importantly, the
right of the head of the household to use ‘reasonable force’ to discipline women,
servants and children came under attack from the law. In the early nineteenth
century any responsible adult was often seen as competent to use force – within
limits – to discipline children misbehaving in public. For example, in 1839 some
respectable inhabitants of Sheffield brought before the magistrates two boys
whom they had caught fighting in the street. The magistrate was not glad of this
business, and said ‘it would have been much better than bringing them before
the Bench [magistrates’ court] had some person taken a stick and given the boys
a sound flogging’ (Williams, 1998: 281).
34
The other end of the shift in attitudes to violence against juveniles was
summed up in 1956. Two police officers in Scotland assaulted a 16-year-old boy
who had been arguing with them. Their reaction would probably have passed
without comment a few decades earlier, but in this case it ended with questions
being asked in Parliament, national publicity about the ‘Thurso Boy’, and a public
inquiry which found the case against the policemen ‘not proven’. By the end
of the 1950s low-level violence by authority figures, which had not even been
seen as criminal at the start of the century, was now identified as a crime, and
increasingly became the subject of critical media and parliamentary debate.
The result of the shift in definitions of violent crimes was summed up by the
Home Office’s chief statistician, the Criminal Registrar, in his 1909 report:
There is no... clear rule, and (it may be said) no uniform practice as to the
degree of violence which makes it proper to prosecute an assault as an
indictable offence... Many of the common assaults and still more of the
assaults on police constables, now disposed of summarily, amount in reality
to malicious wounding, causing grievous bodily harm, or even felonious
wounding, and if they were sent for trial, would go to swell the number of
indictable offences against the person. (Home Office, 1909: 12–13).
So although the offence of ‘assault’ has been recorded and counted for over
200 years in Britain, there is great doubt that this consistent label is referring to
a consistently defined group of events (see Godfrey, 2003: 345).
Ways of looking at statistics: positivist,
interactionist and pessimist
So are all the ‘reported crime’ figures entirely worthless? Are the figures driven
by changing definitions of which activities constitute a breach of the peace, or
cause harm to someone, and which harms are then turned into crimes – a
process known as ‘criming’ by the police? One response is to argue that even if
we assume that under-reporting makes it difficult to draw distinct conclusions
about different areas, we can still get some idea of general national trends from
them. One group of historians has taken such a positivist approach to the figures
for reported crime, holding that, if used with care, some of them can tell us
about the state of crime. The most convincing example of this approach was that
taken by Gatrell and Hadden in their work on the decline of theft and violence
in Britain in the later nineteenth century (Gatrell and Hadden, 1972; Gatrell,
1980). This is one of the very few periods when people writing about crime have
proclaimed that, in general, things are getting better rather than worse (Pike, 1875).
They set out to see if the fall in reported crimes was real or merely a product of
35
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HISTORY & CRIME
the system. First, they examined all the other factors which might be expected
to affect the crime rate. Over this period, a number of developments occurred
which made it likely that crime rates would rise. The number of police
increased, making it easier for members of the public to report crimes. Police
increasingly took on the task of prosecutors, making the process of private prosecution
less of a disincentive, and prosecution costs were reimbursed if the prosecution
was successful. Thus, given all these factors making reporting and
prosecution easier, it would be reasonable to expect reported crimes to rise.
Instead they fell, and thus Gatrell and Hadden concluded that the only explanation
left is that is was a result of a real fall in crime during this period.
As well as drawing conclusions about the overall movement of crime, Gatrell
and Hadden also used criminal statistics in a positivist way to see if any of the
Home Office’s measurements of crime could be correlated with movements in
the business cycle. To do this, they explored whether trends in particular sorts
of crime matched up with economic trends, to test the hypothesis that in times
of hardship, people are more likely to turn to property crime. Conversely, in
times of relative wealth, with more money available to spend on alcohol, we
could expect more crimes of violence and disorder. Sure enough, Gatrell and
Hadden found such a correlation. In this case, whatever the long-term variations
in the proportion of crimes that are recorded, or the variations in reporting
caused by changes over time in police policy, and the difference in practice
between jurisdictions, the underlying influence of the economy on the numbers
of reported crimes was such that it still left a pattern on the figures.
Another group of historians (maybe even the majority of historians of crime)
takes an interactionist approach to criminal justice statistics. The ‘interactionist’
view is that quantitative data can tell us about crime but only through the
medium of changes in the criminal justice system: thus it is better for giving a
picture of the interaction between state institutions and social forces. David
Philips concluded that: ‘Offences cannot be treated as simple entities on their
own, but must be considered in the context of their reciprocal relationship with
the law and law enforcement’ (Philips, 1977: 41–3). So, for example, when reported
instances of property crime rose massively in the mid-twentieth century, an
interactionist perspective would be to state that this might be due to more criminals
stealing goods, but we know that changes in public willingness to report
crime, and police willingness to register it, were so large that we cannot draw
any firm statements about increases in criminality. What we can do is point to
the way that the criminal justice system evolved to cope with many more
offenders, which is an interesting topic in itself.
If we take a close look at one place for which we have data covering arrests
as well as indictments and convictions, we can see the broad picture that
emerges of the activity of the criminal justice system. We have data for all these
measures from Sheffield between 1844 and 1855.
36
The Sheffield figures show that although, in theory, all property crime ought
to have been dealt with on indictment, in practice, a lot of it was dealt with summarily,
without an expensive wait for a higher court to convene. One eighth of
all arrests for property crime culminated in charges for offences like ‘Robbery
in Gardens, &c’; ‘Obtaining Money or Goods by false pretences’; ‘Pawning or
disposing of property illegally’; ‘Embezzlement’; and ‘Frauds’. The characteristic
pattern for this ‘summary robbery’ is of conviction rates which, at 60%, were
very high for summary offences. The majority of property crime (4,928 arrests
in 1844–55) was prosecuted on indictment as ‘larceny’ (the legal term for nonviolent
theft). But although many people were arrested for this crime, many of
them were released by the lower courts without facing trial. It is likely in these
cases that the police or the victim regarded the incident as not serious enough to
justify the considerable expense of a trial. The characteristic pattern here was of
a high discharge rate at petty sessions, and a low rate of committal to later trial.
A very small proportion (205 arrests) were arrested for property crime that was
violent, or potentially so. This was prosecuted under the categories of: ‘Robbery
from the person by force or threat’, ‘Burglary’, and ‘Assaults, with intent to commit
robbery’. Of those arrested, only 37% were discharged by the magistrates in
petty sessions, and the rest were committed for trial on indictment – so those
arrested for violent theft were far less likely to walk free from the initial hearing.
Of those committed for trial in the higher courts however, only 70% were convicted,
so violent theft had a lower conviction rate than those for non-violent
indictable property crime (81%) and summary property crime (87%).
Where does this leave criminal statistics? The problem is that if ‘committals
for indictable offences’ is used to measure crime, it is likely that this is not measuring
changes in the number of crimes committed, but changes in willingness
to prosecute for crime. The practice of convicting people summarily in local
petty sessions courts rather than on indictment in higher courts was made general
in 1855, when an Act of Parliament allowed summary conviction for theft
of items under a certain value. Naturally, this led to the number of prosecuted
thefts shooting up as prosecution became easier – a fact which some subsequent
historians mistook for a crime wave. Before the 1855 Act, about two thirds of
the people arrested for theft were released without charge, and the rest went on
to face trial. Once the Act was passed, the pattern changed, and less than 40%
were released. Instead, a quarter faced trial on indictment for serious theft, and
the rest were convicted by the magistrates in the lower courts (Williams, 2000).
As well as a wider net for crimes of property, we have also seen that more and
more people are drawn into the criminal justice system over the course of the
twentieth century owing to a diminution of the tolerance of the use of violence
as a summary punishment of juveniles by figures in authority.
A third position is a totally pessimistic view towards the statistics, seeing them
only as one ingredient in a debate on crime, and an ingredient which need not
37
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HISTORY & CRIME
have any relationship to reality. This line is taken by Rob Sindall, who has studied
the issue of street robbery in mid-Victorian Britain. He argues that the statistics
are so flawed that the only credible approach to take is:
to view the statistics not as a reflection of a phenomenon but as a phenomenon
in themselves. It was on the criminal statistics, not the actual state of
crime, that both individuals and institutions based their beliefs about the
actual state of crime. Thus to look at the criminal statistics is to look at the
statistics that the Victorians themselves used to gauge the state of crime in
their society. There is no dispute that viewed from this perspective the criminal
statistics are real enough. As the cause of certain reactions, such as
self-protection, increased policing and new legislation, they are immensely
useful in explaining the reactions themselves. The statistics are therefore a
measure, not necessarily of what was happening, but of what people
believed was happening. It was through the knowledge of such statistics,
rather than the observation of criminal acts themselves, that Victorians could
conclude in the 1840s that ‘the progress of wickedness is so much more
rapid than the increase of the numbers of people’ and in the 1890s that, ‘we
have witnessed... a decline in the spirit of lawlessness. (Sindall, 1990: 20)
John Tobias, who also holds this pessimist position, studied the returns of
crimes committed in detail. After analysing the returns of reported crime from
several police force areas, he came to the conclusion that fluctuations in this
measurement were largely random and could not be relied upon to give a picture
of crime. Thus, in order to find out about the general picture of crime in
the nineteenth century, he would ignore all statistics, and instead pay attention
to the written statements of various contemporary commentators, who could be
assumed to know what they were talking about. Tobias was criticized by David
Philips, who pointed out that, in relying on what contemporary observers said
about the nineteenth century, Tobias was not in fact freeing himself from dependence
on the statistics. Philips showed that the Victorian commentators whom
Tobias was relying on for information – politicians, prison governors, social scientists,
civil servants and police officers – were themselves reading and commenting
on criminal statistics, and using these numbers to inform their views
about whether and when crime was rising and falling, and why this might be
the case. Philips argued that rather than take the commentators’ word for it,
modern historians may as well go back to the only data that they had access to.
In looking at the three positions (positivist, interactionist and pessimist), we
have so far deliberately confined ourselves to the figures for ‘reported’ crime. On
the face of it, these look like the most reliable measure of crime, since they are
the ones that are closest to ‘real crime’. But it is important not to mistake this particular
measure for ‘the criminal statistics’ as a whole: in fact, there are many
other measures of activity which we can also use. Many of these are about the
38
activity of the criminal justice system, such as records of arrests, trials, verdicts
and sentences. These are generally reliable, in that they record events which it is
reasonable to suppose took place (although one historian, Howard Taylor, whose
claims will be discussed below, has claimed that they do not even do this).
Other runs of numbers, though, are less immediately reliable. Most of these
concern information about criminals, which is of a different order to information
regarding what the criminal justice system did to them. Two of the most significant
are those dealing with the characteristics of arrested offenders, and the
numbers of offenders or other ‘bad characters’ at large.
Statistics that measure ‘labelling’
In the 1830s, an influential group of public commentators and what we may term
‘early criminologists’ (see Chapter 2) began to investigate the criminal justice system.
The new prisons and the new police were advancing, but so was criminal activity,
which was increasing at an alarming rate. For some, the solution would be found
in the progress of universal primary education: for others what mattered more was
religion. It was as a result of this debate that in 1836 the annual returns of people
committed (sent) to prison was begun. For the first time, this did not merely calculate
the numbers of men and women sentenced for each crime, but included evidence
as to their character: their age, sex, ‘degree of instruction’ (education) and the
number of times that they had been committed previously. This information formed
the basis for a number of competing views about the efficacy – or not – of the
Victorian prison. But as several commentators pointed out, it was far less reliable
than the basic counts had been. Sex was (usually) easy to determine, but age could
be under- or over-stated by offenders who appreciated that the young and the very
old were generally treated more leniently by the courts. ‘Degree of instruction’,
which was largely concerned with whether the inmate could read and/or write, also
depended on the co-operation of the prisoner. As for the information about previous
committals, it was in the prisoner’s interest to conceal these, since repeat offenders
generally received longer sentences. Registers of ‘habitual criminals’ from the late
nineteenth century show that most of them went under one or more aliases, and
before the introduction of fingerprinting at the turn of the century, it was very difficult
to accurately determine the identity of a prisoner, and thus their age and
whether or not they had previous convictions.
There was a similar link between the shape of the crime statistics and contemporary
debates when a national network of police forces was introduced for
the first time by the 1857 Police Act. This will be covered in depth in the next
chapter, but for now we need to understand that one of the factors which precipitated
this legislation was a growing public fear that the numbers of vagrant criminals
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in the country was rising, and that the status quo in policing – whereby some jurisdictions
had reformed their police, and others had not – was leading to criminals
‘migrating’ to under-policed areas. Before 1857, police forces had been financed
entirely from local rates: the central government hence had no hold over them,
and although there was a theoretical requirement that they file quarterly returns
of their activity, few did; and no returns have survived. After this date, though,
they were eligible for a grant for a quarter of their costs from general taxation (in
1873 this went up to a half) and thus central government wanted a statistical
record of the activity that it was funding. A similar mechanism was at work in the
United States, although in this case almost all law enforcement (except the FBI)
was locally financed and controlled until the later twentieth century, which meant
that nationwide police statistics date from comparatively recently. In Britain, what
Parliament, which had voted the money, wanted to hear was how well the various
local police forces were doing. As well as records of arrests and summary convictions,
they also asked for the police to collect annual returns of ‘criminals at
large’. This was divided by gender and into those over and under 16, and into five
categories: known thieves and depredators; receivers of stolen goods; prostitutes;
suspected persons; vagrants and tramps. Also shown were: houses of bad character;
resorts of thieves and prostitutes – public houses, beer shops, and coffee shops;
brothels and houses of ill fame; and tramps’ lodging houses.
Such ‘labelling’ is too susceptible to changing definitions on the part of the
police force to be considered as any reliable reflection of reality. It would have
had to utilize the subjective opinions of many different men and be liable to
change with changes of policy and personnel. This is illustrated by odd jumps
in the statistics from year to year. To take the example of Sheffield, the number
of ‘known thieves and depredators’ under the age of 16 dropped from 25 boys
and 10 girls in 1867 to 4 boys and no girls in 1868, before climbing again to 18
and 9 respectively in 1869. In 1858, 95 ‘receivers of stolen goods’ were living in
17 ‘houses of receivers of stolen goods’. By 1867, 44 were living in 51 houses.
Something had certainly changed, but it is most likely to have been the criteria
used, rather than any ‘actual’ alteration in the number of fences and their residences.
‘Female receivers of stolen goods’ stood at 6 in 1859, 20 in 1860 and 7
in 1861. Tobias and Sindall are certainly right in this particular case: changes in
definition – subjective and unrecorded – can have so much impact as to render
any study of other putative changes impossible.
Statistics and spin
‘Pessimist’ analysis of historical criminal statistics can still offer a useful perspective
on the criminal justice system – asking questions such as: which statistics
40
were collected? How were they aggregated? Why and in what ways were categories
such as ‘Strangers’ and ‘Irish’ separated from the totals? How were the
numbers ‘spun’? The answers to all these questions are important because, as
Superintendent Malcolm Young noted in the 1980s, in the modern era, numbers
are an important measurement of success. New police forces, including the
Metropolitan police, were keen to use numerical measures to bolster their claims
to legitimacy (Reynolds, 1998: 161). For example, from its inception in 1839 the first
reformed police force in Birmingham was unpopular and contentious. It had been
foisted by central government on an unwilling town chiefly to keep an eye on the
radical Chartist National Convention which was meeting in the city. The force took
positive steps to bolster its public image in Birmingham. The police Superintendent
responsible for prosecutions made sure that each week the record of local arrests
and their outcomes was published in the Birmingham Journal, one example of
which is given in Table 3.1.
The Commissioner of the Birmingham Police acknowledged in his reports to his
immediate superior, the Home Secretary, that his primary mission – maintaining
public order in the face of the activity of Chartists in the city – was made easier
by his force’s usefulness in controlling petty and serious crime (Weaver,
1994: 307). The message sent out by the continual presentation of results in the
Birmingham press was a defensive one, designed to show that the police were
active: even if only a few men were committed to trial for serious offences, the
police were doing their part of the job, by bringing large numbers of criminals
up before the magistrates. High numbers were the measure of success, and
hence legitimacy.
In the late 1990s, historian Howard Taylor argued an even more radical (and
to the criminologist, depressing) view of criminal statistics. He claimed that they
were worthless, even as a measure of the effort of the criminal justice system.
So whereas Young had claimed that crime rates and clear-up rates were numbers
produced by police shoe-horning real events into different categories, and
using every bureaucratic means possible to refuse to count some altogether,
41
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
Table 3.1 Returns from Birmingham Police for 23–30 June 1840
Discharged,
prosecutor refusing Reprimanded Summarily Committed
to prosecute Remanded and discharged convicted for trial Total
Felony 16 2 26 9 53
Misdemeanour 5 29 35 69
Drunkenness 1 24 24 49
Vagrancy 4 1 5
Total 22 2 83 60 9 176
Source: Birmingham Journal, 4 July 1840.
HISTORY & CRIME
Taylor claimed that many of them were fictions, plucked out of thin air by police
who were using them to justify their existence. Taylor challenged the idea that
the count of murders is the most reliable of all official indicators of crime. In his
view, the Treasury set a cash limit on the number of (expensive) murder trials
that could be funded annually, and this led to the police forces in Britain
‘rationing’ the number of murder trials to average around 150 per year.
Taylor’s views have received a robust response from historian Robert Morris.
Morris’s riposte mainly concerns the earlier period. While conceding that it is
highly likely that coroner’s courts almost certainly missed a substantial number
of homicides, he shows that Taylor’s accusation that the Treasury capped the
costs of murder trials (and hence their number) is based on a misunderstanding
of the way that British government worked, and in fact no such cap existed. Even
if it had, it is hard to imagine how the 150 or so forces in Britain at the time –
each with a very strong tradition of local independence from the centre – could
have been organized to implement a quota of murders without complaining or
leaving any mark in the historical record. Overall, it seems that until Taylor can
come up with a ‘smoking gun’ – evidence of large-scale and long-term fabrication
of the police returns on crime – his charges must be regarded as ‘not proven’.
Victim surveys: a new departure
With the growth of sociological interest in the issue of crime from the 1960s
onwards, the flawed nature of criminal statistics became increasingly obvious.
The response in Britain was to follow the lead of the US, where a victim survey,
the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) was adopted in 1972, during a
period when the liberal consensus about crime control was being challenged,
and the US Department of Justice was becoming far more active in its relationship
with police forces at the state, city and local level. It involved interviewing
of over 80,000 people twice a year about their experience of crime or that of
their household. In 1982, the British Crime Survey was begun, initially every
two years. To nobody’s great surprise, the pattern that the BCS has revealed is
that even serious offences such as major assaults, robbery and burglary are significantly
under-reported: far more of these take place every year than ever feature
in ‘crimes reported to the police’. Minor offences are still less likely to make
it to the official statistics. But the BCS still does not record every offence that
the official statistics do. At the time of writing, for example, it only records the
victimization of people aged 16 or over, so crimes committed on youths below
this age will not show up on it, although a proportion of them will be reported
and form part of the police-derived figures. This is significant given that in the
early years of the twenty-first century, theft of mobile phones and other items
of personal electronic equipment from juveniles became a widespread problem:
42
the BCS cannot track it at all. In addition, the BCS, as a household survey, cannot
record crimes where the victim is a company or other institution rather than an
individual. Thus it does not track shoplifting and other thefts from business
premises, which between them form a substantial proportion of reported theft.
And it cannot track homicide! Nevertheless, the existence of the BCS after 1982
gives us an important corrective to the official statistics of crime. Historians of
the future are going to find it invaluable.
Before we conclude, let us explore in depth some documentary evidence showing
how contemporaries compiled and viewed criminal statistics. Allowing historical
sources to speak on their own terms can often be the most illuminating form
of historical research. Below is the start of an article by prison reformer Mary
Carpenter. More well-known as a pioneer of the use of reformatories for juvenile
delinquents, here she is challenging the pattern of available criminal statistics.
On the Importance of Statistics to the Reformatory Movement, with
Returns from Female Reformatories, and Remarks on them. By Mary
Carpenter.
Journal of the Statistical Society of London, (Mar., 1857) 20(1): 33–40.
[Based upon a Paper read before Section F.–Economic Science and
Statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at
Cheltenham, August, 1856; with additions.]
The position which Reformatory Schools at present hold with regard to the
State, renders it of the first importance that as much light as possible
should be thrown by statistics on the real numbers of the juvenile criminal
population of the country, and that official returns should be henceforth so
arranged that accurate information may be obtained as to the actual success
or failure of the plans adopted.
The want of such information has led to very serious and alarming apprehensions
relative to the inadequacy of any possible supply of reformatories
to cope with the enormous multitude of young thieves which is supposed
to exist. Reference has been made to criminal returns of convictions,
throughout the country, of young persons under the age of 16, and it has
been imagined that we must make provision for such an annual supply. Two
points have, however, been left out of view: first, that the number of either
commitments or convictions by no means shows the number of criminal
individuals, since many have been committed several times during the year;
and secondly, that according to the old system of imprisonment for juveniles,
the same individual not only would be recommitted two or three times
in the same year, but might remain from year to year until transported, not
only himself swelling the annual list of convicts, but drawing others into his
vortex, and thereby multiplying crime in a fearful ratio; whereas, when the
reformatory system is fully carried out, no young person will be allowed to
be more than a second time convicted, and frequently all who are likely to
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THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
HISTORY & CRIME
be exposed to a second will be removed at the first, and thus each year the
list must be greatly lessened numerically. Not only so, but it has been found
that a deterring influence has already been exerted in those towns where
the Juvenile Offenders’ Act has been carried into active operation. At the
late meeting in Bristol of the National Reformatory Union, an important
communication was made by the chief constable of Berwick, that there had
been considerable diminution in juvenile crime since the Juvenile Offenders’
Act came into operation; and it was stated by the chaplain of the Liverpool
Gaol, ‘that since the Liverpool magistrates began to act with their present
determination of availing themselves of the Youthful Offenders’ Act in all its
provisions, both for the protection of the child and for enforcing the
parental responsibility in every suitable case, a manifest anxiety amongst
the criminal population had been created, and that the number of juveniles
in the gaol, of which he had been for some years chaplain, is less than during
any period within his recollection.’
Carpenter here is using this section of the article to do two things: first, she claims
that new and better statistics need to be collected in order to properly assess the
impact of reformatories. Second, she also draws attention to one of the perennial
problems of any attempt to aggregate events and draw conclusions about people:
what is the number of repeat offenders? If all that is counted is committals, then
100 could be the result of 100 different juveniles each going to prison once, 20
going five times, or many more combinations. The Home Office’s presentation of
criminal statistics, by comparison, offers a very different perspective on the accuracy
and meaning of the figures of crime.
The extract below comes from the preamble to the official Home Office
Criminal Statistics for 1893. This section of the publication was the opportunity
for the Registrar of Criminal Statistics, the senior civil servant in the Home
Office with responsibility for the production of the numbers, to write about
what he considered were the significant features of the mass of figures that
would follow in the returns proper. It also gave him an opportunity to explain
how the compilation of the returns had been changed since the previous year,
especially in ways that brought them closer to international norms.
Introduction to the Criminal Statistics for the year 1893. HMSO:
London, 1895.
1. The INCREASE or DECREASE of CRIME.
The question whether crime is increasing or decreasing has been much
discussed in recent years, and very contradictory inferences have been
drawn from the Criminal and Prison Statistics.
The first step in attempting to arrive at a sound conclusion is to determine
what class of figures can be accepted as a trustworthy index to the amount
44
of crime. No set of figures should be used for this purpose without carefully
examining all the conditions and circumstances or without making due
allowance for influences, other than actual increase or decrease of crime,
which affect the figures; but in some cases the disturbing influences are so
great as to deprive statistics, which at first sight might seem to show the
growth or diminution of criminality, of all value from this point of view.
Thus the total number of convictions on indictment, or of persons tried on
indictment, has often been treated as if it afforded an index to the amount of
crime; but the value of this test has been destroyed by those changes in procedure
introduced by the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, by which a large
but uncertain number of cases that would formerly have been tried on indictment,
are now brought within the jurisdiction of justices in Petty Sessions.
Others again have taken the totals of all convictions, whether on indictment
or on summary procedure, as their guide: forgetting that there are
large classes of cases dealt with summarily which are not really criminal,
and that the number of these is so great as to determine the increase or
decrease of the totals. For instance, the number of convictions under the
Education Acts has risen from 13,662 in 1874 to 50,235 in 1893.
The prison population, another criterion which has often been adopted,
gives even more misleading results. Its rise and fall is affected not only by
the creation of new offences not really of a criminal character, such as
offences under the Education Acts and Vaccination Acts and under county
and borough byelaws, but also, and to a very much greater extent, by the
tendency to impose long or short sentences.
On the whole the best criterion of the amount of criminality is the total, not
of crimes tried on indictment, but of indictable crimes. All serious crimes
are included in the list of indictable offences and none are included that
are not really criminal, except perhaps a few under the head of nuisances
which are too small in number to affect the totals in any appreciable
degree. The great changes in procedure within the last 20 years, which
have so largely affected the number of cases actually tried on indictment,
have not in any way affected the definitions of indictable crimes; and in the
few cases where new indictable offences have been created the necessary
allowances can easily be made.
If we take the total number of indictable offences as the best-general criterion
of the amount of crime, it is immaterial whether the figures we use
be those of offences committed (i.e. reported to the police), of persons
tried; or of convictions: The conclusions to be drawn from them as to the
increase or decrease of crime are substantially the same. The figures
quoted in this Introduction represent the number of persons tried for
indictable offences.
…
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HISTORY & CRIME
[The next section contained a number of tables, each giving the number
tried for various indictable offences between the years 1874 and 1893, and
the proportion that this made of each 100,000 inhabitants.]
…
Summing up these results we arrive at the following conclusions: that during
the 20 years from 1874 to 1893, the number of crimes of violence against the
person has diminished in a very marked degree; and though ‘crimes against
morality’ have apparently increased, the increase is, in part at any rate, due
to the creation of new offences by legislation; that all classes of crimes
against property show a diminution in the actual figures, and a marked
diminution as compared with the population; and, though in the case of larceny
and kindred offences this diminution is complicated by changes of
legal procedure, in the cases of crimes of violence and also in the case of
offences against the currency where there has been no change of procedure,
the diminution is very marked indeed; and that the miscellaneous
offences included in Class VI, with the exception of attempts to commit suicide,
have shown a considerable diminution. On the whole, therefore, there
is good ground to think the decrease in crime, though not so great as it has
often been represented, though by no means comparable for instance to
the decrease in prison population, is nevertheless real and substantial.
Similar results may be obtained in the case of the minor offences, which
are within the ordinary jurisdiction of Courts of Summary Jurisdiction. I do
not propose to extend to them the detailed examination that has been
undertaken with regard to indictable offences, but the following figures
from Table D show the tendency to diminution, particularly under the
heads of assaults, malicious damage and drunkenness.
Proportion of Persons tried per 100,000 inhabitants
1874–78 1879–83 1884–88 1889–93
Assaults 402 320 289 268
Stealing animals, fruit, &c. 19 22 20 13
Malicious damage 97 80 76 65
Vagrancy Acts 121 157 153 14.1
Game Laws offences 52 41 40 30
Drunkenness – – 812 698
Education Acts offences 103 272 218 285
…
4. Crime in RELATION TO AGE AND SEX.
…
46
The proportion of persons convicted on indictment who are women is 13
per cent, of persons convicted summarily for indictable offences, 19 percent.
There appears, therefore, to be a distinct tendency to send for trial
a smaller proportion of women than of men, and the true results as regards
crime can only be obtained by taking in one view all cases whether settled
summarily or sent for trial.
Taking all indictable crimes, it will be found that 82 percent of the persons
convicted are men, against 18 percent of women, but the proportion of
women varies very much in different classes of crime:
Crimes Proportion of women (%)
Violence against the person 11
Crimes against morals 4
Procuring abortion and concealment of birth 91
Child stealing and cruelty to children 70
Burglary 3
Robbery and extortion 10
Crimes against property without violence 19
Malicious injuries to property 15
Forgery 9
Coining, &c. 18
Miscellaneous offences 16
Generally speaking, in crimes involving the use of force, the proportion of
women is smaller. In crimes of violence against the person the proportion
falls, as stated above to 11 percent. Under the head of robbery it is 10 percent;
while in the case of burglary, housebreaking, &c., the proportion of
women is less than 3 percent. On the other hand, in the case of offences
against property without violence, the proportion committed by women
rises to 19 percent. It is much higher under one or two heads, notably larceny
from the person, 27 percent, and receiving stolen goods, 31 percent.
The number of women convicted of forgery is small, only 9 percent; while
under the head of coining and passing counterfeit coin the proportion
rises to 18 percent. Under the head of attempting suicide the proportion
of women is exceptionally large – 27 percent.
…
How far these figures represent the tendency to crime – to acts of dishonesty
and violence – in the two sexes is a question which goes somewhat
beyond the scope of this Introduction. On the one hand the tendency to
treat women more leniently than men – not to prosecute a woman for an
offence for which a man would be prosecuted; not to convict a woman
on evidence on which a man would be sent to prison – may be responsible
for some lowering of the percentage of female criminals. On the other
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THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
HISTORY & CRIME
hand, it has to be borne in mind that women – weaker physically, and having
fewer means of employment – are more likely than men to be driven
to those offences which are due less to criminal instincts than to stress of
circumstances.
As you might expect, positivist ideas dominate this piece: the Registrar is confident
that the numbers collated here are representations of actual crime. But
there is also evidence of an interactionist view – he is aware of changes in counting
rules, and the potential problems with leniency towards women which meant
that the figures for women’s convictions would not stand direct comparison with
those for men’s as a measure of their inherent criminality: thus the figures are
not a picture of crime, but a picture of the interaction between criminals and the
criminal justice system. We would not expect the Registrar to be a pessimist
about the returns, but if we subject them to a ‘pessimist’ analysis, ignoring the
numbers and just looking at them as an ingredient into (and a reflection of) the
debate on criminal justice, then historians and criminologists can gain much from
studying them.
Summary
There are reams of historical criminal statistics: exact numbers, related to identifiable
geographical areas, compiled painstakingly, and analysed minutely. If
only we could simply use them in an uncomplicated and straightforward manner
to answer some of the big questions of criminology. Are we getting more or
less criminal? Why are women far less likely to be criminals? What is the relationship
between crime and social class? Is a high level of crime an inescapable
result of modernity? What we have learned from this chapter, though, is that
there are great limits to the questions that can be answered from criminal statistics.
We can certainly learn a great deal about the nature of the criminal justice
system by adopting an ‘interactionist’ approach to them. If we look at them
in a ‘pessimistic’ way, we can find out about which topics were the live issues
of the day, and learn about the political reasons behind the ways that statistics
were presented. For certain periods and certain very general questions, a ‘positivist’
approach is justified: but overall the most important thing to remember
about the crime statistics is what they cannot tell us.
48
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 Why were criminal and judicial statistics originally compiled, and have those aims changed
now?
2 What can crime statistics tell us about levels of crime, and trends in crime rates?
3 What are the major problems of crime statistics, and how have these problems manifested
themselves or changed over time?
4 How have the three main analytical frameworks (positivistic, interactionist, pessimist)
attempted to make something from crime statistics?
FURTHER READING
Gatrell, V.A.C. (1980) ‘The decline of theft and violence in Victorian and Edwardian England’,
in V.A.C. Gatrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker (eds) Crime and the Law: the social history of
crime in early modern Europe, Europa: London.
Gatrell, V.A.C. and Hadden, T. (1972) ‘Criminal statistics and their interpretation’, in
E.A. Wrigley (ed.) Nineteenth Century Social History: essays in the use of quantitative methods
for the study of social data, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Morris, R.M. (2001) ‘“Lies, Damned Lies, and Criminal Statistics”: Reinterpreting the criminal
statistics in England and Wales’ in Crime, Histoire & Sociétiés/Crime, History & Societies,
5(1): 111–27.
Sindall, R. (1986) ‘The criminal statistics of nineteenth-century cities: a new approach’, in
Urban History Yearbook 1986, pp. 28–36.
Williams, C.A. (2000) ‘Counting Crimes or Counting People: some implications of midnineteenth-
century British police returns’ in Crime, Histoire & Sociétiés/Crime, History &
Societies, 4(2): 77–93.
49
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS

POLICE GOVERNANCE
4
Police Governance –
Enforcement, Discretion,
Professionalism and
Accountability
Chapter Contents
Local control or central authority – modern debates 54
The history of policing and local government 56
The practice of policing 58
Towns and cities 59
Counties 60
The London Metropolitan force 62
Professionalism and centralization 63
The impact of the First World War 64
The decline of local autonomy 66
Continuity in the discussion of police organization 69
Summary 74
Study questions 75
Further reading 75
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HISTORY & CRIME
52
OVERVIEW
Chapter 4:
• Provides an examination of how local control was exerted over the police between 1800 and
1914, and how different systems developed in London, the counties, and the towns and cities
of England.
• Reveals the pressures for centralization after the First World War. It describes the development
of a national officer class and the increasing power of the Home Office which led to
the eclipse of local democracy in 1964.
• Explains how terms such as ‘modernizing’ the police have hidden tensions between democracy
and professionalism in policing for the last two centuries. This chapter outlines some
of the key debates.
• Examines the re-emergence of (some) local control. What lessons does the past hold for the
new systems of local control?
KEY TERMS
governance enforcement professionalism local accountability
In a phrase written in the 1970s, which has been much quoted since (albeit
largely by sociologists), American researcher Egon Bittner defined the police as
‘a mechanism for the distribution of situationally justified force in society’
(Bittner, 1975: 39). However, more recently Johnston and Shearing (2003: 9) have
argued that changes in policing practice have moved it in an increasingly decentralized
and complex direction. Their view is that Bittner’s definition is obsolete,
and rather than think of ‘the police’ as an institution we should pay more attention
the process of ‘policing’, which they define as all ‘programmes for promoting
peace in the face of threats that arise from collective life’. This new theoretical
definition is indeed useful as a way of tracking recent changes in policing, but,
for us, Bittner’s definition still has much mileage in it. For most of the last 200
years, policing has been what the police did, and ‘the police’ were that uniformed
body of men (and from 1914 in the UK, women) whose specific job it
was to enforce the law, protect public order, and defend the state within its borders,
using force if necessary. Even now (2007), despite the growth in policing
activities by various central and local ‘non-police’ state agencies, and an increase
in the number of private security personnel, the vast majority of those who
carry out this function in the UK’s public places are members of the 50 or so
police forces which trace their institution ancestry back 150 or more years.
The contemporary study of policing involves far more than merely attempting
to arrive at the most effective definition for the subject area. There are a large
number of theoretical and practical issues regarding policing which are topics of
concern to researchers and policy-makers. These involve, for example, looking at
gender; which is not just about how police deal with women, but also concerns
how much they are influenced by an ethos of masculinity (Westmarland, 2001).
This has particular relevance following the ongoing discovery of the problem of
domestic violence. There is also a focus on policing and race, which is especially
salient given that the most contentious issues in British policing in the last 30
years have derived from problematic relationships between police and members
of ethnic minority communities (Whitfield, 2004; also see Chapter 6). Since the
defeat of the organized British working class in the 1980s, the question of the
policing of industrial disputes has become less relevant. However, the recent rise
in ‘anti-terrorist’ operations, and their accompanying vast increase in police powers
and surveillance technologies (see Chapter 7), has given new force to the
question of how these can be balanced with political liberties such as freedom of
movement and protest (Waddington, 1994). While these issues are important, the
basic questions of police practice and efficiency also occupy the attention of
many researchers. Effectiveness at fighting crime and disorder, and at allaying
public fear of crime, often expressed through initiatives like neighbourhood
watch and the clamour for more bobbies on the beat, remains central to the
debate over policing (Innes, 2003; Loader and Muclcahy, 2003).
Much of this work of analysis and interpretation of the police’s activity,
though, comes back to the central question of how the police institution fits into
the wider society. How does it respond to public demand, and how does it judge
which public demands are legitimate and which are not? For example, up until
the last decade or so, most British police had a tacit policy of not getting involved
in domestic violence, unless it had reached a highly injurious level (Edwards,
1989). This was not necessarily because they subscribed to a patriarchal ideal
and thought that wife-beating was reasonable. It had as much, if not more, to do
with the extreme difficulty of getting convictions following arrests for domestic
violence, given that the victim hardly ever agreed to give evidence in court.
Convictions are one of the most important measures of police activity, and an
arrest that is unlikely to produce one thus involves a large outlay of time and
effort for a limited result (see Chapter 3). One major recent change in policing
policy is the move towards a culture of arresting the perpetrators of domestic
violence, and of pressing charges even if the victim is opposed to the process.
This is an instance of government (in this case central government) forcing a
change in policing policy which has the effect of limiting the choices that the
individual police officer on the spot can make, using their discretion.
Discretion is one of the most significant aspects of policing, because it is so
important. A police officer responding to an incident has a very wide degree of
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POLICE GOVERNANCE
HISTORY & CRIME
latitude. The law has a broad scope, and this is not merely the product of
present-day emergency and quasi-civil powers, but has always been present,
given the existence of powerful statute laws like the Vagrancy Acts, and common
law arrestable offences such as breach of the peace. The officer has to decide
whether to attempt to defuse a situation and move on, to arrest for a trivial
offence such as a public order offence, or (sometimes) to declare a major incident
and look for evidence that a serious crime has been committed. So, for
almost all the interactions between police and public, policing is inherently difficult
to supervise, and this has always been the case. It is very hard to formulate
a set of rules which will apply to the infinite variety of situations that most
police officers need to deal with. Thus, rather than a complete concentration on
the policy that comes down to police officers from the top, there are a number
of factors that exercise massive influence on how policing is carried out: the
background of police officers and their attitudes, the history of police practice
contained in the organization’s culture, the training programme, and the formal
instructions and rules (Reiner, 1991: 349).
‘Discretion’ works at the level of the individual officer, but it is also important
in the disposition of the force as a whole. This chapter will look at the historical
record to examine the ways that police discretion, operations and powers
have been controlled in Britain. It ought to provide the necessary background
information to any informed discussion about the theory and practice of contemporary
policing.
Local control or central authority – modern debates
In liberal democracies, there is a built-in tension in policing between ‘democratic
control’ and ‘bias’. Few people would disagree with the statement that police
need to be close to the communities they serve in order to carry out their job,
but equally, most would argue that it would be a bad thing for the police to be
merely a tool of some sections (even of a majority) in those communities if it
meant that the law was not fairly enforced. If the police are too closely controlled
by the people, this leaves them open to the charge of ‘politicization’ or
bias, but if not the people, then who should control them?
The British doctrine for much of the twentieth century, zealously repeated by
police and politicians alike, is that police are professionals responsible only to
the law: they are not under the control of one politician or another. Local and
national politicians may be responsible for providing adequate resources for
policing, to be able to set out guidelines for the police, and have the right to
demand reports about police activity (thus making the police ‘accountable’), but
in order to avoid ‘politicization’ they cannot give them day-to-day orders. Perhaps
54
the most eloquent, and certainly the most extreme, exponent of this doctrine
was the journalist Charles Reith, who wrote a series of very influential histories
of the British police in the 1930s and 1940s. He claimed that:
One of the most striking features of the behaviour of the British police is
their success in preventing their dependence on public approval from
interfering with the efficiency of their service to Law, and thus overcoming
what might appear, in theory, to be a fundamental weakness of their organization.
They never forget their dependence on public approval, and they
secure it, not by pandering to the local or temporary demands of a section
of the public at any temporary moment, but by a strict impartiality in their
behaviour, and by providing a consistent service of unbiased support of
laws, and resistance to their breach, regardless of the nature or justness
of the laws. The consistent aloofness of the police from political bias, and
their sustained indifference to any other aspect of a law than its need of
being observed are frequently the cause of temporary embarrassment and
unpopularity, but they are the real foundation of the immense confidence
with which the public regards the police, and on which their value and their
strength depend. (Reith, 1943: 7)
Reith’s eulogies to the acceptability of policing were based on an unstated consensus
view of what it was reasonable and desirable to expect police to do. Thus,
Reith’s ideas had much greater purchase in the 1950s, when the overall level of
social consensus was itself higher. This view of policing as unproblematic adherence
to the law is far less powerful when society (or at least those parts of it with
access to the media) is divided over what police ought to be doing. To take just
one example, the policing of industrial disputes in the 1980s led to controversy
over the way that police forces should be controlled, precisely because there
was no general agreement that this was a proper allocation of police resources.
Writing in the early 1990s, Robert Reiner pointed out:
The bottom line of any controversy about policing is who governs Who
has the power to determine the policies which will actually be implemented?
As policing has become more controversial in the last quartercentury,
so police accountability has become an ever more hotly debated
topic. By the 1980s two clearly polarised camps had developed. (Reiner,
1991: 249)
Before we go into the historical detail of how the way that Britain’s policing
structure evolved, it is worth considering the issues that we will be examining.
There are different forms of power over police. These include the power to:
• set wages and terms and conditions of employment;
• write instructions about the procedures that police must follow;
• determine training programmes;
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HISTORY & CRIME
• hire and fire police – which might extend to selecting merely the chief, the senior officers,
or every recruit;
• distribute police resources geographically, such as by setting patrol patterns; and
• order police to carry out a particular task.
If we look at the history of policing in Britain, we can see that, at various times,
there are many different ways that these powers have been divided up between
police chiefs, central government and local government. Despite all the rhetoric,
there is not really any single ‘British way’ of controlling police. The rest of this
chapter will examine the history of policing in England and Wales1 to show how
the actual way that police were controlled, and the balance of power between
police chiefs, local government and national government, has shifted in the last
150 years. As will be seen, there are periods of stability and periods of rapid
change, each the product of a different combination of circumstances. Although
the overall direction has been to concentrate power in the hands of police officers
and central government at the expense of local government, the last decade has
seen this process go into reverse in some respects. The historical development is
certainly not a story of gradual movement in one direction and for one reason.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, the notion that the police were
overly centralized regained respectability in British political debate. In the 1980s,
the Conservative government reflexively supported police chiefs against their
(often Labour-controlled) police authorities, but this position has now changed.
A comprehensive report commissioned by a Conservative-linked think tank
called Policy Exchange was issued in 2003 (Loveday, 2003). This argued that the
American model of policing – where democratically elected local governments
control the make-up and the policies of the police in their jurisdiction – was one
that the UK ought to adopt. The Conservatives even fought the 2005 General
Election on a platform of electing local police chiefs: a return to a version of the
local democratic structures that had been replaced over 40 years previously.
The history of policing and local government
The earliest police were the parish constables and (in towns only) the local
night watch forces. These were in theory composed of householders who
took it in turns to carry out these duties unpaid. By about 1750, almost all of
the night watch, and many parish constables were no longer householders but
paid substitutes; the watchmen working for a low wage, the parish constables
for fees. Watchmen patrolled a short urban beat, or stood in a kiosk, at night
time only, usually carrying a lantern and a staff, and calling out the time as they
patrolled. The work was steady, but not especially well paid, and in consequence,
while in the main they gave a satisfactory service, the quality of the
56
personnel was sometimes low. Unlike watchmen, parish constables were
almost always literate – in an age when about half of the male population was
not. They rarely patrolled the streets, but instead followed up complaints of
crime. They were ultimately answerable to local justices of the peace, though
they were not closely supervised by them – or, indeed, by anyone. Instead, they
could be sued or fined if they failed to perform their duty adequately; an expensive
and time-consuming process which was rarely invoked. They did not
receive wages, but could claim their expenses, and rewards (sometimes very
large) for prosecuting criminals. The constable could serve warrants, search
premises and arrest suspects, but the initiative in prosecuting serious crime was
almost always taken by the victim.
Constables were close to their communities, which was a source of pride for
most theorists of British government at the time, who also favoured them since
they could not act as agents of any potential oppressive government (Rawlings,
1999: 74). However, this closeness was a problem to many early police reformers,
who argued that because they were embedded in their communities, and
lacked a supervisory structure, constables were unable or unwilling to enforce
unpopular laws, such as those concerning smuggling, poaching and many causes
of disorder such as licensing laws. Not only that, but their essentially amateur
nature meant that many of them were not competent to act against criminals,
and those constables who were full-time were suspected of corruption, since
their dependence on rewards gave them an incentive to ignore minor crimes
and, in some cases, to connive in setting up major ones.
In practice, these criticisms were over-blown, and most of the ‘old police’
system worked well most of the time. Nevertheless, as is well-known, in the
period between 1800 and 1860, new salaried and uniformed police forces
were founded all over Britain. They made a virtue of their ability to prevent
crime and to secure the streets from disorder. It was claimed that they were
professional, in that they applied a constant standard to all members of the
public, without regard to their ability to pay for their services. These new
police organizations had various structures of accountability, but they tended
to follow a standard pattern of organization and activity, which marked a great
break from the system of parish constables. They were assigned to a ‘beat’
which it was their duty to patrol, generally along a set route. Their performance
of this task was supervised by a series of higher ranking officers, each
reporting verbally or (more often) in writing to the one above. They were subject
to military-style discipline, and their training involved drill and marching:
abilities which were useful for intervening in riots and political demonstrations.
No more would British policing largely be in the hands of a mainly amateur
group of responsive individuals who merely reacted to reports of crime:
the ethos of the new police was to prevent crime and disorder by a continual
presence on the streets.
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The practice of policing
For the second half of the nineteenth century and, for most police, the majority
of the twentieth, the way that they did their job was through walking a beat.
This was as likely, or sometimes more likely, to be at night time as in the day,
since it was at night that much property crime – such as theft, robbery and
burglary – took place. The evenings were also the time that there was a risk
of disorder related to drinking and other pastimes. But the main threats to
order happened in daylight, and police were routinely deployed in larger numbers
to control crowds and enforce the law at major public events such as
races and fairs. Although the policeman on the street was legally very powerful,
police authority was limited in private space. This of course meant that
those people (such as the middle classes) who conducted most of their lives in
private space were unlikely to be interfered with by police, whereas those who
were more likely to be found in public, largely from the working classes, felt
the policeman’s presence far more strongly. In the early days of the new police
this conflict over the use of the streets led to extreme opposition by workingclass
people. Perhaps the best known is the case of the Lancashire mill town
of Colne, where:
By April 24, 1840, a flash-point was reached. During the afternoon small
knots of men began to collect in different parts of the town; by sundown
a large crowd numbering several hundreds had congregated. The events
of that evening showed evidence less of a ‘spontaneous’ riot than of real
tactical planning. Every lamp in Colne was put out. At about 9 pm, the
police formed up to clear the streets. One segment of the crowd pretended
to flee ahead of them to the east. At length on a given signal this
group turned ‘and in a disciplined manner’ began to stone those policemen
who had been lured away from the main body. The police, split into
two bodies, were driven from the streets. (Storch, 1975: 80)
Legally powerful in some respects, the policeman was physically and
morally at a disadvantage: especially in rural areas, he was often miles from
aid, and also from supervision. For this reason, many rural forces prohibited
their constables from entering pubs alone: they were forced to observe them
through the window. For although the ‘new’ policeman was in theory a man
apart from the temptations of community life, the dilemma was that he also
needed to be part of that community if he was to have any chance of enforcing
the law on his own.
Perhaps because of their vulnerable position, police tended to apply different
standards to the ‘respectable’. As Carolyn Steedman has found, following her
research into the policing of the Victorian countryside:
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In 1862, just after the Night Poaching Act came into force, the chief constable
of Buckinghamshire ordered his men to exercise ‘extreme caution
and discretion’ in apprehending people, only to approach respectable persons
if they felt ‘assured in their own minds’ that an action could be carried
through. ‘I expressly pointed out,’ said the chief constable of
Cumberland and Westmoreland ‘that the police should be very careful
never to interfere with anybody whom they knew to be a respectable
man… (Steedman, 1984: 149)
In theory, police powers – to prevent obstruction, maintain order, search on
suspicion, and to arrest if evidence was present – were structured in such a way
that it was the poorest Britons who felt their presence the strongest, while
(before the arrival of the motor car) the rich and respectable were more likely
to see them as servants than masters.
Towns and cities
The power of towns to police themselves was re-defined by the 1835 Municipal
Corporations Act which for the first time gave them a legal obligation to set up
a police force under the control of a Watch Committee: but it set no standards
as to the size of the force. Many boroughs took a long time to set up their
forces, but they all did eventually, and some of them (such as Liverpool and
Birmingham) were among the most strongly policed areas in the country. By
the second half of the nineteenth century, the 150-odd boroughs of England
and Wales set great store by controlling their own police force. Watch
Committees were elected annually from the newly elected local council, but
once in place it was the Committee, not the council, who were the police
authority. They had the power to promote, hire and fire any member of the
force, right up to the top, and the local chief (often called a ‘head constable’ or
‘superintendent’) could not fine his men more than one day’s pay without the
watch committee’s involvement. They wrote the rules and regulations for their
force (Williams, 2003).
This system also made the police responsive to the issue of what we would
now call ‘anti-social behaviour’ – low-level disorder. Watch Committee members
could hear of the complaints of their friends or constituents, and pass these on
to the head constable at one of their weekly meetings: he had an obligation to
obey their instructions. Nearly all borough head constables were policemen who
had risen from the ranks and were seen as servants (albeit skilled and necessary)
by the committees. Practically, this meant that local councils had direct control
over how the law over many important local issues was enforced. These included
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60
licensing laws, the regulation of traffic, and the imposition of sexual morality
through the ability to tolerate (or not) brothels.
In 1890 the issue of who was in ultimate charge – policeman or committee –
was tested in Liverpool when a pro-temperance group, the Vigilance Association,
gained a majority on Liverpool city council and hence its Watch Committee.
They ordered the city’s chief constable, William Nott-Bower (a rare example
of an ‘officer-class’ city chief), to close down the city’s brothels, which though
technically illegal had long been tolerated in certain areas. Nott-Bower
protested that this would merely spread the problem of prostitution throughout
the city and lead to more police work; he made this claim based upon the
fact that he was a professional police officer with a better grasp of the priorities
of his job than the Committee. But when the police chief appealed to the
Home Office, they backed the Watch Committee and confirmed that it had
the power to give him detailed orders (Nott-Bower, 1926: 140–146): political
control over-rode professional claims. The policeman was eventually vindicated
when the inhabitants of the areas into which the trade had moved put
enough pressure on the Watch Committee that they tacitly reversed their zerotolerance
policy.
Of course, there were limits to how democratic this system was. The vote in
local elections was limited to rate-paying householders, which meant that the
electorate was overwhelmingly male, and included very few of the working
classes. The councillors themselves had to meet a property qualification, and
this was zealously imposed to keep the radical poor from the council, while
those radicals who did get elected found themselves excluded from Watch
Committees (Williams, 2004). It was perhaps for this reason that, until 1914,
the system of extreme local control was backed up by Whitehall. When questions
over police matters outside London were raised by MPs in Parliament,
Home Secretaries regularly disclaimed all responsibility for them, and merely
advised them to take their complaints to the relevant local police authority;
the correspondence of the Home Office shows that this attitude was replicated
in private.
Counties
In the counties, the first police forces were set up in 1839 when, alarmed by the
threat of Chartism (the radical working-class movement for democratic reform)
the government passed legislation which enabled counties to set up ‘new’ police
forces in their counties, if they so chose. Providing a police force became an
obligation for the counties in 1857.
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In the counties, the police were overseen by a committee of the county quarter
sessions bench of Justices of the Peace. These men were responsible for the
police not because they sat in courts, but because they were the local government.
Since the sixteenth century, each county of England and Wales was
administered by the local Justices of the Peace, who met four or six times a year
to consider local government issues as well as dispense justice in quarter sessions.
As well as policing and judicial matters, Justices were also responsible for
highways, prisons, bridges, asylums and markets. They were overwhelmingly
members of the landowning elite of the county – or at least that subset of it
which felt an obligation of high social rank was to aid in the governance of the
locality. Often, members of parliament would also be active Justices, and some
government ministers tended to act as well: thus the men at the centre of the
police system also had experience of the localities within it (Storch and Philips,
1998: 67). Sometimes, especially in semi-urban areas where there was much
call for their services, there were numbers of Church of England clergymen on
the bench, but these men too were mainly younger sons of landowners, and
shared most if not all of the attitudes of their fellows.
The Justices’ Police Committees were not as active as Watch Committees, and
did not enjoy the same level of legal control. They tended to meet quarterly, and
concerned themselves with providing the necessary money, equipment and property
for their chief constable to run the force efficiently. Their most important
function was to appoint the chief constable, and in some counties even this was
very rarely exercised, since county chiefs were often appointed very young, and
retired or died in office many decades later. The reason that they were appointed
at such as young age was that the vast majority of them were not professional
policemen who had risen through the ranks, but younger sons of the gentry, who
shared their background and pre-occupations with the county bench of justices,
even when they did not serve in their native county. Often they had already had
experience as army officers; very few had specific police experience, and of those
that did, the majority had gained it in the Empire or in Ireland. Within their
forces, county chief constables tended to gain a reputation as autocrats, and it
was they, rather than the police committee, who were responsible for hiring and
firing the subordinate members of their force.
The majority of county policing was done by police dispersed to villages in
their ones and twos, many with only daily or less frequent contact with sergeants
or fellow officers, patrolling lonely rural beats which took in several villages. But
this was not the whole picture: nearly all counties contained some substantial
urban centres which the ‘rural’ force policed, and many (such as Staffordshire,
Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire) had large semi-urban industrial districts
to patrol. So it was in its style and structure of accountability that county
policing displayed the most contrasts with borough policing. This was notable in
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the balance of power between the police authority and the chief constable, but the
factor which linked both types of system was that policing was the responsibility
of local government.
The London Metropolitan force
For nearly all of its life, the London Metropolitan police (the ‘Met’) has been an
exception to the general rule about the way that British police were controlled.
In 1785 the Prime Minister, William Pitt, proposed a single centrally controlled
police force for London. This proposal never went anywhere, chiefly because it
infringed upon the jealously guarded independence of the self-governing City of
London. In the square mile of the City, policing was already relatively effective,
but it was the threat to the City’s political autonomy which mobilized it against
Pitt’s police bill rather than any considerations of policing effectiveness. This
pattern was repeated many times in the course of the transition from ‘old’ to
‘new’ police, outside London as well as within it (Williams, 2000; Paley, 1998:
104). Policing is too important to be considered merely in terms of crime, or
even of broader issues of law and order. In any political system, even one as stable
as that of Great Britain, control over the police is a highly significant exercise
of state power. Local considerations and local politics were always very
important in the eclipsing of the old police.
In 1829, London’s local authorities acquiesced in the creation of a new police
force for the entire capital except for the square mile of the City. The Met controlled
a network of stations across London, from which police constables were
based, the vast majority of them patrolling beats. The ethos of the force was to
prevent crime by virtue of their presence on the streets – although this did not
stop them making numerous arrests. The detective force was non-existent until
1842, and very small after that until the 1870s. Despite this orientation towards
passive uniformed policing, the force was controversial for a number of reasons.
In many parts of London, the parish vestries which had previously run the watch
had created efficient and effective bodies of men: some places were better
patrolled before 1829 than after it. Londoners paid for the Met, but they had no
control at all over the way that the force operated. In establishing its credentials
as a riot-control force, it acquired a reputation for heavy-handedness and brutality.
This view of policing can be seen in the aftermath of the Cold Bath Fields riot of
1833, when an inquest jury decided that owing to the unprovoked attack of the
police on a demonstration, the death of a Constable who was stabbed in the ensuing
fight was ‘justifiable homicide’. The initial years were clearly rocky, but afterwards,
the Met began to gain general acceptance in London.
The Met was then under the control of two (from 1859, one) Commissioners of
police, responsible to the Home Secretary. In London, the Home Secretary was
himself (the first female Home Secretary was appointed in 2007) the police authority.
This state of affairs persisted until 2000, when the Metropolitan Police
Authority was created. This had the same amount of control over the
Commissioner as other provincial police authorities, and marked the end of
the Met’s exceptional situation. Some of the MPA’s members were elected from
the Greater London Authority; others were appointed. Despite this reform, the
Home Secretary still has greater control over the Metropolitan Police than other
forces, reflecting the fact that the Met plays national roles such as combating political
crimes and protecting foreign diplomats.
Professionalism and centralization
The nineteenth century’s structures of policing were the product of a particular
political system, and as that system evolved, so did they. As local government
became more and more democratic, Britain’s ruling elites grew worried that this
might leave radicals or the working classes in control of policing, and took steps to
prevent this. Other pressures for change were less overtly political, and came from
a desire to control crime and disorder better by the compulsory amalgamation of
small forces, and the imposition of a basic regime of central inspection on them.
The very small size of some of the borough forces was seen by many police
reformers as an obstacle to the creation of an integrated national system of
police. Partly this concern was driven by the ‘migration theory’: that criminals
would leave areas where the police force was strong, and instead take refuge
in those areas where it was weak. Hence, weak police forces in one area were
the responsibility of all. A Parliamentary Committee considered this issue in
1853: an extract from the 1853 Report is reprinted at the end of this chapter. In
1854 and 1856 the Home Office’s attempts to pass police bills that limited the
rights of boroughs to control their own police forces were defeated by an
alliance of Watch Committees, who sent down representatives to join their
borough MPs in a mass delegation to the Home Secretary. All but the smallest
boroughs won; the 1857 Act paid a quarter of the costs of ‘efficient’ forces provided
that they policed a population of more than 5,000. This Act also created
the Inspectorate of Constabulary: two (later three, later more) senior police officers
working for the Home Office to check that forces were indeed ‘efficient’.
This, though, was narrowly defined as meeting a certain ratio of police to
population, and reaching an acceptable standard of parade-ground drill. Some
boroughs even decided to ignore the grant altogether, although this attitude
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tended to change from 1874, when the government grant was raised to half of
the costs.
In the counties, a precedent was set in 1888 that would have far-reaching consequences.
The Local Government Act that year took political power away from
the Justices of the Peace (though they remained magistrates in legal cases), and
gave it to elected county councils. But the one power which was not transferred
was that over the police force. The dominant Conservative wing of the Unionist
government overruled the desires of the Liberal Unionists to replicate the democracy
of the cities in the counties. The Prime Minister Lord Salisbury wrote: ‘The
civilization of many English counties is sufficiently backward to make it hazardous
for the Crown to part with power over the police; even if that power should
be looked on as a proper municipal attribute, which I am inclined to doubt’
(Dunbabin, 1963: 250). County police authorities – ‘standing joint committees’ –
were created, with their membership divided between magistrates and elected
members. Given that some of the elected members of almost every county were
upper-class magistrates, this gave the landowners a built-in majority on the police
committees. The crucial point was that for the first time outside London, policing
was no longer defined as just another power of the ordinary institutions of local
government, but instead as something with which democratic local government
could not be trusted.
The impact of the First World War
The First World War brought new responsibilities for police forces and, above
all, for the Home Office. Home Office civil servants, needing to work through
the police, became increasingly concerned that the large number of forces, of
varying sizes and quality, were an imperfect instrument for carrying out their
instructions. Consequently, more centralization and the compulsory amalgamation
of more forces became a top Home Office priority. ‘War is the health of the
state’, and faced with the imperative demands of a war, all states tend to pay
more attention to effectiveness, at the expense of conserving traditions or adhering
to political norms such as an attachment to democratic control. Policing was
just one of many policy areas where the expanded state responsibilities of the
two world wars would set a benchmark for what could be done, and provided
a point for policy-makers and administrators to aim for.
During the war, police wages were frozen at a time of rising inflation, and
although police had many more duties to perform, forces were denuded of men
by the armed services. These developments galvanized the underground police
union into action. This body had arisen in the preceding decade, having emerged
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out of a growing self-consciousness among rank and file police officers, which
first arose in the agitation in the 1880s for an entitlement to a pension, and had
been strengthened by the opposition to often oppressive and arbitrary discipline.
The Union’s first strike in 1918 was short, effective and victorious. The
Home Office promised a pay rise, a review of pay and conditions, and the right
to join a staff association which would negotiate with employers. They did not,
though, recognize the Union as legal, and in 1919 there was another strike,
largely confined to Liverpool and London, over the issue of Union recognition.
This time, the government took a hard line, and sacked all the strikers, never to
reinstate them.
The review produced the Desborough Report, whose conclusions were the
basis of the 1919 Police Act. This unified pay and conditions for police nationally.
Thus it took away from the local police authorities the right to set the
levels of pay for their forces, and also established a national body (the Police
Council). The rank-and-file side of the negotiations was taken by the new staff
association, the Police Federation. The official side of the negotiating body was
co-ordinated by the Home Office, which of course meant that central government
had a lot more power over policing; it also involved the creation for the first time
of an official group of chief constables, who took their own place round the table
for consultations. During the interwar period, the government increasingly began
to pay for ‘common police services’, such as training facilities, the first forensic
science laboratories, and technical collaboration over issues like radio.
By the end of the nineteenth century, county chief constables kept a club in
London for their use, and the borough chiefs also organized annual dinners (on
a less opulent scale) but these relationships between senior officers tended to
be social rather than professional. Over the length of the twentieth century,
however, police chiefs consistently increased their degree of professional
autonomy (Deflem, 2002: 457), which meant that they were increasingly able
to set the policing agenda, usually in alliance with the Home Office, and at the
expense of the power and position of the local police authorities. In the tense
atmosphere of the 1920s, the spectre of Bolshevism and the appearance in local
government of its apparent (to some) shadow, the Labour Party, led to an
increase in political battles between police authorities and their chiefs.
Disputes involving Labour-controlled authorities Monmouthshire and St Helens
were both settled when the Home Office came down against the authority: in
the county by withholding funds, and in the borough by setting up an inquiry
that exonerated the chief constable. The expansion in the ‘security state’ during
the ‘red’ scares of the early 1920s saw an unprecedented level of peacetime
planning for counter-insurgency and maintenance of supplies. The Home
Office took increasing responsibility for producing a class of leaders for police
forces, and thus intervened increasingly in matters of training, promotion and
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66
appointment. The Home Office began to intervene more in the appointment of
chief constables; the Hendon Police College, which had a national impact, was set
up in 1933. By the 1950s Whitehall introduced a policy of refusing to appoint any
chief constable who had only one experience in force; this was clearly designed
to create a more homogenous and professionalized group of senior police officers.
The main new issue which prompted Whitehall to take this line was the rise
of the left, in the shape of the trade unions and their political wing, the Labour
Party. The unions were increasingly militant in the post-war period, and in
response the Home Office became the centre of increasingly sophisticated plans
for emergency powers and counter-insurgency. Not unnaturally, this process
was very difficult to plan without a high degree of centralization. Whitehall
needed to know who to deal with in the provinces, and to know that they were
competent; police forces needed to be able to work together. For the first time
since the 1840s, the organized working class posed a potential threat to the political
control of the state as a whole, rather than merely a threat to public order
in one area or another. One answer to this problem was the development of the
system of mutual aid between forces, so the public order response could be coordinated;
a process that culminated in the use of the central National Reporting
Centre (operated by the Association of Chief Police Officers) during the 1984/85
miners’ strike.
As well as the heightened demands on the police system stemming from
industrial unrest, the Home Office was also worried by the influence of the
Labour Party, which was beginning to take a significant degree of power in many
towns and cities and in a few counties such as Durham. The system of local control
which had been politically unproblematic when Watch Committees could
be controlled by Liberal or Conservative majorities became a threat when it
appeared that they could fall into the hands of Labour politicians who might be
less willing to use them to preserve order against strikers.
The decline of local autonomy
After its failed attempt to bring the borough police forces under its control in
the 1850s, the Home Office left them alone until well into the twentieth century.
But in the new post-war climate, the department’s policy (which was adopted or
followed passively by every successive Home Secretary) was to increase the control
it exercised over the provincial forces. Its initial gambit was to propose that
all small borough forces should be amalgamated with county forces as part of
the overall post-war cuts in public expenditure, but this policy did not pass.
During the 1920s, successive Home Secretaries, anxious to avoid conflict in the
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House of Commons, decided against introducing new legislation to end the independence
of the boroughs. Instead, the Home Office changed tack, and proclaimed
the independence of chief constables through the courts rather than
statute law. The decision by Whitehall to support the authority of the independent
chief constable (both borough and county) was justified by referring to the
doctrine that since the ordinary constable was ultimately responsible to the
law rather than to his superiors, thus the chief constable was also. Local executive
control of the police was therefore portrayed as ‘political’ and hence suspect.
In a speech in November 1928, the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary, Sir
John Anderson, spelt out that: ‘the policeman is nobody’s servant... it is the
Law... which is the policeman’s master’.
Although Anderson claimed that this doctrine was long-standing, it was in
fact innovative. In the period before 1914, the Home Office had made it clear
that in the boroughs at least, the policeman – even the police chief – was the
servant of the Watch Committee. The legal framework which set the situation
up – the 1835 Act with minor later amendments – had not changed. The issue
of who controlled the constable was addressed, though not to everyone’s satisfaction,
in 1930, with the legal verdict in the case of ‘Fisher vs Oldham’. A man
named Fisher was wrongly arrested following incorrect information provided
by the Oldham borough police. He sued Oldham Corporation for damages, on
the basis that the police force was their responsibility (Emsley, 1996: 164). In a
judgement which raised eyebrows even at the time, Lord Justice McCardie
ruled that since an individual police constable took an oath to uphold the law,
the police force as a whole were not the servants of the borough, but of the
Crown, and hence the borough could not be held responsible for their actions.
This ruling cemented Anderson’s view of constabulary independence into law
for the first time. So when Charles Reith wrote the glowing view of the British
police’s subordination to the law alone which was quoted earlier in this chapter,
he was describing a state of affairs that was less than 20 years old.
By establishing this ‘constitutional principle’, and massively enhancing its
role at the centre, the Home Office transformed its powers. T.A. Critchley, a
Home Office civil servant at the time, thought that during this period the police
became more of a national than a local service and:
the prolific ‘advice’ and ‘guidance’ contained in Home Office circulars on
all manner of subjects became a euphemism for ‘direction’; and chief
constables, resentful of any attempt at interference from the outside,
would look to an informal exchange with the Home Office to settle almost
any problem. Thus, for good or ill, the department had worked itself into
a position of exercising great power without formal responsibility.
(Critchley, 1967: 219)
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The introduction of radio and police cars meant that for the first time centralization
could lead to significant improvements in efficiency. Issues such as making
sure that radio frequencies were compatible also provided another reason
for it. During the 1920s, the British police service as a whole became increasingly
pre-occupied with the challenge to its traditional modes of operation
presented by the increasing use of the motor car. More police needed to be
detached on to traffic patrol and enforcement duties, leading to strained relations
with many middle-class motorists who were not happy in their new roles
as the objects of police attention (Emsley 1993). As well as this, criminals threatened
to move faster than police, not least because they could easily cross boundaries
between local forces. In the words of one chief constable, before slum
clearance ‘one knew with some certainty where to look for suspected persons
in relatively circumscribed areas’ (Popkess, 1936: 186).
Although the image of the 1950s is one of social peace and a consensus society,
policing became increasingly contentious in this period. Unease over policing
derived from two main sources: accusations of police incivility and
sometimes excessive violence towards members of the public, and corruption
scandals involving local chiefs and police authorities. The result was a Royal
Commission on the Police, which sat from 1960 to 1962. It had a mandate to
investigate ‘the constitution and function of local police authorities; the status
and accountability of members of police forces, including chief officers of
police; and the relationship of the police and the public and the means of ensuring
that complaints by the public against the police are effectively dealt with’.
In practice though, under heavy influence from the Home Office, the
Commission skated over the question of the relationship with the public and
concentrated on administrative structures. The Home Office agenda from the
outset was clear – the Secretary of State should be made more responsible for
policing outside London. Watch Committees ought to be more like the county police
authorities, and thus exercise far fewer powers. The result was the 1964 Police
Act, which subsumed city forces into counties, and so replicated the weak system
of local accountability found in the county police forces.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, and reaching what many saw as an unpleasant
crescendo in the 1980s, chief constables began to develop a political profile in
their own right, usually but not always associated with the Right of the political
spectrum. Following the urban riots of 1981, several clashed with their police
authorities over how they should be equipped: the chief constables, backed by
the Home Office, favoured the adoption of a more paramilitary style of riot
policing, and although a number of police authorities protested that this was not
their desire, the chief constables’ policies prevailed. Tension increased following
the miners’ strike of 1984/85, which saw a complex pattern of mutual aid between
forces, co-ordinated through ACPO’s National Reporting Centre. The police
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were subject to accusations that they had allowed themselves to be dragged into
supporting the government side of the dispute, rather than merely enforcing the
law. They denied these accusations, but many senior officers felt that being
identified too closely with one political party was not healthy in the long run for
the police.
Many adopted a more nuanced and professional style, moving away from
‘law and order’ rhetoric towards the idea of ‘community policing’, which was
initially made prominent by John Alderson, the chief constable of Devon and
Cornwall police. This idea meant different things to different people, but it was
largely justified in terms of adopting police tactics and forms of organization
which brought the police ‘back’ into close touch with those that they policed.
It tended to be an issue of tactics rather than democratic control. Nevertheless,
a new focus towards basic order maintenance policing and closer contact with
the ‘community’ characterized the 1990s, and informed most recent developments
in policing. In organizational terms, the most striking feature of the
1990s and the early twenty-first century has been the rise of the Basic
Command Unit: this is a police district containing between 100,000 and
300,000 people, and is led by a chief superintendent. The Home Office now collects
statistical data at the level of the BCU rather than the force. In addition,
the Inspectorate of Constabulary can (and does) conduct its inspections at BCU
rather than force level. Thus the old county forces are seeing their preeminence
challenged from above with the increasing power of the Home
Office, and from below by the increasing autonomy of their territorial units.
Alongside this process, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act also brought local government
back into the policing process: at the BCU level, each police force
must now agree to consult representatives of the local authority on the nature
of an annual plan to reduce crime and disorder, and the ‘Crime and Disorder
Reduction Partnership’ provides another line of accountability for the police.
However, unlike that enjoyed by Watch Committees, this accountability does
not concern everything that police forces do, but merely those activities relating
to the fulfilment of the plan.
Continuity in the discussion of police organization
The format of this book is to introduce and compare historical documents, and
below there are excerpts from two documents which illustrate continuity in the
ways that policing has been discussed from the 1850s to the early twenty-first
century. The first is a number of extracts from the proceedings of a Parliamentary
Select Committee which considered the issue of how to reform police in the
HISTORY & CRIME
1850s. The second is an extract from a 2005 report by HM Inspectorate of
Constabulary on the best form of police organization for the twenty-first
century.
The 1853 Select Committee
Second report from the Select Committee on Police Together with the proceedings
of the committee, minutes of evidence and appendix. Ordered by the House
of Commons to be printed, 5 July 1853.
1 (a) Evidence of Willis
Edward Willis was Head Constable (at the time this was the preferred designation
of their police chiefs by many boroughs) of Manchester between 1842 and
1857, and acted under the close supervision of the Watch Committee.
Evidence of Capt Edward Willis, Head Constable of Manchester, 10 June
1853, p. 22, Vol 2.
2902. Supposing they had a separate police and separate districts, taking
Manchester as a separate county, do you think Lancashire and Manchester
could be under the direction of one chief constable? – There is certainly at
present a want of co-operation and a want of union; the police forces know
very little of what each other is doing, and there is very little intercommunication
except when very serious robberies are committed. I think it would
be a benefit to the counties; as most of the thieves reside in large towns,
from whence they go out to commit their depredations.
...
2904. [Chairman.] Is the district round the Manchester police district half
rural and half manufacturing? – Yes.
2905. In the vicinity of large towns, like Manchester, do you think those districts
would be attached to the Manchester district? – I think so.
2906. Do you think it would tend to the prevention of crime? – I think it would.
1 (b) Evidence of McHardy
John McHardy was an officer in the Customs Service when he was recruited by
the county of Essex to set up their force in 1839. Since his force was among the
largest of those founded in this period, and close to London, he became an influential
voice advocating professionalism and hence centralization.
Evidence of J.B.B. McHardy, 27 May 1853, p. 49, Vol 1.
I would propose...that England be divided into four districts...
70
728. [Chairman.] In speaking of four divisions, do you include Wales and
Scotland? – No; I would have one for Wales, and two for Scotland.
729. And only two for England? – Four for England; north, south, east and
west; Wales one, and Scotland two.
730. In proposing the appointment of these inspectors, am I to understand
that you are not in favour of centralization in London? – Decidedly
I am not in favour of entire centralization. I think, for numerous reasons, it
would be anything but advisable; you would lose the great advantage of
local supervision; for every police constable has several superintendents,
particularly with the smaller ratepayers, who are ready to point out any
irregularity.
…
733. You have mentioned the number of policemen in your force; are you
enabled to train recruits thoroughly before entrusting them with the responsibility
of their duties? – No, from the constant demand for constables.
734. By whom is that demand made? – By the public; it is an increasing
demand.
Resolution
This resolution formed a part of the recommendations of the Committee.
Resolved, 6. That the efficiency of all existing Police Forces is materially
impaired by the want of co-operation between the Rural Constabulary and
the Police under the control of the authorities of boroughs, or other local
jurisdictions. That, in order to secure that co-operation which uniformity
can alone afford, Your Committee are of opinion, that the smaller boroughs
should be consolidated with districts or counties for Police purposes,
and that the Police in the larger boroughs should be under a similar
system of management and control to that of the adjoining district or
county, and (where practicable) under the same superintendence, by
which arrangement a considerable saving would be effected in the general
expenditure.
In 2005, HM Inspector of Constabulary Dennis O’Connor (who had in the
course of his career served in the Metropolitan, Kent and Surrey forces), supported
by the staff of HM Inspectorate, reported on the suitability of the organization
of the 43 police forces in England and Wales for the specific functions
of investigating major crimes and terrorism. Like the Select Committee of 1853,
he linked improvements in efficiency and professionalism to centralization.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke initially proposed that many of these forces
should amalgamate swiftly, but these plans proved highly unpopular in most
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HISTORY & CRIME
localities, and when he resigned in 2006 (over a separate issue) his successor
quickly shelved the plans.
The 2005 Inspectorate report
Excerpt from the ‘Executive summary’ (i.e. the recommendations).
Design considerations for restructuring
1.40 The existing 43 force structure is over 30 years old. It matches local
government structures and has emphasised the need to drive down volume
crime and provide local policing, with considerable success, but current
scope and scale now act as constraints to improve protective
services and the economics associated with them. Models of democratic
policing vary between the disaggregated, and layered such as in the
United States or France, to all purpose, integrated bodies, as presently
exist in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
1.41 The practical advantages of integrated units in facilitating intelligence,
operational control and clarity of responsibility are compelling in an
environment of unprecedented uncertainty. This was evidenced in the
ACPO response on police reform discussions in 2004, which showed that
a laminate model, that envisages an integrated approach to policing, was
superior to disaggregated models.
1.42 Community affinity for policing services above the BCU level is also
of value in demonstrating commitment to the needs of wider recognisable
localities; and putting a human, accessible, accountable face on the
imposing institution of policing.
1.43 In creating a structure that is fit for purpose the overall goal should
be the creation of organizations that are large enough to provide a full
suite of sustainable services, yet still small enough to be able to relate to
local communities.
1.44 It would be possible to disaggregate certain functions – giving one
force the role of investigating major crimes for two or three neighbours for
example – but with the possible exception of counter-terrorism, this risks
blurring important lines of accountability at a time when the service instead
needs to take a clear, balanced view of the police mission...
1.45 BCUs are the critical building blocks of both the current structure and
a possible new arrangement. They deliver the vast bulk of everyday policing
services and many are now sufficiently large and have secured coterminosity
such that they can be left largely intact during a move towards
a more streamlined structure.
1.46 Particular design considerations around combinations of forces in
whatever form they take include:
72
• Size – the review indicates minimum size of over 4,000 police officers, but must
be cognisant of the need to design-in resilience and spare capacity.
• Mix of capability – any structural change must take account of the graded capability
of potential ‘partners’ (i.e. forces that could be amalgamated or work
more collaboratively) as indicated through both performance on volume crime
and the Protective Services Review.
• Criminal markets – it is fundamental to understand the underlying criminal markets
and context in which any new entity is to operate.
• Geography – the scale and demography may require a measure of pragmatism in
proposals for change.
• Risk – it is essential that opportunities to reduce risk are maximised by considering
current capability and consolidating to generate new strengths.
• Co-terminosity – it is essential to consider established political and partners’
boundaries.
• Identity – whilst accepting the local focus of public perception, historical and
natural boundaries should be maximised where possible.
...
‘1.60 ...when viewed from the context of the range of challenges and
future threats now facing the service and the communities it polices, the
43 force structure is no longer fit for purpose. In the interests of the efficiency
and effectiveness of policing, it should change. Whilst some
smaller forces do very well, and some larger forces less so, our conclusion
is that below a certain size there simply is not a sufficient critical mass to
provide the necessary sustainable level of protective services that the 21st
century increasingly demands.
61 The position is likely to worsen rather than improve as time progresses.
The costs and professional sophistication needed to provide adequate
standards of protective services will become ever harder to deliver for
smaller forces and we now firmly believe that some reorganisation of
forces and re-configuration of protective services is inescapable.2
The 2005 report was obviously justified by the perceived need to combat terrorism:
what is less obvious is that the 1853 Committee was also influenced by
international issues. Parliamentarians were reflecting wider fears about the
potential threat to social peace posed by soldiers who would be demobilized
after the Crimean War. Anxiety about post-war disorder has been common in
Britain and beyond for centuries. The Select Committee ended up producing a
blueprint for radical centralization of policing, in the shape of the 1855 Police
Bill. An outcry, largely orchestrated by the boroughs that stood to lose their
autonomy, led to its defeat, and to the 1857 Act (described above). There are
significant points of similarity between the two documents. These include the
following:
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POLICE GOVERNANCE
HISTORY & CRIME
74
• The impact or threat of war – policing is hardly ever considered in isolation on its
merits. Almost every other policy area development or crisis can have an impact on,
policing; indeed in may cases, an issue is judged to be significant or not insofar as
it has an impact on policing.
• Big is beautiful – the desire to make things efficient by cutting central costs, to make
them effective by improving communication within the organization, and to make
them powerful by having a large force: the 10% strategic reserve in a force of 10,000
men is enough to control the largest crowd; in a force of 2,000 men, it is not.
• Effectiveness is seen as the most important factor. Others, such as the constitutional
position of the police (which loomed so large in the eighteenth century), are not
referred to, or are referred to as subsidiary factors which ought not stand in the way
of police effectiveness in the fight against crime.
But as well as the similarities, there are significant differences in the context of
each extract:
• The nature of police forces – in the nineteenth century there were very few specialist
roles within the police, aside from a very few detectives. Then, nearly all police
were grouped in similar units, exercising similar skills, which were essentially those of
beat patrol. Now we have a far bigger CID, Special Branch, traffic, traditional foot
patrol, and cars that respond to incidents. Each produces a very different kind of job
and potentially different styles of policing.
• The complexity of organization – in the period covered by the first extract, each area
was policed by only one territorial police force. In the modern day, there is effectively
a two-tier structure, which is acknowledged in the report, consisting of the
forces, and the BCUs beneath them. As we have seen, these are a relatively new
introduction.
Summary
To take us right back to the beginning of this chapter, discretion remains at the
heart of police practice, both for the officer on the beat, and the officer or committee
who is charged with assigning police to beats, and setting procedures
and standards. The problems inherent in squaring the exercise of this discretion
with control in a liberal democracy are perennial in the history of British
police, although over the years they have been addressed (they are inherently
hard to solve) in a variety of different ways. One message from a consideration
of the historical evidence, therefore, is that we cannot consider policing as an
abstract ideal which can be divorced from the social and, above all, political
conditions of the society around it. In order to explain it, then or now, we must
understand the main external forces that act together to shape the nature of the
police institution.
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POLICE GOVERNANCE
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 How did different systems of local control emerge in London, the counties, and the towns
and cities of England between 1800 and 1914?
2 What part did the Home Office play in eclipsing local democracy in 1964?
3 What have been the major barriers to local governance of policing in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries?
4 Does the emergence of community safety offer the possibility of increased local control in
the future?
FURTHER READING
Brogden, M. (1982) The Police: Autonomy and Consent, Academic Press: London.
Emsley, C. (1996) The English Police: a political and social history, 2nd edition, Longman:
Harlow.
Loveday, B. and Reid, A. (2003) Going Local – Who Should Run Britain’s Police? Policy
Exchange: London.
Lustgarten, L. (1986) The Governance of the Police, Sweet & Maxwell: London.
Reiner, R. (1991) Chief Constables: Bobbies, Bosses, or Bureaucrats?, OUP: Oxford.
Wall, D. (1998) The Chief Constables of England and Wales: the socio-legal history of a criminal
justice elite, Ashgate: Aldershot.
Notes
1 The constitutional position was slightly different in Scotland, notably owing to the lower level of
independence of borough forces, and to the existence in Scotland of a separate public prosecutor’s
office (the Procurator Fiscal) which pre-dates the England and Wales Crown Prosecution Service
(established in 1985) by several hundred years. Otherwise, though, the main developments are similar,
although the dates of the relevant Acts are slightly different.
2 O’Connor D. (2005) Closing The Gap: A Review Of The ‘Fitness For Purpose’ Of The Current
Structure Of Policing In England & Wales, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary: London.

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINALITY
77
5
Changing Perceptions
of Criminality
Chapter Contents
Perceptions of crime in the late eighteenth century 81
The ‘criminal classes’ 83
Degeneration and the ‘born criminal’ 87
The twentieth-century ‘social problem group’ 90
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? 93
Summary 98
Study questions 100
Further reading 100
OVERVIEW
Chapter 5:
• Considers contemporary debates about a criminal ‘underclass’ – a hard core of offenders
responsible for a large proportion of all crimes committed.
• Describes the origins of these debates, starting with perceptions of crime in the late eighteenth
century.
• Questions how the concept of a dangerous revolutionary poor became transformed into the
concept of a rising tide of professional criminals in the heart of English society.
• Discusses how, as the nineteenth century progressed, fears about degeneracy caused some to
turn to biological explanations for crime. How did this scientific approach to criminality
inform understandings of the causes of crime – and what is its legacy?
• Asks: What are the differences between contemporary discussions about ‘problem families’
and the ‘ASBO generation’ and historical discussions about criminals and how they were
‘made’? The case studies, extracts of historical documents and the conclusion to this chapter
reveal the close connections between the two sets of debates.
KEY TERMS
criminal class residuum degeneration the ‘underclass’
A perennial debate in the criminal justice field revolves around the question of
‘who commits crime?’. More specifically, the media and the public (as well as
criminologists and politicians) often debate whether there is a particular ‘type’
of person who is predisposed to criminality, and whether these putative individuals
form an identifiable ‘class’ of criminals. One word which is often bandied
loosely about in this connection is the term ‘underclass’, first popularized in the
USA by the journalist Ken Auletta (1982). This rather vague, umbrella term
refers to the notion that an identifiable class of individuals, usually poor, poorly
educated, under-employed, often involved in substance abuse and from ‘broken
homes’, are responsible for a disproportionate amount of criminality and other
forms of anti-social behaviour. Also implicit in the term is the idea that this
‘underclass’ is somehow essentially ‘different’ and ‘separate’ from mainstream
society in both its values and behaviour.
In a speech on 30 May 2001 Tony Blair pledged that New Labour would
‘take further action to focus on the 100,000 most persistent offenders’ who
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HISTORY & CRIME
were ‘responsible for half of all crime’ and ‘the core of the crime problem in
this country’. Of these individuals, he claimed that ‘nearly two thirds are hard
drug users, three quarters are out of work […] more than a third were in care
as children [and] half have no qualifications’ (Young, 2002: 463). While he did
not explicitly use the term ‘underclass’, Blair’s focus (using largely hypothetical
figures) on crime as primarily the pursuit of an identifiable class of lazy,
dissolute, anti-social individuals was clearly based on a long-standing social
preconception.
Jock Young has identified three different variants of the underclass debate. In
one version, the presence of a disaffected underclass is viewed as the end result
of ‘a sort of hydraulic failure of the system to provide jobs’ (Young, 2002: 457).
In the work of theorists such as Wilson (1987), a lack of jobs leads to social and
spatial isolation for many. The alienation that this engenders has the end result
that drug use and petty crime (and other ‘anti-social’ behaviours) became the
norm in deprived areas. In this version of the underclass debate, it is ‘the system’
(primarily late-modern capitalism) which is to blame. In another strand of
debate, typified by works such as Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America (1999),
it is the stigmatization of the employed and the stereotyping of certain socioeconomic
and racial groups as criminogenic which has produced an underclass.
In this radical version of the debate, members of the underclass are again primarily
victims of social injustice.
In the third version of the underclass debate, however, disadvantaged individuals
are blamed for their own lack of motivation and ‘self-exclusion’ from mainstream
society. One of the foremost exponents of this type of thinking has been
Charles Murray, a policy analyst for a conservative American think tank (the
American Enterprise Institute). Murray caused controversy in the early 1980s
when he claimed to have identified a particularly problematic section of the
American working class defined by its anti-social behaviour (1984). He believed
he had distinguished three linked indicators – rising illegitimacy, rising crime
and rising drop-out from the labour force – which defined a ‘separate’ and ‘different’
element at the lower end of the social spectrum. In 1989, and again in
1993, Murray was invited by the Sunday Times to assess the extent to which the
United Kingdom was developing a USA-style ‘underclass’. Here, again, Murray
claimed to have identified an ostensibly ‘new’ and growing element of society
marked by a divergent value-set (1989, 1994). It was here that he located high
levels of crime and criminality, claiming that ‘the habitual criminal is the classic
member of an underclass. He lives off mainstream society without participating
in it’ (1989: 11). In other words, for Murray and others on the right,
members of the ‘underclass’ define themselves as such by their wilfully antisocial
behaviour.
Although he does have his supporters, customarily on the political right,
Murray has been severely criticized on both sides of the Atlantic on grounds of
his methodology and general use of inflammatory language. However, his work
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CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINALITY
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80
still stands as perhaps the most extreme example of a more general trend – the
turning away during the 1980s (in some spheres) from collective explanations of
crime based on economic and environmental factors. Even among criminologists
not involved in the ‘underclass’ debate, there was a marked drift towards analyses
of criminal activity which considered individual ethics. Gottfredson and
Hirschi’s ‘control theory’, for example, noted that ‘criminal acts provide easy or
simple gratification of desires. They provide money without work, sex without
courtship, revenge without court delays’. Thus, for them, it also followed that
‘people lacking in self-control will also tend to pursue immediate pleasures that
are not criminal; they will tend to smoke, drink, use drugs, gamble, have children
out of wedlock and engage in illicit sex’ (1990: 89–90).
However, this chapter is not concerned with the question of whether or not
an identifiable underclass actually exists. Still less is it an attempt to discern
objective causes of crime. What is important here is that an underclass is perceived
by many to exist, and that policy is often formed on the basis of these
perceptions. But just how contemporary is this debate? Is the idea of an ‘underclass’
really the new, startling phenomenon that commentators such as Murray
claim? How do current perceptions and debates over the causes of crime compare
to those of the past? When, in fact, did public concern with the idea that a
specific class of individuals commit most crime arise? In the following extracts,
for example, Murray’s work shows clear parallels with that of Patrick
Colquhoun, a London magistrate writing two centuries earlier.
[I]nevitably, life in lower class communities will continue to degenerate –
more crime, more widespread drug and alcohol addiction, fewer marriages,
more dropout from work, more homelessness, fewer young people
pulling themselves out of the slums, more young people tumbling in.
(Murray, 1999: 114)
[T]he moral principle is totally destroyed among a vast body of the lower
ranks of the People; for wherever prodigality [extravagance], dissipation
[indulgence in vice], or gaming, whether in the Lottery or otherwise, occasions
a want of money, every opportunity is sought to purloin public or private
property. (Colquhoun, 1800: 11)
Despite being separated by a gulf of two centuries, the congruence between the
perceptions of poverty and crime expressed by Patrick Colquhoun and Charles
Murray is striking. Each reveals a focus on the poorer elements of society as the
source and location of much crime and criminality, and as somehow essentially
‘different’ and ‘separate’ from mainstream society. Moreover, for both authors,
the criminality of the poor is not merely a by-product of the environmental
hardships associated with their poverty. Each complicates the issue by linking
both poverty and criminality to a range of other ‘lifestyle’ factors such as personal
morality, ‘dissolution’ and idleness. There are some clear similarities here,
despite the nearly 200 years separating the two authors. However, as with all
historical study, care must be taken not to draw glib conclusions and, in particular,
not to assume that simply because a view pertains at two particular points
in time, it was the same for the whole of the intervening period. What is
required is a consideration of the changing ways in which criminality has been
explained between Colquhoun and Murray.
Perceptions of crime in the late eighteenth century
As V.A.C. Gatrell has noted, ‘for centuries in Britain, stealing from and hurting
other people have been pursuits as common and traditional as drinking and fornicating’
(1990: 243). This continuity does not, however, mean that perceptions of
crime and criminals have always been the same. In fact, if one looks far enough
back into the past, it is possible to encounter some very different perceptions of
criminality. Prior to 1750, before the Industrial Revolution, England was largely
rural and overwhelmingly agricultural. The vast bulk of the population could be
considered ‘poor’; rural communities tended to be places where outsiders could be
easily identified; there was no mass media in the sense in which we use the term
today; and the institutions of law and order were very different to our own (see
Godfrey and Lawrence, 2005). While this certainly did not mean that theft, violence
and murder were rare or unusual occurrences, it did perhaps mean that the
social meaning of crime (the way it was perceived and discussed) was different.
Gatrell has argued that, prior to the late eighteenth century, while elites and
the middle classes may well have worried in passing about lawlessness and ‘the
thieving instincts of the poor’, they were relatively indifferent to crime as a
generic ‘social problem’. Essentially, he argues, prior to about 1780, ‘crime’ as
a subject for public concern and discussion did not really exist. Where the term
was used at all, it was usually in the context of personal depravity. In other
words, there was no public debate about a ‘crime problem’ which was seen to
be worsening or deteriorating and, more importantly for this discussion, ‘the
criminal’ was not yet discerned as ‘a social archetype, symbolic of the nation’s
collective ill-health’ (Gatrell, 1990: 248). Crime was something which might
affect one individually, but was not an issue which the government or the press
might discuss in the abstract. Property-owning elites were generally more exercised
of the threat of revolution and public disorder (particularly in the wake
of the French Revolution of 1789) than by fears of crime.
However, from about 1780 onwards, the threat of crime did gradually become
more of a focus of public concern, and debates about criminality began to be
rehearsed. Crime quickly became a problem associated primarily with the poor.
However, while the poor were readily associated with crime, this was not
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because of their poverty (for example, not because they had to steal to make ends
meet). Poverty itself was widespread and, even at the end of the eighteenth century,
was still accepted as inevitable by most social analysts. Edmund Burke,
writing in 1795, claimed that ‘the labouring classes are only poor, because they
are numerous. Numbers in their nature imply poverty. In a fair distribution
among a vast multitude, none can have much’ (Poynter, 1969: xiv). Rather, the
poor were associated with crime because of their supposed lax personal morality.
For example, Henry Fielding, the novelist and Bow Street magistrate,
believed that the typical robber was ‘too lazy to get his Bread by labour, or too
voluptuous [given to sensory gratification] to content himself with the produce
of that Labour’ (Fielding, 1751: 169). Fielding believed that rich and poor alike
could suffer from poor standards of morality, but that this was only translated
into crime among the poor whose income could not support their vices.
Similarly, Patrick Colquhoun, in his influential treatise, identified ‘the depraved
habits and loose conduct of a great proportion of the lower classes of the people’
as one of the primary causes of crime (Colquhoun, 1800: 3). As he noted:
While in the higher and middle ranks of life a vast portion of Virtue and
Philanthropy is manifested […] it is much to be lamented that, among the
lower classes, a species of profligacy and improvidence prevails, […] To
this source may be traced the great extent and increasing multiplication of
crimes, insensibly generating evils calculated, ultimately, to sap the foundation
of the state. (1800: 618)
Thus, by the start of the nineteenth century, crime was becoming a topic of
public discussion and concern, and an issue which was overwhelmingly associated
with the behaviour of the poor. In understanding this change, it is essential
to consider the wider historical context. Initially, of course, it is important to
recall the immense social and economic developments of the period. From the
late eighteenth century the twin forces of industrialization and urbanization had
generated tremendous wealth for some. However, this transformation had also
entailed vast disruption in the living conditions of much of the population. In
many new urban areas the spread of wage labour and cyclical unemployment,
overcrowding and a lack of social infrastructure meant that the problems of
poverty were glaringly apparent. Economic growth and its attendant benefits
remained extremely unevenly distributed.
Perhaps more importantly, however, these changes in the structure of the
economy were contributing to a decline in traditional, patriarchal views of the
poorer classes. For example, a shift from farm workers as ‘servants in husbandry’,
with the traditional obligations this entailed for employers, to mere
wage labourers within a rural proletariat meant an increasing shift towards a
market driven economy where traditional rights, duties and deference counted
for little. Allied with this, the upheavals caused by rapid urbanization blurred
82
the boundaries of society and contributed to increasingly fluid employment patterns
in towns and cities. Thus, not only did this economic and social turmoil
contribute to harsh living conditions for the bulk of the population (at least until
around 1860), and hence trail crime and popular unrest in its wake, but the
rapid and forced development of new types of social relations clearly led to fears
of a breakdown in morality and the erosion of tradition forms of authority.
Another significant factor in the growth of concerns over crime was the advent
(during the early part of the nineteenth century) of criminal and judicial statistics.
As already discussed in Chapter 2, the growth of statistic collection generally
(and of judicial statistics in particular) appeared to promise, for the first time
ever, the possibility of quantifying crime and identifying ‘types’ of criminals. Of
course, as the discussion in Chapter 2 makes clear, despite Adolphe de Quetelet’s
assertion of the ‘constancy with which the same crimes are annually reproduced
in the same order’, these initial statistics did not necessarily reflect actual levels
of crime but merely the practices and operation of the judicial system (Porter,
1981: 110). However, again, what is important is not the reality but the perception.
The new statistics were believed to be identifying a group of repeat offenders,
and hence public opinion and government policy were shaped accordingly.
Thus, the poor became the focus of many types of anxiety in a rapidly changing
society. On the continent, fears over the ‘dangerous classes’ (the unruly
poor) and their possible involvement in revolutionary activities continued.
However, as Victor Bailey has argued, fear of social unrest was not something
the propertied classes, even in London, worried that much about by the early
nineteenth century. Rather, ‘these years were characterised by the emergence of
the notion (though not yet the phrase) of a “criminal class”’ (Bailey, 1993: 232).
While there were still residual concerns over the gangs of ‘sturdy beggars’
believed to tramp the countryside extorting money by intimidating villagers, it
was the urban poor in particular who came under increasing scrutiny, and it was
primarily in towns and cities that the ‘criminal class’ was judged to reside.
The ‘criminal classes’
Although most prevalent during the 1860s, the notion of a ‘criminal class’ was a
common theme among many mid-nineteenth-century writers. While hard to
define with any precision, the term generally referred to a rather nebulous group
of individuals (not just the poor or the working classes en masse, but rather a subgroup
of these) who made their living from crime. The criminal classes were
those who had largely foresworn the world of labour and immersed themselves
in crime and vice of all kinds. Very often seen to be steeped in criminality from
childhood, it was often claimed that the criminal classes had their own argot (or
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CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINALITY
HISTORY & CRIME
slang language), their own meeting places and their own customs and rituals.
They were thus, in every sense of the word, ‘separate’ from respectable society –
‘the enemies of the human race’ as The Times put it. The Leeds reformer, Thomas
Plint, in his 1851 book Crime in England, described them succinctly thus:
The criminal class live amongst […] the operative [working] classes, whereby
they constitute so many points of vicious contact with those classes – so
many ducts by which the virus of a moral poison circulates through and
around them. They constitute a pestiferous canker [an infectious sore] in the
heart of every locality where they congregate, offending the sight, revolting
the sensibilities, and lowering, more or less, the moral status of all who come
into contact with them. (Cited in Himmelfarb, 1984: 387)
The criminal classes, as portrayed in the middle-class press, had certain key
characteristics. Firstly, they were overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon. As we
have seen, cities were developing very fast during the first half of the nineteenth
century. Often, therefore, their speed of growth outstripped the ability of municipal
governments to provide an adequate infrastructure. Hence sewerage, lighting,
road surfaces and housing stock were all hugely deficient. This made the
new urban environments both threatening and anonymous. As Gareth Stedman
Jones has argued, the poorer districts of cities thus became ‘an immense terra
incognita periodically mapped out by intrepid missionaries and explorers who
catered to an insatiable middle-class demand for travellers’ tales’ (1976: 14).
These vast new agglomerations also appeared to pave the way for the erosion
of ‘personal’ or ‘individual’ social relationships between the classes. Sir Charles
Shaw, a former police chief of Manchester, described the residents of industrial
cities as ‘the debris, which the vast whirlpool of human affairs has deposited
here in one of its eddies, associated, but not united; contiguous, but not connected’
(Lees, 1985: 32). Clearly, the notion of anomie, the breakdown of rules
and norms of expected behaviour during periods of social change (first proposed
by the sociologist Durkheim and later developed by the sociologists Robert Parks
and Robert Merton), was well-known, if as yet unnamed, during the period.
Secondly, the ‘criminal classes’ were closely associated with the lowest end of
the social spectrum. Again, what must be stressed is the notion that it was not
poverty itself which was associated with crime, but rather the poor, who were
held accountable for their own situation. Many believed that it was idleness and
a love of vice which led to poverty. Hence, if the poor then resorted to crime this
was their own fault for ending up poor in the first place. As a Royal Commission
of 1839 concluded:
[W]e have investigated the origin of the great mass of crimes committed for
the sake of property, and we find the whole ascribable to one common
cause, namely the temptations of the profit of a career of depredation, as
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compared with the profits of honest and even well paid industry […] The
notion that any considerable proportion of the crimes against property are
caused by blameless poverty or destitution we find disproved at every step.
Gottfredson and Hirschi’s proposal that criminality is more prevalent among
those with low levels of self-control would thus have found widespread approval
had it been promulgated a century earlier.
A final common theme of middle-class debates on the ‘criminal classes’ was
that of the transmission of deficient values across the generations. John Wade, the
radical journalist, in his well-known Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the
Metropolis claimed that ‘thieves are born such, and it is in their inheritance: they
form a caste of themselves, having their peculiar slang, mode of thinking, habits,
and arts of living’ (1829: 158). Similarly, William Augustus Miles, in the Select
Committee Report on Gaols (1835) noted that ‘there is a youthful Population in
the Metropolis devoted to crime, trained to it from Infancy, adhering to it from
Education and Circumstances […] a Race sui generis different from the rest of
Society, not only in Thoughts, Habits, and Manners, but even in Appearance; possessing,
moreover, a Language exclusively their own’ (cited in Philips, 2003: 91).
Thus, in contemporary terminology, the mid-nineteenth-century criminal
class might be defined as a marginalized segment of the working class, confined
to certain slum areas of major cities, frequently unemployed, given over to drugs
and drink, and often bringing up their children to the same type of life. At a cursory
glance, at least, this description is not a million miles away from that of the
‘underclass’ supposedly ‘discovered’ in Britain and the USA during the 1980s.
Again, it is important to stress that the reality of all this is rather unlikely. As
Bailey has argued ‘whatever the Victorians thought, very few Victorian criminals
were full-time “professionals”’ (1993: 246). Rather, the majority of crimes
were committed by ordinary working people forced to supplement their meagre
income with thefts of food, fuel or clothing. Most offenders were not markedly
different in social or cultural background to the bulk of the ‘honest poor’. That
said, the notion that a marginalized group of the working class was turning away
from the values of mainstream society and devoting itself to crime, idleness and
vice came to have great purchase on the public psyche during the mid-nineteenth
century. Why was this? A number of reasons might be posited.
Some authors have focussed on the idea of ‘moral panic’ as a way of explaining
the mid-century preoccupation with a ‘criminal class’. The idea of moral
panic was first defined by Stanley Cohen as a phenomenon where:
a condition, episode or groups of persons emerges to become defined as a
threat to societal values and interests: its nature is presented in stylised and
stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned
by editors, bishops and other right-thinking people; socially accredited
experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions. (Cohen, 2002: 9)
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Usually implicit in the term is the idea that new legislation is rushed through as
a result of the ‘panic’, which then quickly subsides. A number of historians (for
example, Davis, 1980; Bartrip, 1981, and Sindall, 1987) have investigated the way
in which fears over garotting (a form of violent street robbery) led, in 1862, to
intense media scrutiny and a subsequent change in the law regarding ‘ticket-ofleave
men’. The panic over garotting, initially precipitated by an attack on the
M.P. Hugh Pilkington, who was assaulted on his way from the House of Commons
to the Reform Club, certainly seems to have been ‘one of those episodes in
which public anxieties, especially as expressed and orchestrated by the press
and by government actions, serve to “amplify deviance” and to promote new
measures for its control’ (Davis, 1980: 191).
However, the notion of a ‘moral panic’ is perhaps a little too simplistic to serve
as a satisfactory explanation for a phenomenon as complex as the rise of fears
of a ‘criminal class’. A further development of the theory of moral panic has
been provided by David Philips (1993, 2001, 2003), who has elaborated the
notion of ‘moral entrepreneurship’. For Philips, what is really significant about
moral panics is the way in which they provide opportunities for ‘moral entrepreneurs’
to push for their own political and social agendas. Philips cites
William Augustus Miles as an example. Miles, a ‘self-proclaimed expert’, worked
for various House of Lords Select Committees. While trying to secure permanent
paid government employment for himself he conducted many interviews
with juvenile offenders, police and prison officers. Philips argues that Miles had
‘a horrified fascination with the details of criminals, criminal areas and criminal
life’ and hence sought to fix in his readers’ minds the image of a deceitful and
predatory class who were ‘constantly cheating and robbing the honest public’
(2003: 92). More than this, however, Philips also contends that Miles ‘deliberately’
accentuated the size and threat of the criminal class in order to win support
for his campaign for reform of the policing agencies. Miles had a clear
vested interest in doing this, as he hoped to gain government employment in the
agencies set up as a result of his recommendations.
Certainly, the rise of fears of a criminal class cannot be explained without reference
to key individuals such as Miles (and also Colquhoun, mentioned above).
However, it is also important to consider deeper, underlying reasons for these
fears. Randall McGowen (1990), for instance, has sought to consider the social
functions which narratives of a criminal class served in nineteenth-century
England. He believes that the idea of a criminal class served to displace a general
unease about the chaotic state of the nineteenth-century city, and to transform
it into a specific anxiety. As he notes:
By contrast with the disturbing sight of the urban masses or the dark
reaches of the city, the habitual criminal had a known form […] Amidst all
the uncertainty produced by the idea of crime, its mysterious roots and its
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lurking presence in the heart of the city, nonetheless here at least was
some comfort, for one could recognize the criminal. For all the other fears
associated with crime, it was reassuring to think that one had grasped it,
measured it, figured it out, and could act upon it. (1990: 50)
Thus perhaps the true significance of the notion of a criminal class (and this
holds true for the modern notion of an underclass too) is that it enables criminality
to be defined as the actions of a class of people who commit crimes, not
because of economic hardship or deprivation, but essentially because of weakness
of character. This has the further implication that the remedies for criminality,
therefore, are not to be found in any major economic or social reform,
but in strengthening the agencies of policing, prosecution and punishment.
Hence, avoiding any indictment of society as a whole or of the existing status
quo, the notion of a criminal class meant that the problem of crime ‘was essentially
reduced to one of identifying and isolating that class’ and dealing with it
through the institutions of the police, the courts and the prison (Philips, 2003:
105). However, while the ‘criminal class’ was a useful notion for moral entrepreneurs,
and may have helped the mid-nineteenth-century middle-classes to feel
better about the rapid pace of change within English towns and cities, the concept
was not a static one. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the
advent of new fields of knowledge (particularly criminology, but also psychology
and the pseudo-science of eugenics), new and very different perceptions of
the form and nature of criminality arose.
Degeneration and the ‘born criminal’
During the last third of the nineteenth century, prevalent attitudes towards criminality
began to undergo considerable modification. Individualistic explanations
of poverty and crime (which placed an emphasis on rational choice and the deficient
morality of the working classes) were increasingly being superseded by
more collective theories of degeneration and urban decay. Although most commonly
associated with the work of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso,
Daniel Pick (1989) has demonstrated that the diffuse and ill-defined discourse of
degeneration was a European-wide phenomenon. Originating in the work of the
French doctor Morel on cretinism, degeneration theory focused on the detrimental
effects of modern, urban life (both the effete luxury of the aristocracy,
and the squalid, filthy existence of the poor) on the physical and mental health
of individuals. Adverse environmental conditions not only led individuals
towards physical and mental infirmities, but also predisposed them to criminality
and vice. Moreover, many late nineteenth-century scientists and criminologists
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came to believe that such defects could then become hereditary, leading to an
inexorable decline in the overall health of the nation. As Pick expressed it,
‘degeneration was increasingly seen by medical and other writers not as the
social condition of the poor, but as a self-reproducing force; not the effect but
the cause of crime, destitution and disease’ (1989: 21).
Thus public attention gradually shifted away from the notion of a wily, professional
criminal class to consider the hereditary influences or environmental
factors which shaped the destiny of all those at the very bottom of society.
Typical of this view were the remarks of the social commentator Francis Peek
in the 1880s:
In many dismal alleys and fetid courts of our large towns, the impure and
stagnant air depresses and enervates those who return home, already
exhausted by work […] Many families […] have only one single room, in
which parents and children of all ages and both sexes work, live and sleep.
It is impossible to conceive that children brought up thus can fail to
become unhealthy in body and depraved in mind and morals. (1883: 32)
While the degenerating effects of slum living were seen to affect many of the
poor, particular concern was focused on what came to be called the ‘residuum’
– a term which passed into common usage during the 1880s. The residuum was
made up of all the most unproductive elements at the bottom of society. The
residuum thus included criminals, but also lunatics, alcoholics, habitual
vagrants and long-term paupers. The boundaries between these categories were
both bridged and blurred by the concept of degeneration. All these types of individuals
were believed to be ‘inherently unable to help themselves, because of
biological and physical “degeneracy”’ (Harris, 1995: 67).
It is likely this significant shift in public discourse on the causes of crime was
largely due to the influence of new forms of ‘knowledge’ and ‘expertise’. In the
field of science, to take but one example, the publication of Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species (1859) suggested a biological path of human development
rather than one of ‘divine creation’. Darwin’s exploration of the significance of
hereditary and environmental factors in the sphere of biology implied that such
factors were potentially more important than ‘the will of the individual’ in the
development of society, too. Thus notions of free will and rational choice, which
early ‘moral’ views of crime were based upon, came to be undermined.
Moreover, Darwin’s theory raised the unsettling idea that if the course of human
history was not divinely ordained, then ‘progress’ was not assured. If mankind
could evolve, could it not also ‘degenerate’?
Medical writings, too, and in particular the new discipline of psychiatry, often
seized upon the influence of hereditary factors in causing mental deficiency, and
routinely linked this to criminality. The pioneering psychologist Henry
Maudsley, for example, believed that some individuals were ‘born with such a
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flaw or warp of nature that all the care in the world will not prevent them from
being vicious or criminal, or becoming insane’ (Maudsley, 1873: 76). Similarly,
early criminologists also sought to forge links between modern living, vice and
crime. The ability of the individual to shape his or her destiny was downplayed
and the force of ‘hereditary impulses’ stressed. As Gordon Rylands, one of the
new criminological writers, noted:
Many unfortunate persons have bequeathed to them by their parents morbid
affections of the brain which compel some to homicide, some to suicide,
some to drunkenness and its consequent vicious and degraded
mode of life, reducing others to idiocy or raving madness. In this sad class
of cases it is obvious enough to any one that the criminal should be no less
an object of our deep commiseration than the man who has been seized
by a loathsome and painful disease. (Wiener, 1990: 237)
It can be seen, therefore, that when considering changing representations of
crime and criminals, we must be aware that these were not constructed in a vacuum.
Cultural trends, scientific developments and economic and social changes
all have an impact on the construction of criminality. However, one important
point to note here is that while the causes ascribed to criminality changed considerably
towards the end of the nineteenth century, there had been much less
change in the public’s perception of criminals. New discourses of crime meant
that the topic was discussed using new terminology. Criminality was thus no
longer seen as residing among the ignorant and unrestrained ‘dangerous
classes’, nor among the wily and mysterious ‘criminal class’. By the end of the
nineteenth century, the unhealthy and degenerate ‘residuum’ was the locus of
fears about criminality. However, while the ‘residuum’ was perceived to be
rather smaller than the ‘dangerous classes’ of the start of the century (largely
due to growing faith in the responsibility of the honest working class), and while
the causes attributed to criminality had changed, the persona of the criminal
remained remarkably constant. The ‘crime problem’ was still located among the
urban poor or, more specifically, in a deviant subset of the urban poor.
Crime was closely identified with a deprived class of individuals, living in
unhealthy slum areas, partial to drink and drugs and unable to raise their children
properly. Of course, not all commentators took such a view and even
among those who did this did not preclude sentiments of sympathy. The
Cambridge academic and economist Alfred Marshall argued that:
Those who have been called the Residuum of our large towns have little
opportunity for friendship; they know nothing of the decencies and the
quiet, and very little even of the unity of family life […] No doubt their physical,
mental and moral ill-health is partly due to other causes than poverty:
but this is the chief cause. (Welshman, 2006: 16)
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Nevertheless, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the residuum was seen
by many as the social location of the bulk of criminogenic individuals. The first
half of the twentieth century, however, was one of immense social change for
those at the lower end of the social spectrum. Not only did the upheavals of the
First World War produce dramatic socio-economic transformations, the period
also witnessed the advent of the welfare state, the start of slum clearances and
town planning, and the depressions of the 1930s. Given all this, did a more
sophisticated debate about poverty and crime arise in the first half of the twentieth
century? Or, to put it another way, what (if anything) links the concept of
the residuum to the late twentieth-century ‘underclass’?
The twentieth-century ‘social problem group’
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the term ‘residuum’ was already falling
out of common usage. It is tempting, perhaps, to infer from this that a more objective
and analytical view of poverty and crime was beginning to develop. However,
John Welshman has argued that, in fact, ‘by the 1890s, the term “unemployable”
had become a synonym for the residuum’ – with many of the same adverse connotations
(Welshman, 2006a: 586). For example, well-known social activists like
Sidney and Beatrice Webb used the term ‘unemployable’ to refer to the sick and
crippled, ‘idiots and lunatics’, the epileptic, the blind, deaf and dumb, criminals
and the ‘incorrigibly idle’, and all those who were deemed ‘morally deficient’. The
Webbs advocated labour colonies to remove the burden of the unemployable from
society as a whole. Likewise, even William Beveridge (a key figure in the founding
of the British welfare state) believed that:
There are social parasites most prominently represented by the habitual
criminal and the habitual vagrant. Each of these is in truth as definitely diseased
as are the inmates of hospitals, asylums and infirmaries, and should
be classed with them. (Cited in Welshman, 2006b: 27)
Thus the now familiar linking of poverty, crime, and mental, physical and
moral deficiency was alive and well in the pre-First World War period. While
social surveys such as that undertaken by Joseph Rowntree (published in 1901)
did show a growing awareness of the true nature of urban poverty, Welshman
argues that they still contained an implicit ‘behavioural interpretation of poverty
and unemployment’. In other words, the belief that the poor could be held at
least responsible for their own situation lingered into the twentieth century.
While the full employment of the First World War temporarily stilled debate
over those at the bottom of society, the high unemployment of the post-war
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recession meant that the topic was quickly on the public agenda again. While
economists and demographers were perhaps moving towards a more objective
and neutral analysis of the labour market, the term ‘unemployable’ became
incorporated into a new concept, the ‘social problem group’ of the 1920s. During
a period of recession, at a time when the new professions of psychiatry and
social work were securing their place within British society, the discovery of the
‘social problem group’ provided both a convenient scapegoat for poor economic
performance and a legitimate object of enquiry for these newly professionalized
groups.
The ‘social problem group’ was a term which was closely linked to the eugenics
movement and which found its way into a number of governmental reports
during the 1920s and 1930s. The term ‘eugenics’ was first coined by Francis
Galton (Charles Darwin’s half-cousin) in 1883. Prompted by discoveries in
genetics and biology, scientists, social reformers and other ‘eugenicists’ asserted
that the human race could (and should) be improved through the breeding out
of deficiencies such as mental retardation and inheritable diseases. In the early
part of the twentieth century, some British eugenicists advocated that pauperism,
criminality, alcoholism and prostitution could also be tackled via
eugenic methods, including forcible sterilization of deficient individuals. For
example, C.T. Ewart, assistant medical officer at Claybury Asylum, claimed in
1910 that:
Nothing is more wasteful than this army of degenerates who, when they
are not living at the cost of the taxpayer in workhouses or prisons, are
wandering at large, idling, pilfering, injuring property, and polluting the
stream of national health by throwing into it human rubbish in the shape of
lunatics, idiots, and criminals. (Cited in Stone, 2001: 405)
The eugenics movement never did get the legislation on sterilization and
social cleansing they desired. Although a Departmental Committee on Voluntary
Sterilization was set up by the Department of Health in 1932, the campaign was
damaged by revelations of compulsory sterilization and euthanasia in Nazi
Germany. However, the eugenicist discourse on hereditary deficiencies among
the poor did find expression, albeit in diluted form, in a number of governmental
enquiries and reports.
The Wood Committee, which was convened in 1924 to consider ‘Mental
Deficiency’ (and which reported in 1929), concluded that ‘higher grade feeble
minded’ were concentrated in the bottom 10% of society, and hence identified
a coherent ‘social problem group’. This ‘subnormal’ or ‘social problem’ group
was seen to contain a much larger proportion of ‘epileptics, paupers, criminals
(especially recidivists), unemployables, habitual slum dwellers, prostitutes and
other social inefficients’ than other levels of society (Macnicol, 1987: 302). Thus,
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more than a quarter of the way though the twentieth century, the linking of
poverty, crime, vice, and mental and physical defects remained intact.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, as Welshman argues, the concept
of the ‘social problem group’ was largely replaced in public discourse by that of
the ‘problem family’. This notion still encompassed many of the attributes
ascribed to the nineteenth-century residuum. The survey Our Towns, published
by the Women’s Group on Public Welfare (1943), for example, identified a putative
‘submerged tenth’ – a strata of ‘problem families’ at the bottom end of the
social spectrum – ‘always at the edge of pauperism and crime, riddled with mental
and physical defects, in and out of the courts for child neglect’ (Welshman,
2006b: 69). However, after 1945, the eugenic element of this debate diminished
rapidly, and the focus of interest in poverty ‘came to be cultural rather than biological’
(Morris, 1994: 31). Partly, no doubt, the post-war period signified for
many ‘a new era of social awareness and optimism’, during which it was
thought that innovative welfare systems would alleviate both poverty and crime.
Partly, also, it became increasingly common to find collective explanations for
social ills which emphasized the role of environment and ‘the system’ over the
culpability of individuals.
It was not really until the 1970s that what Macnicol terms another ‘cycle of
rediscovery’ took place, and there was a resurgence of debate surrounding the
problem of poverty and its relationship to social deviancy. This was initiated in
England by Sir Keith Joseph, then Secretary of State for Health and Social
Services, in the early 1970s. In a speech in 1972 he posited the existence of a
‘cycle of deprivation’ whereby deficient values were being transmitted among
the poor across the generations. In another, better-known, speech in Birmingham
in October 1974, he claimed that lower-class mothers were consistently ‘producing
problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of
our borstals, subnormal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters’
and, echoing Colquhoun, predicted calamity, noting ‘the balance of our population,
our human stock, is threatened’ (The Times, 21 October 1974: 3).
From the mid-1970s onwards, it is possible to note the genesis of the specific
‘underclass’ debates which formed the starting point for this chapter. Economic
marginality, alternative values and deviant behaviour feature in most discussions
of the underclass. However, it is the renewed focus on individual values
and responsibility (rather than structural and state responsibility) which are of
most interest here. The term ‘underclass’ was first popularized in the USA by
the journalist Ken Auletta in an article in the New Yorker in the early 1980s.
Auletta noted that ‘at the heart of this age-old debate is the issue of social versus
individual responsibility’ but further claimed that ‘whatever the cause […]
most believe that the underclass suffers from behavioural as well as income deficiences’
(Auletta, 1981: 91). Auletta’s status as a journalist is perhaps noteworthy.
It is certainly significant that the underclass debate has had a far greater
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public impact than previously discussed ‘social problem groups’ or ‘cycles of
deprivation’, which were conducted largely among interested experts.
The underclass debate in Britain was initially more subdued than in the
United States, and the term ‘underclass’ itself was rarely used until the mid-
1980s. Ralf Dahrendorf was one of a prominent few arguing for the emergence
of an underclass in Britain and his definition was much like Marx’s ‘lowest sediment
within the reserve army of labour’, with an emphasis on its relationship
to Britain’s ‘moral hygiene’ (Mann, 1994: 86). A very different approach came
from the left, where the concept has been used in attempts to promote the interests
of the poor and highlight social divisions. The Labour MP and former minister
Frank Field, for example, claimed that it was a decline in concern about the
welfare of the poor which produced an ‘underclass’, and that economic individualism
promoted greed and indifference (Field, 1989). In general, in both
England and the USA, the liberal left has emphasized the decline of staple industries
in creating ‘social isolation’ for marginalized groups, while the right has
focused more on the ‘pathology’ and ‘culture’ of the putative ‘underclass’. In
both countries the term has been eagerly appropriated by the media, which has
often been keen to claim that ‘the underclass has not only arrived: it dominates’
(Jones, 1993). There is not space here for a detailed consideration of the underclass
debate itself. A number of useful studies have already been mentioned
(Macnicol, 1987; Mann, 1994; Morris, 1994; Young, 2002; Welshman, 2006).
Enough evidence has perhaps been given here, however, to indicate that the idea
of a problematic ‘underclass’, eating away at society’s values from within, is
nothing new. In one form or another, this is a debate that has been rehearsed in
Britain for centuries.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?
On the surface, at least, it appears that there are many similarities in the debates
over poverty and crime of the last two centuries. However, it is important to consider
this point in detail. While it is easy to make glib comparisons based on a
few seemingly similar quotations, just how much congruence is there across
these debates? Is it possible to sustain a more detailed comparison? Two of the
quotations in the introduction to this chapter appeared to show that the writings
of Patrick Colquhoun and Charles Murray have a lot in common, despite the fact
they were produced 200 years apart. As individuals, both men were politically
conservative, socially influential and widely read. But what happens if their writings
are subjected to a more in-depth analysis? For example, to what type of individual
does each author attribute criminal tendencies? To what social factors does
each author link crime? Do poverty and ‘social exclusion’ produce criminality?
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Patrick Colquhoun (1800) A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis,
pp. 311–364.
Chapter XI: Of Criminal Offences
Offences of every description have their origin in the vicious and immoral
habits of the people, and in the facilities which the state of manners and
society, particularly in vulgar life, afford in generating vicious and bad
habits […]
Before a child is perhaps able to lisp a sentence, it is carried by its ill-fated
mother to the tap-room of an ale-house; in which are assembled multitudes
of low company, many of whom have been perhaps reared in the
same manner. The vilest and most profane and polluted language, accompanied
by oaths and imprecations, is uttered in these haunts of idleness
and dissipation […]
Reduced, from their unfortunate habits, to the necessity of occupying a
miserable half furnished lodging from week to week, there is no comfort at
home. […]
Another cause of the increase of crimes, arises from the number of individuals
in various occupations among the lower and middling ranks of life […]
who, from their own mismanagement and want of industry, or attention to
their business, are suddenly broke down, and in some degree excluded
from the regular intercourse with Society. Unable to find employment, from
want of character, or want of friends, with constant demands upon them
for the means of subsistence to themselves and families, they resort to
Public-houses, under the influence of despondency, or to kill time which
hangs heavy upon them […]
Chapter XIII: The State of the Poor
Indigence, in the present state of Society, may be considered as a principal
cause of the increase of Crimes […]
But it is to be lamented, that in contemplating the mass of indigence,
which, in its various ramifications, produces distresses more extensive and
more poignant than perhaps in any other spot in the world, (Paris
excepted) […] though sometimes the result of unavoidable misfortune, it
is perhaps more frequently generated by idleness, inattention to business,
and indiscretion […]
While the wretchedness, misery and crimes, which have been developed,
and detailed in this work, cannot be sufficiently deplored, it is a matter of
no little exultation, that in no country or nation in the world, and certainly
in no other Metropolis, does there exist among the higher and middle
ranks of Society, an equal portion of Philanthropy and Benevolence […]
[But] it is not pecuniary aid which will heal this gangrene: this
Corruption of Morals. […] In spite of all the ingenious arguments which
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have been used in favour of a System admitted to be wisely conceived
in its origin, the effects it has produced incontestably prove that, with
respect to the mass of the Poor, there is something radically wrong in
the execution […]
A new era in the world seems to have commenced […] The evil propensities
incident to human nature appear no longer restrained by the force of
religion, or the influence of the moral principle. On these barriers powerful
attacks have been made, which have hitherto operated as curbs to the
unruly passions peculiar to vulgar life: they must therefore be strengthened
by supports more immediately applicable to the object of preserving
peace and good order […]
The first step is, to attend to the Morals and the Habits of the rising
Generation; to adapt the Laws more particularly to the manners of the
People, by minutely examining the state of Society, so as to lead the inferior
orders, as it were, insensibly into better Habits, by gentle restraints
upon those propensities which terminate in Idleness and Debauchery.
Charles Murray (1989) ‘The Emerging British Underclass’, Sunday
Times Magazine, November.
‘Underclass’ is an ugly word, with its whiff of Marx and the lumpenproletariat.
Perhaps because it is ugly, ‘underclass’ as used in Britain tends to
be sanitised, a sort of synonym for people who are not just poor, but especially
poor. So let us get it straight from the outset: the term ‘underclass’
does not refer to a degree of poverty but to a type of poverty.
It is not a new concept. I grew up knowing what the underclass was; we
just didn’t call it that in those days. In the small Iowa town where I lived, I
was taught by my middle-class parents that there were two kinds of poor
people. One class of poor people was never even called ‘poor’. I came to
understand that they simply lived with low incomes, as my own parents
had done when they were young. Then there was another set of poor people,
just a handful of them. These poor people didn’t lack just money. They
were defined by their behaviour. Their homes were littered and unkempt.
The men in the family were unable to hold a job for more than a few weeks
at a time. Drunkenness was common. The children grew up ill-schooled
and ill-behaved and contributed a disproportionate share of the local juvenile
delinquents […]
Britain does have an underclass, still largely out of sight and still smaller
than the one in the United States. But it is growing rapidly […] I am not
talking here about an unemployment problem that can be solved by more
jobs, nor about a poverty problem that can be solved by higher benefits.
Britain has a growing population of working-aged, healthy people who
live in a different world from other Britons, who are raising their children
to live in it […] and whose values are now contaminating the life of entire
neighbourhoods […]
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Charles Murray (1993) ‘Underclass: The Crisis Deepens’, Sunday
Times Magazine.
When trying to estimate what’s happening to the underclass I focus on three
symptoms: crime, illegitimacy, and economic inactivity among workingaged
men.
[…] Illegitimacy in the lower-classes will continue to rise and, inevitably, life
in lower class communities will continue to degenerate – more crime, more
widespread drug and alcohol addition, fewer marriages, more dropout
from work, more homelessness, more child neglect, fewer young people
pulling themselves out of the slums, more young people tumbling in […]
How are males to be socialised if not by an ethic centred on marriage and
family? And if they are not socialised, how may we expect the next generation
of young English males to behave? […] In lower class communities,
where the norm of marriage has already effectively been lost and a generation
of boys is growing up socialised by a ‘something else’ ethic not centred
on marriage and family […] it is not just the economic head wind that
will have to be bucked, but a cultural milieu that bears no resemblance to
anything that English society has ever known. […] I favour eliminating benefits
for unmarried women altogether (for potential new entrants, while
keeping the Faustian bargain we have made with women already on the
system). A strong case can be made that […] these radical changes would
produce large reductions in the number of children born to single women
[…] Many will find […] this level of restraint on the welfare state unacceptable.
But as you cast about for solutions, I suggest that one must
inevitably come up against this rock. The welfare of society requires that
women actively avoid getting pregnant if they have no husband, and that
women once again demand marriage from a man who would have them
bear a child. The only way the active avoidance and the demands are
going to occur is if childbearing entails economic penalties for a single
woman. It is all horribly sexist, I know. It also happens to be true. Other
things happen to be true as well. Babies need fathers. Society needs
fathers. The stake for England, as for the United States, is not to be measured
in savings in the Social Security budget nor in abstract improvements
in the moral climate. The stake is the survival of free institutions and
a civil society.
Obviously, these short extracts can only convey a loose sense of the ideas of
both Colquhoun and Murray. Both make forceful arguments. Colquhoun’s
Treatise extended to almost 700 pages, while Murray’s was more concise but no
less strident.
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In relation to the questions posed above it would appear that both do focus on
elements of ‘the poor’ as the perpetrators of a disproportionate amount of crime.
However, it is clearly not simply poverty as an unfortunate economic state that
exercises these commentators. Both Colquhoun and Murray focus on the standards
of behaviour and morality of members of the poorer classes as significant
in the causes of crime. Colquhoun refers to ‘vicious and immoral habits’ while
Murray refers to healthy but idle individuals ‘whose values are now contaminating
the life of entire neighbourhoods’.
The social factors linked to crime are also similar, although there are differences.
Both mention deficient socialization within the family, drinking and
drugs, and unemployment, but with different emphases. For Colquhoun, it is
clearly drink which is the chief culprit in leading the poor towards criminality.
For Murray, it is illegitimacy and a consequent lack of male role models which
leads young men towards deviant behaviour. Interestingly, both argue that welfare
exacerbates the problem of an underclass rather than alleviating it.
Colquhoun argued that ‘it is not pecuniary aid which will heal this gangrene’
while Murray advocated the elimination of benefits for unmarried mothers.
In answer to the key question as to whether ‘social exclusion’ produces criminality,
the answer which can be inferred from the work of both commentators
is, confusingly, both yes and no. Yes, both believe that it is among the socially
excluded that crime is most prevalent. However, both deny that social exclusion
(characterized by low wages, reliance on benefits, geographical segregation in
run-down areas and so forth) necessarily leads to criminality. Rather, both at
least imply that it is the deficient personal values of a subset of the poor (smaller
for Murray than Colquhoun) which leads to social exclusion in the first place,
and hence on to criminality. Both critiques are laden with value-judgements
despite, particularly in Murray’s case, assertions to the contrary. Colquhoun
refers to ‘unfortunate habits’, ‘want of industry’ and ‘the unruly passions peculiar
to vulgar life’. While Murray makes the case that the State needs to provide
a framework to enable young men and women to make the ‘right’ choices in
their lives, implicit within his text is still a focus on morality and the traditional
‘virtues’ of marriage and hard work. There are, of course, differences of language
and presentation. However, the two authors do have much in common,
despite the separation of years. The perpetuation of the underclass discourse
seems likely (for all the reasons discussed in the conclusion) to continue in one
form or another for the foreseeable future. Few members of the general public
are yet willing, as Young (2002: 484) suggests, to ‘emphasize that crime occurs
throughout the structure of society and that its origins lie not in a separate aetiology
but in the structure of society and its values’.
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Summary
Obviously, when considering both public debate and expert discourse, it is
important to remember that there is never simply one unanimous ‘point of
view’. The historical perceptions and stereotypes discussed in this chapter were
often contested, and it is always difficult to assess the impact that they had on
policy formation and the actual operation of the criminal justice system. That
said, it would appear that the image of the lower end of the social spectrum as
‘separate’ in values and behaviour from the rest of society, and as the location
of a disproportionate amount of crime, deviancy and dependency, has (in one
form or another) remained fairly constant over the last two centuries. However,
what has perhaps changed over time are the causes to which criminality among
this group has been attributed. More specifically, at the start of the nineteenth
century, lax personal morality was generally seen as a cause of both poverty and
crime. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, explanations of crime arose
which placed more emphasis on hereditary characteristics and the environment
in which the poor lived. During the mid-twentieth century, the focus shifted
towards ‘problem families’ and the way in which a ‘culture of poverty’ sustained
certain modes of behaviour. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however,
the pendulum swung back (at least on the political right) to debates about the
lack of moral responsibility among a relatively small group of socially deprived
individuals.
There are a number of potential explanations for the somewhat circular nature
of these debates, and for the recent resurgence of explanations of criminality
among the poor which emphasize morality and rational choice. Most obviously,
the problems of poverty and crime still persist. While noting the methodological
difficulties associated with all kind of criminal statistics, it is undeniable that
despite real advances in the provision of welfare, in general standards of living
and in the sophistication of patterns of policing, few types of criminality have
sensibly diminished since the Second World War and others have markedly
increased in recent decades. Robert Reiner has claimed that ‘from 1975 onwards,
the rising crime-rate is justifiably referred to as being in a stage of “hyper-crisis”’
(Reiner, 1990: 50). In the course of the last 40 years, high crime rates have
become a normal social fact in most contemporary Western societies. Hence, the
recent underclass debate must, at least in part, be an attempt to conceptualize a
real problem. There has been an increasingly obvious failure of the ‘penalwelfare’
model, the state-centred policy suite which promised ‘not just to punish
legal violations, and quell internal unrest, but actually to govern in ways which
would curb or cure the social problem of crime’ (Garland, 1996: 449). This has,
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perhaps inevitably, led to a resurgence of speculation as to the nature and extent
of the problem of criminality among the poor, and to a disproportionate desire to
apportion blame.
However, Baguley and Mann (1992: 124) claim that this perpetuation of
‘blame’ is due to the fact that ‘the dominant ideas of the day have been consistently
used by the middle classes to facilitate a redefinition of the poor’ and
point to a need within the middle classes to justify their privileged place in society
by identifying the ‘failings’ of the poor. They conclude that ‘the underclass
is the ideology of the dominant upper and middle classes’, in the sense that conceptions
of an underclass assist other groups within society to sustain relations
of domination. Also on a theoretical level, Dario Melossi has attempted to
account for the way in which, ‘in a somewhat cyclical fashion, at least since the
inception of modernity and criminological thought in the nineteenth century,
representations of crime and criminals have been oscillating between different
social attitudes’ (Melossi, 2000: 296). In periods of relative prosperity, he contends,
there has been a tendency towards liberalism, optimism and low imprisonment
rates, with criminals even seen as ‘innovators fighting an unjust and
suffocating social order’. By contrast, since the early 1970s, rising unemployment
and a profound restructuring of the economy have led to a concomitant
‘deep disciplining of the working class’, via what he terms ‘revanche criminology’,
characterized by ‘the ideological disconnection of the issue of crime from
social circumstances’ (2000: 308–10). When removed from its ‘embeddedness in
the complexity of social relationships’, the whole question of crime thus
inevitably becomes one of ‘moral edification’.
It is also likely that this debate is linked to wider, long-term tensions between
‘liberal’ and ‘collectivist’ paradigms. Richard Cockett notes that it is possible to
view the last two centuries in terms of an ideological struggle between liberalism
and collectivism (1994: 6). He is primarily concerned with economic liberalism,
but his thesis can arguably be applied more generally. He notes that,
following the initial triumph of liberalism over feudalism from 1770 to the
1880s, economic liberalism (with its concomitant focus on individual freedom of
action) became the mainstream ‘orthodoxy’. Then, from the 1880s to the 1940s,
there was a gradual sea-change in favour of collective explanations of phenomena,
initiated largely by the Fabians. Subsequently, it is only recently, from the
1970s onwards, and co-incident with Thatcherism, that more individualistic
explanations have again assumed a popular vogue, albeit always now within a
referential framework of impersonal social forces. Cockett notes that ‘one can
[…] interpret this process in Hegelian terms as these cycles bear a close resemblance
to the dialectic of thesis/antithesis/synthesis’, and the parallels of this
process with the debates outlined above are readily apparent.
HISTORY & CRIME
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 What were the main explanations of the causes of criminality from 1750 to 1850?
2 How did the concept of a professional criminal class arise in the mid-nineteenth century?
3 What was the contribution of scientific criminology to understanding crime?
4 What are the similarities and differences between current and historical debates about the
‘underclass’?
FURTHER READING
Bailey, V. (1993) ‘The Fabrication of Deviance: “Dangerous Classes” and “Criminal Classes” in
Victorian England’, in J. Rule and R. Malcomson (eds) Protest and Survival: The Historical
Experience. Essays for E.P. Thompson, Merlin Press: London, pp. 221–56.
McGowan, R. (1990) ‘Getting to Know the Criminal Class in Nineteenth-Century England’,
Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 14(1): 33–54.
Pick, D. (1989) Faces of Degeneration. A European Disorder, c.1848–1918, Cambridge University
Press: Cambridge.
Welshman, J. (2006) Underclass. A History of the Excluded, 1880–2000, Hambledon: London.
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101
6
Immigration, Ethnicity,
Race and Crime
Chapter Contents
Immigration and race in British history 104
Public opinion and media stereotypes 110
Immigration, ethnicity, crime and criminal justice 116
The perpetuation of adverse ethnic stereotypes 120
Summary 123
Study questions 125
Further reading 125
OVERVIEW
Chapter 6:
• Provides evidence suggesting that race and ethnicity are significant in the operation of the contemporary
criminal justice system. A presumed link between ethnicity and crime is a staple
part of media reporting. This chapter describes current research in this area.
• Describes how, despite the contemporary focus on immigration from the Caribbean since
1945, there is a long history of migration to the British Isles.
• Describes historical studies of race and crime and presents primary historical evidence from
a number of sources to identify common perceptions surrounding ethnic minorities and crime.
KEY TERMS
race ethnicity immigration media stereotypes
The intertwined issues of immigration, race, ethnicity and crime are the subject
of much contemporary debate. Fears that foreign arrivals to the United Kingdom
might engage in criminal activities have become a staple part of media reporting
on crime. Following a trio of teenage fatalities in London, for example, a
leader article in The Express (16 February 2007) carried the headline ‘How we
surrendered our streets to the evil rule of foreign killers’, and referred to the
prevalence of ‘Third World thuggery’ in inner London. Similarly, in late 2006 the
Home Office was publicly pilloried when it emerged that over 1,000 foreign
criminals had been simply released from prison without being considered for
deportation, with some going on to commit serious crimes.
This type of controversy is not, of course, confined to foreign nationals, nor
found only in the media or the political arena. As regards British ethnic minorities,
police forces often come under criticism for their stop-and-search procedures,
which appear disproportionately to target young black men. Evidence
also suggests that strip searches are more likely to be conducted where the suspects
in custody are of African-Caribbean origin (Newburn et al., 2004).
Moreover, research indicates that, all the way through the criminal justice system,
young, black men are disproportionately represented. Perhaps the most
startling evidence of this pertains to the end point of the criminal justice system
– prison. In the year 2000, black British nationals formed 10% of the male
prison population in England and Wales (and around 12% of all female
detainees) despite comprising only 2% of the overall population (Phillips and
Bowling, 2002: 579).
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The upshot of this is that, if your skin colour is black, you are around five
times more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system than if it were
white. Citizens of African-Caribbean origin are also proportionately more likely
to be the victim of a crime than their white counterparts (Clancy et al., 2001:
12). This over-representation of African-Caribbeans in particular is interesting,
as it would appear that other ethnic minority groups (such as those of Asian origin)
are subject to equal levels of societal prejudice, yet do not end up in the
criminal justice system in disproportionate numbers (Smith, 1997: 725). It is
thus incorrect to assert a simplistic correlation between race and involvement in
the criminal justice system.
A number of reasons might be posited as to why men and women of African-
Caribbean origin are more likely to end up in prison than any other ethnic
group. As noted, it would be convenient to assume simple societal prejudice, but
this does not explain the under-representation of Asians within the prison population.
One might posit bias in arrest or sentencing. However, there is evidence
to indicate that, although black men are more likely to be arrested and charged
than their white counterparts, this discrepancy is ironed out somewhat as they
pass through the criminal justice system, being proportionately more likely to
have their case terminated by the CPS (Phillips and Bowling, 2002: 599–601).
One thing which is more widely agreed is that young men of African-
Caribbean origin are proportionately more likely to be members of the lower
socio-economic categories. There is a well-documented, strong correlation
between these strata of society and involvement in the criminal justice system.
Structural theories of crime, however, cannot provide a convincing explanation
as to why some individuals turn to crime and others do not.
Clearly, immigration, race and crime are subjects of continuing debate.
Contemporary criminological writings, however, often assume that these issues
are of fairly recent advent, and tend to concentrate on the migration to Britain
from colonial territories which occurred in the aftermath of the Second World
War. The problematic involvement of African-Caribbean men with the police
(and in the criminal justice system) is usually considered from the 1958 Notting
Hill riots onwards. In fact, ethnicity, immigration and crime have been of public
and official concern at many points during the last 200 years.
The first section of this chapter will give a brief overview of immigration and
race in Britain since c.1800, as a necessary prerequisite to any consideration of
the involvement of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.
While it is true to say that mass immigration to Britain from its colonies in
Africa and the Caribbean was primarily a post-1945 occurrence, it is certainly
not the case that black migrants were not present in England or involved in the
criminal justice system before that time. Also, other waves of European immigrants
should not be forgotten. The mass Irish immigration of the mid
nineteenth century saw well over half a million resident in England by 1861.
HISTORY & CRIME
They formed over 2% of the population (Holmes, 1988: 21), a figure comparable
to current figures for all those of African-Caribbean descent. The arrival of
Eastern European Jews towards the end of the century was also statistically, as
well as culturally, significant. The post-Second World War colonial influx will
also be outlined.
The second part of the chapter will then consider both media and public perceptions
generated by these waves of immigrants. Obviously it will be impossible
for a relatively brief treatment to consider all the perceptions and stereotypes
attached to such a diverse set of communities, and hence the discussion will concentrate
principally on attitudes pertaining to the criminal justice field. As today,
the views of the media and of the public in framing the actions of the police and
the judiciary are impossible to ignore.
The final section will evaluate what data is available about actual patterns of
offending among ethnic minorities over the past two centuries. One of the problems
besetting criminologists wishing to study contemporary issues of race and
crime is the relative paucity of firm data. The 1991 census was the first to gather
adequate data on ethnicity, and prison statistics which record ethnicity are only
available from 1985. Problems with sources are obviously compounded the further
back in time one peers. Hence, straightforward comparisons of offending or
committal rates over time are impossible. However, historians are a resourceful
bunch, and there have been a number of quantitative studies attempted, mainly
using data compiled from sources not originally intended for that purpose.
These will be considered here, along with qualitative data pertaining to issues
such as the disproportionate use of police discretion where minority groups
were concerned (‘over-policing’), and the extent to which black, Irish or Jewish
citizens were more likely to belong to the socio-economic groups customarily
associated with criminality.
Immigration and race in British history
Towards the end of the eighteenth century a number of British cities (particularly
London, but also other ports such as Liverpool) were becoming truly cosmopolitan,
and attracting migrants from many countries. Most immigrants were
at this stage from Europe but, by the 1780s, there were at least 5,000 black people
living in London (Myers, 1996: 35). Some contemporary estimates placed this
figure much higher, at 15,000 or even 20,000 (around 2% of London’s population
at the time). Many of these individuals had ended up in England as a result
of the slave trade, which was at its peak during the eighteenth century. As
traders and plantation owners made their fortunes overseas, it became common
to transport slaves back from the colonies of the West Indies and North America.
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For London’s powerful elites, an ‘exotic’ servant was a symbol of status and a
familiar sight on the streets of London.
Slaves in England were obviously in a unique legal position, almost entirely
unprotected by the law. This changed somewhat with the ‘Somerset Ruling’ of
1772, a landmark test case where Charles Stewart, the owner of a runaway slave
(James Somerset), attempted forcibly to remove Somerset from England and ship
him back to Jamaica. The presiding judge (Lord Mansfield) ruled that, while
slavery was legal in the colonies, it had no force in mainland England. Many
took this to mean that slavery itself was declared illegal at this point. This was
not true (it simply meant that slaves could not be removed from England against
their will), but the case certainly did much to place the issue of emancipation
on the political agenda and gave many slaves the confidence to strike out on
their own (Gerzina, 1995: 132). Following a long abolition campaign, the
Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill was passed by Parliament in 1807. Contrary to
the impression given by the celebratory media events of the centenary anniversary
of this event in 2007, the Act did not make slavery illegal, only the trade in
slaves. Slavery still continued in British colonies. It was not until 1833 that the
Slavery Abolition Act was passed, freeing all slaves in the British Empire.
Of course, not all of those of African-Caribbean origin who were resident in
England at this time were slaves. Large numbers of black Londoners also arrived
as sailors in the merchant navy and as soldiers in Britain’s armed forces. After
the end of the American War in 1783, many black men who had fought on the
Loyalist (British) side were discharged at British ports, forming the first coherent
black communities in the United Kingdom. Quite a number of black
migrants also worked as domestic servants or labourers. Those black migrants
who were not slaves also found themselves in a disadvantaged position legally.
The Poor Law (or system of relief for the destitute) was regulated by place of
birth. The parish where you were born was responsible for your upkeep should
you fall on hard times. Obviously, those born overseas did not have access to
these resources. Many were thus forced into highly visible begging, leading to
poverty among the black community being a much discussed social issue by the
start of the nineteenth century. We should recall, however, that (while unusual)
it was perfectly possible for a black immigrant to rise to a position of considerable
prestige within British society at this time. Freed slave Ignatius Sancho, for
example, published poetry and a number of works on musical theory. Ottobah
Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano (also freed slaves) were both prominent in the
movement to end the slave trade. Tom Molineux was a successful black boxer in
early nineteenth-century England, and Ira Aldridge became a celebrated actor.
While the black population in Britain during the early nineteenth century has
been described as ‘large’ and ‘significant’ (Walvin, 1973: 84), the Irish were by far
the largest immigrant minority in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth
century. The legal status of the Irish in Britain was of course different to those
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arrivals from Africa and the Caribbean. Following the passing of the Act of
Union of 1800, largely in response to a bloodily suppressed rebellion in 1798,
Ireland was subsumed into the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland, and Irish
home rule abolished. Until 1922 the whole of Ireland was thus part of Great
Britain, and ruled from Westminster. To an extent, therefore, it is more precise
to speak of Irish ‘migrants’ rather than ‘immigrants’. However, contemporaries
perceived the Irish as ethnically different from the English, and certainly the
Irish also viewed themselves that way. Hence, in the discussion that follows,
arrivals to the mainland from Ireland in the nineteenth century will be analysed
in much the same way as other immigrant groups.
The 1841 census recorded 189,404 Irish immigrants living in England and
Wales (around 1.8% of the total population). By 1871 this figure had risen to
566,540, or 2.5% of the total population (Holmes, 1988: 2). This tally does not,
of course, include second-generation migrants born in England, who might very
well still have considered themselves Irish but were not counted as such.
Although the Irish population in England and Wales diminished somewhat
towards the end of the nineteenth century (with the 1911 census showing
around 375,000 – 1% of the total population) the numbers involved and the relative
rapidity of their arrival ensured they were the focus of both debate and
scrutiny.
What were the reasons behind this massive influx? Again, one of the most
basic reasons was exploitation – this time the exploitation of Ireland by the
British. It used to be argued that the expropriation of goods and money from the
Irish economy was so rampant that it was left unable to sustain its own population.
Such a view is, however, too simplistic. For example, emigration was lowest
from the poorest areas of Ireland, as individuals simply could not afford to
leave. Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1849 also forced many to emigrate –
and Ireland saw its population drop from around 8 million to just 4.4 million by
1911. The famine was partly the result of catastrophic failures in the potato harvest.
However, at a time of prosperity in England, and at a time when Ireland
was under English control, the English must surely take some share of the
responsibility here also.
While better than in Ireland itself, the conditions which met Irish arrivals to
England and Wales left plenty to be desired. It is important to avoid stereotypes.
Large numbers of Irish served in the British armed forces and in the police, too,
towards the end of the century. There were also Irish lawyers and doctors.
However, there is no doubt that such life experiences were not the norm. In the
north of England, the Irish became closely associated with the agricultural sector
of the British economy, where it was common for them to take on short-term
work (at harvest time, for example). Further south, many also took up residence
in towns and cities. Here, Irish immigrants clustered in semi-skilled and
unskilled trades such as dock work and labouring. Irish women often worked in
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textile factories or in domestic service. This concentration at the lower end of
the social spectrum can be traced to a range of causes – prejudice on the part of
the English being at least as important as reasons such as illiteracy on the part
of many of the immigrants (Swift and Gilley, 1989). Residential segregation was
also a part of Irish urban social life. In areas such as Scotland Road in Liverpool
and St Giles, London, Irish immigrants very often settled near their kin or
acquaintances, thus creating densely populated ‘Irish quarters’.
Towards the end of the century this influx from Ireland abated somewhat.
However, soon the public gaze turned to a new set of arrivals, this time from
Eastern Europe. In the 1880s, large numbers of immigrants began to arrive from
Russian Poland (Poland having been partitioned in 1815 and a large part of it
incorporated into and ruled by Russia). Most of these new arrivals were Jewish.
There are no absolutely reliable statistics, but it has been estimated that around
40–50,000 Russian Poles (the vast majority, Jews) arrived in Britain between
1875 and 1901, eventually numbering 82,844, or 0.3 per cent of the total population.
While numerically less significant than the Irish, these new arrivals again
tended to congregate in specific areas of settlement (in particular the East End
of London) and this made them more visible and hence increased the impact of
their arrival.
Why did these individuals travel so far to reside in Britain? Again, exploitation
and persecution provide part of the answer, although this time not on the
part of the British. Most of these immigrants were drawn from the western
boundary of Russia, the so-called ‘Pale of Settlement’. They were denied employment
by Russia outside of this area, and increasing population pressure meant
worsening social conditions. In addition, however, and more significantly, Eastern
European Jews were subject to unremitting persecution at the end of the
nineteenth century, where ‘governments seemed to be competing with one
another over who could most mistreat the Jews’ (Winder, 2005: 229).
On arrival in Britain, many Jewish immigrants clustered in particular professions,
particularly the clothing trade, cabinet making and boot making. While
numbers nationally were not perhaps that great, their geographical and occupational
density (particularly in London and a few other major cities) meant that
‘within […] a short period of time the immigrants and refugees introduced a
new, distinctive, immigrant cultural life into their areas of settlement’ with the
result that ‘the East End and Stepney in particular became an island of immigrant
Jewish culture’ (Holmes, 1988: 46).
Such was the consternation generated by this very visible influx that Britain
passed its first ever peace-time legislation restricting those who could come to
the country – the Aliens Act of 1905. There had been legislation controlling
entry to the United Kingdom before, but only during times of war. In 1793, for
example, an Aliens Act (passed in response to war with France and fear of spies)
had restricted access to those with appropriate documentation. After the war,
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however, the legislation was soon relaxed and was abolished by the 1830s.
Towards the end of century, Britain was seen by many as perhaps the most tolerant
country with regard to immigration, as even the USA had introduced some
restrictions in 1882. The passing of the Aliens Act of 1905, however, sprung from
deep antipathy towards Jewish immigration in particular, combined with fears
that British-born workers would lose their jobs (Kershen, 2005: 14).
Following the passing of the act, the numbers of immigrants entering Britain
fluctuated annually between 1906 and 1911 but, overall, there was a noticeable
decline. Still more stringent restrictions were introduced after the First World
War (in 1919). From this point on, work permits were required for the first time
for those already resident in Great Britain. Indeed, during the 1930s, in stark
contrast to the end of the nineteenth century, many of those hoping to flee to
Britain from Nazi Germany and other parts of mainland Europe found their
route impeded by restrictions introduced in 1919 and 1920.
After the Second World War, however, this restrictive climate was relaxed
again somewhat. The reconstruction of the British economy after six years of
war required manpower that the domestic market was unable to supply. More
than a year after the end of the war, for example, Britain was still employing
more than 350,000 prisoners of war, and in 1946 the Foreign Labour Committee
(FLC) was created to explore ways of recruiting foreign labour (Whitfield, 2004:
12). In addition, the decades after the Second World War saw the ‘retreat from
Empire’; the gradual withdrawal and transfer of power in Indian and Africa.
Thus between 1945 and 1971 (the date of final British withdrawal from the
Middle East), a steady succession of immigrants and refugees arrived in Britain,
and their cumulative impact led to important changes in the constitution of
British society.
One of the most significant paths for immigration in the immediate post-war
period was from the Caribbean to Britain. Life in the West Indies was at the time
blighted by overcrowding and unemployment, and the 1948 British Nationality
Act guaranteed West Indians free entry into the United Kingdom. These push-andpull
factors were decisive for many. The SS Empire Windrush, carrying the first
group of immigrants from the region, arrived on 18 February 1949. When the
USA restricted immigration from the Caribbean in 1952, this flow increased still
further. The black population of Britain increased from around 10,000 in 1939 to
approximately a million in 1964 (Whitfield, 2004: 22). Hundreds of thousands of
immigrants also arrived from India and Pakistan during the same period.
London attracted large numbers of these new arrivals. However, Bristol, the
Midlands (Birmingham, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham) and Yorkshire
(Leeds) also saw significant immigrant communities spring up. Compared to the
African and African-Caribbean immigrants of previous centuries, these new
arrivals entered a wider range of occupations. However, most were still concentrated
on trades where labour was scarce and, inevitably, this meant doing jobs
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that British workers were not that keen to fill. In London this meant public
transport and general labouring. In the Midlands, this often entailed working in
foundries and textile mills, particularly covering the night shifts.
Immigration from the Caribbean slowed somewhat after the passing of the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, which restricted immigration from former
British colonies. Indeed, from this point on, a gradual hardening of social
attitudes can be discerned in Britain. In the general election of 1964, a conservative
candidate won the seat of Smethwick (West Midlands) with the racist slogan
‘if you want a Nigger for a neighbour, vote labour’ (Gilroy, 1987: 81). The
National Front was formed in 1967 and a year later the conservative M.P. Enoch
Powell made his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, in which he predicted the
fragmentation of British society and a rise in racial violence unless immigration
was sharply curtailed. Against this background, entry controls were progressively
strengthened with a new Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968 and the
passing of the Immigration Act of 1971. While increasing restriction was the
trend, it should also be remembered, however, that at the same time there was
increasing social concern about racial prejudice and disadvantage in Britain.
Significant legislation was passed in this area too, including the Race Relations
Acts of 1965 and 1968 which made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race.
During the latter part of the twentieth century, legal restrictions on immigration
continued. In the 40 years following 1962, no less than ten acts relating to
asylum and immigration control were passed by both Conservative and Labour
governments. However, while immigration from former colonies significantly
diminished during this period, the gradual drawing together of the European
Union had a significant impact in facilitating the arrival of workers from mainland
Europe. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimated the net annual
inflow (of immigrants vs emigrants) was 47,000 in 1997. By 2004, however, this
had increased to around 220,000. These figures have risen yet again following
the accession of ten new countries to the EU in May 2004, with many new
immigrants from (for example) Poland, again taking jobs that the UK labour market
finds hard to fill.
As can be seen from this brief overview, immigration to Britain has always
been a very diverse process, with the immigrants themselves also multifarious.
However, while some new arrivals have been educated and prosperous, this was
not the norm. Over the last two centuries, the majority of immigrants have been
concentrated (at least after their arrival) in the lower socio-economic groups.
Their social status has very often been inferior to the indigenous population and,
even when legally equal (which was not always the case) this equality was often
merely a thin veneer. While Britain had negligible controls on immigration for
much of the period under discussion, even this brief overview highlights the various
ways in which those coming to Britain from overseas have always had a
struggle to establish a new life here. However, what were the indigenous
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perceptions of these successive groups of immigrants? How were they viewed
by the public, the media, and officials such as the police and the judiciary? What
common discursive tropes can be identified and how did they relate to the criminal
justice sphere?
Public opinion and media stereotypes
As might be expected, a very broad range of opinions and stereotypes have been
associated with immigrants to Britain during the past 200 years. These perceptions
have routinely been extended to subsequent generations of immigrants’
families. While usually legally British, they have often still been viewed and
treated as ethnically different ‘others’. There is not space here to cover the entire
range of stereotypes applied to those perceived as different to the majority white
population. However, this section will discuss the many associations made
between immigrants, ethnic minorities and crime.
At the start of the nineteenth century, as we have seen, the absolute number
of black immigrants in Britain was quite low. Many were slaves or former slaves,
and as such were perceived very adversely by the indigenous population.
Indeed, Norma Myers (1996) argues that they were often viewed as sub-human,
a stereotype which served to legitimate their ‘chattel’ status under the system
of slavery. While opinions had changed quite significantly by the start of the
nineteenth century, perceptions of inferiority endured. For example, William
Wilberforce, one of the driving forces behind the Abolition of the Slave Trade
Act of 1807, invited black residents of London to a celebratory dinner following
the passing of the act, but still required them to eat in a separate room.
However, Myers contends that public attitudes towards black immigrants at
the start of the nineteenth century were best characterized by ‘mixed antipathy
and sympathy’, and prejudice was not the only attitude on view (Myers, 1996:
51). Many new arrivals from the West Indies, Africa and America were poor,
being relatively unprotected by the law and finding it hard to secure employment.
Poverty and very visible begging among the black community of London
generated considerable public sympathy. As early as 1786, for example, a
‘Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor’ was founded (which disbursed significant
funding to black immigrants and ‘Lascars’ – immigrants from South
East Asia).
As regards crime and criminal justice, the available evidence suggests that,
while societal attitudes towards black immigrants were by no means wholly
warm, there was no particular association made between Africans and African-
Caribbean immigrants and criminality. Peter King has made a preliminary study
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of ethnicity and crime during the period 1780–1830 (as part of a broader work-inprogress),
and finds that very little mention is made of specific ethnic groups in
contemporary pamphlets and books about crime. Similarly, Myers finds that
while black men and women were not handled entirely equally in court (often
being treated in the same manner as minors who were too young to understand
the nature of the oath) there was certainly no consistently hostile stereotype
applied to black immigrants by the courts. Actual involvement in the criminal
justice process will be covered in the next section. Suffice it to say here that what
little evidence there is indicates that ethnicity was not yet central to discussions
of crime, policing and justice. Partly, this may have been a function of the low
numbers involved. Partly also it may have been because, as discussed in the previous
chapter, there was little or no public discourse in the early nineteenth century
concerning crime as a generic ‘social problem’ requiring state action.
However, by the time Irish immigration was reaching a peak in the mid
nineteenth century, this had changed considerably. ‘Crime’ in the abstract
(rather than any particular incident) had become well-established as a problem
to be discussed by the media and the public. Irish immigrants attracted a lot of
unwelcome and unflattering attention, and the notion that Irish men and
women were somehow innately predisposed to crime and disorder was widespread.
The historian, critic and writer Thomas Carlyle, for example, noted in
1839 that ‘in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence’, the
Irishman was ‘the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder’ (cited in
Swift and Gilley, 1989: 163). A Welsh radical journalist, writing about the social
effects of illiteracy in 1846, still felt it acceptable to use the phrase ‘thieving like
an Irishman’ (cited in O’Leary, 2002: 162). Similarly, the journalist and social
investigator Henry Mayhew (writing later in the century) believed that, of the
habitual criminals of London, 90% were ‘Irish Cockneys’ – individuals born in
London to Irish parents (Mayhew and Binney, 1862: 402).
There was a specific association often made between the Irish, ‘drink’ and petty
criminality. Excessive consumption of alcohol, particularly spirits, was seen to be
an intrinsic Irish weakness, and such beliefs were not only confined to the press
but also permeated the criminal justice system. The Select Committee on the
Police of the Metropolis (1817), for example, was informed that ‘the effects of
liquor upon the Irish in every scene of depredation and murder, needs only to be
adverted to’. Likewise, in 1834, a Manchester magistrate noted:
If there be a company of English drinking in a beer-shop, they are very
good friends if they get drunk together, and they can go home with each
other and behave with the utmost kindness; but if it be a party of Irish
drinking whiskey or spirits, they will quarrel or fight before they reach
home. (Cited in Swift and Gilley, 1989: 167)
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The idea that Irish immigrants were prone to violent quarrels (both within their own
communities and without) was another prevalent belief. There was also a perception
that they were likely to resist arrest, or even that other members of the community
would intervene if the police arrived. A Superintendent of the Night Watch in
Manchester, giving evidence to the Constabulary Commission of 1839 claimed that:
It repeatedly happens that, in order to apprehend one Irishman in the Irish
parts of town, we are forced to take from ten or twenty, or even more,
watchmen. The whole neighbourhood will turn out with weapons, even
women, half-naked, carrying brickbats and stones for the men to throw.
Clearly then, adverse perceptions of Irish immigrants were widespread throughout
British society during the nineteenth century, with many sharing Friedrich
Engels’ view that all Ireland had supplied England and America with were
‘pimps, thieves, swindlers, beggars and other rabble’ (cited in Henderson, 1967:
95). The hostile reception the Irish received in Britain probably owed much to
the timing of their arrival. Impoverished immigrants fleeing famine in Ireland
in the 1840s came to a country where vagrancy, travelling labourers and poverty
were already the focus of much public attention, with the ‘Condition of
England’ question the subject of much media debate. In addition, the period
after 1839 saw the reorganization of many provincial police forces in England,
with many seeking particularly to crack down on travelling vagrants and ‘suspicious
characters’. Towards the end of the century, there may have been some
amelioration of such prejudicial attitudes. However, anti-Irish sentiment could
still flare up with dramatic consequences (such as the large-scale attacks on Irish
property in Tredegar, Wales, in 1882). The suspicion that Irish immigrants were
involved with the campaign for Irish independence, which was to result in formation
of the IRA following the Easter Rising of 1916, also did little to improve
the image of the Irish in England during the early part of the twentieth century.
Another group of immigrants often associated with underground political dissidence
were those arriving from Eastern Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth
century (particularly Jews from Russian Poland). As noted above, the
public outcry over this influx was largely responsible for the passing of the
Aliens Act of 1905, which restricted peace-time entry into United Kingdom for
the first time ever. Between 1880 and 1905 there was a general sense of discontent
that England was virtually the only nation to be accepting such refugees
without restrictions, while many of the English working class were themselves
emigrating. Even the socialist press (in 1894) felt that:
the Old Word [is] depleting itself of its best and most adventurous blood
[…] while we accept with open arms all the broken-spirited physical wrecks
which Northern Europe cares to dump down. (Cited in Garrard, 1970: 19)
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However, most of the prejudices directed against Eastern European Jews were
not really concerned with crime or criminality. There were worries about overcrowding
and the unsanitary conditions of many of the areas where these new
arrivals lived (such as the East End of London). There were also economic concerns,
as Jewish immigrants from Poland were believed to be causing unemployment
among British workers. Certainly, the East London Advertiser claimed in the
late 1880s that:
Competition is at the bottom of this evil [unemployment]; foreign competition
for the most part. The swarms of foreign Jews who have invaded the
East End labour market are chiefly responsible. (Cited in Kershen, 2005: 3–4).
However, immigrants from Eastern Europe were not a population particularly
linked to crime in the way that the Irish had been. The only significant association
made between Jews from Eastern Europe and criminality was where anarchism
and political dissidence were concerned. For a time the largest anarchist
publication in the United Kingdom, the Arbeiter Freind (Worker’s Friend) was
published in Yiddish, and the support anarchist groups gave to strikes and other
‘revolutionary’ activities was of concern to the British government.
This lack of overt linkage between immigrants from Eastern Europe and criminality
is interesting. Like the Irish, they were often poor and were usually
socially segregated. They were perceived as being culturally and ethnically different
from the indigenous ‘white’ population, and were subject to a high degree
of prejudice. As we will see, a very similar pattern of prejudice can be traced in
public fears and media stereotypes regarding African-Caribbean immigrants in
the period after the Second World War. In this latter case, however, a strong link
was gradually developed in the media and in the public psyche between these
immigrants and various types of criminality and disorder. How can we account
for this?
As previously described, the period between the docking of the SS Empire
Windrush in 1948 and the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962
saw the arrival of hundreds of thousands of African-Caribbeans (along with
many thousands from India, Africa and other former colonial regions). As with
all previous large-scale immigrations, these new arrivals were subject to various
derogatory prejudices and stereotypes. However, initially at least, these concerns
did not focus primarily on criminality per se. Rather, as with the Eastern
European immigrants of half a century earlier, the lifestyles and cultures of the
African-Caribbean arrivals were the primary focus of attention. As regards housing,
there were concerns that immigrants from the Commonwealth were lowering
the value of property and crowding white residents out of their homes (a key
theme of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech). Black culture was stereotyped
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as involving loud, prolonged parties and the use of drugs such as cannabis.
There was also apprehension over the intermarriage of African-Caribbeans and
white women, with black sexuality stereotyped as predatory.
Racial prejudices such as these were the trigger for the Notting Hill riots of
1958. Although police initially insisted that the events were not ‘racial’, the disorder
is now known to have been triggered by crowds of youths, 300–400 strong,
chanting ‘Keep Britain White’, and attacking West Indian residences (and indeed
residents) in Notting Hill. Violent rioting raged over the bank holiday weekend
before order was restored. In the immediate aftermath, an ITN news reporter
visited the area to interview residents. He concluded that the majority view of
white residents was that most West Indians were ‘honest people doing an honest
job’. Grievances were aired but, again, these revolved around housing,
employment and loud clubs. While there was an association made between West
Indians and ‘girls on the game’ – the assumption being that immigrants were
often running brothels – our contemporary concerns such as street crime and
theft were not mentioned at all. Thus, although a survey prior to the passing of
the Race Relations Act of 1968 showed that racial discrimination in Britain
‘ranged from the massive to the substantial’ (Smith, 1992: 1050), associations
were not routinely made between African-Caribbeans and crime during the
1950s and 1960s.
This changed fairly rapidly, however, during the 1970s. When the House of
Commons Home Affairs Committee considered race relations and immigration
in 1972, it consulted widely and the majority of witnesses ‘tended towards the
view that Afro-Caribbeans were less criminal than whites’ (Smith, 1992: 1053).
However, by the time Lord Scarman’s report on the 1981 Brixton Riots was published,
this opinion had been largely reversed. While Scarman famously concluded
that the Metropolitan Police were not ‘institutionally racist’, he argued
that many young black men felt alienated and excluded from British society, and
linked crime, inner-city decay and the breakdown of consent between the police
and local communities. Taking up this theme, the Home Secretary William
Whitelaw spoke, in the aftermath of the 1981 riots, of the ‘need to remove the
scourge of criminal violence from our streets’ – clearly connecting this with ethnic
minority communities (Benyon and Solomos, 1990: 28). Thus, by the early
1980s, ‘race’ and ‘law and order’ were now issues to be discussed at the same
time. But why was there this sudden change in public perceptions and media
stereotyping? There is not space to fully investigate this here, but this shift from
generalized prejudice towards a specific focus on the involvement of black
youths in certain types of criminality has been much debated by criminologists
and historians.
Certain key points should be noted. During the 1970s there were a series of
high profile and widely reported confrontations between the police and members
of African-Caribbean communities – most notably, perhaps, the Notting
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Hill Carnival Riots of 1976, 1977 and 1978. Relations between the police and
African-Caribbean communities were strained, to say the least, during this
period. Also during the 1970s, the growing media focus on disorderly behaviour
on the streets of African-Caribbean areas bled into the assertion that black
youths were largely responsible for the newly termed crime of ‘mugging’. In
1978, for example, Enoch Powell again made the headlines by highlighting the
fact that recently released crime statistics appeared to indicate that mugging was
a ‘racial’ crime, committed largely by black men, and this notion rapidly became
a staple media trope.
The significance of these factors is, however, hard to unpick. There is no doubt
that there were violent confrontations between the police and African-Caribbeans,
and there is no doubt that the statistics released by the Metropolitan Police
during the 1970s appear to show a sharp rise in mugging by black men.
However, these ‘facts’ have been interpreted in various ways. Gilroy (1987), for
example, has argued that the Metropolitan Police actively presented data on
street crime in a manner calculated to show African-Caribbeans as a problem
group, and thus enhance their own support base during a difficult period for the
police. Similarly, Hall et al. (1978) claimed that the sudden appearance of mugging
as a ‘crime problem’ allowed the police to scapegoat young blacks, and prepare
the public for the introduction of more authoritarian policing during a
period in which the state was undergoing a ‘crisis of legitimacy’.
Others have taken a more moderate line. Waddington (1986) for example,
argued that there was evidence to suggest that the official reaction to the ‘discovery’
of mugging in the 1970s was not disproportionate. Whitfield (2004) notes
that policing during this period was characterized by a ‘them and us’ approach,
which may well have contributed to a worsening of ethnic minority/police relations.
What is not in doubt, however, is that from the early 1980s onwards,
African-Caribbean communities, especially those in large cities, became the
object of particular media attention and police scrutiny, and that young black
men began entering the criminal justice system in disproportionate numbers.
To conclude, this overview of perceptions of immigration and crime has
shown how successive waves of immigrants, usually residing in socially disadvantaged
communities, have customarily been perceived as ‘different’ from the
majority white population. This difference has been presented in terms of ethnicity,
but also via a focus on the divergent cultures and behaviours attributed
to immigrant groups (divergent, that is, from a perceived indigenous norm or
ideal). Ethnicity was not really an issue linked to ‘crime’ in the early part of the
nineteenth century. However, the rapid Irish immigration of the mid-nineteenth
century, in tandem with the development of the daily press in the same period,
meant that it quickly became one.
Interestingly, while all immigrant groups were subject to societal prejudice
and stereotyping, not all became associated with criminality to the same extent.
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Certainly the Irish were believed by many to be innately criminal. However,
Eastern European immigration at the end of the nineteenth century, which was
significant enough to generate Britain’s first ever peace-time immigration controls,
was not particularly associated with criminality. Likewise, the African-
Caribbean immigrants of the post-war period were not initially associated with
criminality. This perceived link only developed later. Part of the explanation for
this may lie in a consideration of the notion of ‘disorder’. The Irish quarters of
the mid-nineteenth century, and the African-Caribbean communities of the later
twentieth century, were widely perceived to be a threat to order on the streets
of British cities. The Eastern European communities of early twentieth century,
and the influx from the Caribbean in the 1950s, were not so perceived. It might
be argued, therefore, that it is only once an ethnic minority population is
believed to threaten the stability of the host society that it becomes linked to
criminality in the public psyche. This issue will be discussed further in the conclusion.
Now, however, it is time to turn from the suppositions of the media, the
public and politicians, to investigate what has been written about the actual
involvement of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.
Immigration, ethnicity, crime and criminal justice
As discussed above, immigrants and ethnic minorities were subject to a wide
range of prejudices in Britain in the past. As is arguably the case now, different
stereotypes were applied to different ethnic/migrant groups. However, many of
these groups were perceived to have been disproportionately criminal in comparison
with the domestic ‘white’ population. Certainly, at various times, there
were media and public fears about the involvement of Irish, African-Caribbean
and Eastern European immigrants in crime, disorder and political activism.
However, what does historical research indicate about the actual involvement of
immigrants and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system? To what extent
can popular perceptions be said to have been ‘justified’? What other factors
might account for the over-representation of certain groups in the criminal statistics
and the prison population?
It has already been argued that black immigrants were not particularly associated
with criminality during the early part of the nineteenth century. The
empirical studies available confirm this, and appear to indicate that, at this time,
black immigrants were no more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system
than white individuals of comparable social status. Of course, it is important
to remember that the evidence here is quite scarce. Peter King, as part of a
larger work in progress, has noted that the Old Bailey only recorded place of
birth systematically for a brief period between 1791 and 1793. Taking this data,
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however, combined with other trial reports, fragmentary court, reformatory and
prison records, he calculates that the black population of London ‘may well have
been under-represented’ in the courts. Much depends on the population figures
used. If the minimum figure of 5,000 black inhabitants of London in the 1790s
is used, then black people were no more likely to be accused of a crime than
whites. However, if the higher estimate of 15,000 is used, then they were very
much less likely to be in court than whites. In terms of verdict and sentencing,
King also finds that the black population was not unduly disadvantaged. His
findings back up previous work by Myers (1996) – the only other study of the
topic – who found that there was no evidence that the black population of
London was particularly criminal. Patterns of black offending, rather, suggested
‘poor people’s crime, and poor people’s punishment’ (Myers, 1996: 98).
Quite a different picture emerges, however, when the offending patterns of
Irish immigrants is considered later in the century. As argued above, the Irish
were clearly linked in both the public and official mind with certain types of
criminality. Certainly, most studies concur that they were over-represented for
their population size in the criminal statistics. Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley
have noted that ‘the Irish-born were almost three times as likely to face prosecution
as their English neighbours’ (Swift and Gilley, 1989: 165). A number of
local studies of York, Bradford and Wolverhampton have demonstrated how the
Irish comprised 20–30% of total prosecutions in the early 1860s, an index of
over-representation relative to their population size of between 2.5 and 3.3
(Finnegan, 1982; Richardson, 1976; Swift, 1984). In Wales, too, O’Leary (2002:
170) confirms that the proportion of Irish-born criminals in Welsh prisons in the
late 1860s meant that they were around three times more likely to face prosecution
than their white neighbours.
Within this broad over-representation, moreover, it is possible to associate the
Irish with particular types of offences. The authors cited above generally link
Irish offenders with petty criminality and disorder. Irish appearances in court
typically involved the lower magistrates courts (rather than the Quarter
Sessions). Characteristic offences for which they were convicted were drunk
and disorderly, assault and, to a lesser extent, petty theft, vagrancy and resisting
arrest. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that a lot of Irish appearances in
court were for intra-ethnic assaults. Irish migrants were much less likely simply
to assault strangers. Sectarianism (strife between Catholic and Protestant factions)
was a problem in some areas at certain times. While it might be argued
that the offending patterns of the Irish as revealed by criminal statistics do fit
the stereotype of ‘drunken, fighting Irish’, this assertion has to be set in a wider
social context. Assaults on the police, street fighting, and excessive drinking
were all common white working-class traits during the period (Storch, 1976). It
thus becomes hard to disentangle the over-representation of Irish in certain
crime returns from their social status and the prejudice directed against them.
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One point worth noting briefly is that the Irish were often associated with
travelling people and ‘gypsy’ bands. The 1839 Royal Commission on a Constabulary
Force for England and Wales noted that:
three parts of those who are travelling now throughout the kingdom have
Irish blood in them, either from father, mother, or grandmother […] cultivated
minds are not to be looked for amongst such thieves as we are now
describing, who for the most part are of no education, of Irish parents,
totally unacquainted with, and therefore unable to perceive, their own
degraded state.
Travellers of all kinds were increasingly ‘suspect’ during the mid-nineteenth
century, when the working class was becoming increasingly static. Hence, foreign
gypsies and travellers were assumed, almost without question, to be criminal
(Lawrence, 2000). This applies equally to the gypsies who arrived from
Eastern Europe in 1904–07, who provoked widespread antipathy from the working
class and police alike (Holmes, 1988: 64).
The majority of new arrivals from Eastern Europe were not migratory once in
Britain, however, and settled in the East End of London and other areas of major
cities. As already discussed, the prejudicial stereotypes attached to these (mainly
Jewish) immigrants did not initially revolve around crime. Official studies of
criminality among this group at the end of the nineteenth century confirmed
that they were ‘on the whole a peaceful and law-abiding community’ (HMSO,
1894: 61). A Board of Trade report from 1894 investigated the numbers of
Russian and Polish immigrants in prison in London (for it was here that most of
these were concentrated), and plotted this against the population size as a percentage
of the London population. It found that in 1893 there were only 21
Russians or Russian Poles in prison, about 1 per 1,081 of the population. The
average for the indigenous population was slightly lower – meaning the immigrants
from the new group were slightly less likely to be in prison. Obviously,
these numbers were so small and the population figures so approximate that
they are largely meaningless. However, the figures clearly do not highlight crime
as a particular issue affecting Eastern European immigrants.
This picture did change somewhat in the twentieth century. Giving evidence
to the 1903 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Sir Alfred Newton, ex-
Lord Mayor of London and a magistrate at Guildhall Police-Courts, stated that
between 15–20% of all cases brought before him were Germans or Eastern
Europeans. This would indicate a massive over-representation compared to population
size (although it must be remembered that the immigrant population was
very dense in some areas). Other legal witnesses, however, felt that there had
been no recent increase in crime among immigrants and disputed these figures.
What can be said with more certainty is that, despite involvement of Eastern
European (Jewish) immigrants in some high-profile criminal cases (such as the
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1911 Siege of Sydney Street), they were never as disproportionately involved
in the criminal justice system as the Irish were before them, or as the African-
Caribbean population were to become later in the century.
There is no doubt that the African-Caribbean immigrants who arrived in
Britain after 1948 were subjected to widespread public prejudice. In the fields
of housing and employment in particular, discrimination was rife, at least until
the passing of the Race Relations Act of 1968 which gradually began to iron out
the worst biases. During the early period of immigration, however, crime per se,
was not an issue particularly associated with black communities. However, from
the 1970s onwards, crime statistics began to indicate a link between young black
men and particular types of crime – especially street crime. The use of the term
‘mugging’ dates from this period. Data on ethnicity and nationality in relation
to the United Kingdom prison population has only been collected since 1985.
From this point, however, there has been a steady rise here too. This is not the
place for a lengthy debate on recent trends – this is well covered in criminological
literature (see, for example, Phillips and Bowling, 2002; Holdaway, 1996;
Mhlanga, 1997). Suffice it to say that African-Caribbeans have been, for some
decades, over-represented in both arrest figures and in prison populations. This
is particularly striking given that other ethnic minorities (such as South Asians)
are likely to be subject to the same levels of societal prejudice (Daniel, 1968) but
do not end up in criminal justice system in disproportionate numbers. It is also
important to note that all available data shows that ethnic minorities and immigrants
are more likely also to be the victims of a crime than white citizens. This
is not necessarily due to racism but rather due to their poor life chances and
socio-economic circumstances. This was as true in the early nineteenth century
as it is now (Clancy et al., 2001).
How then are we to make sense of this rapid trawl through the offending patterns
of immigrant communities in the last 200 years? A number of points stand out
clearly. Firstly, immigrants have very often been part of the lowest socio-economic
categories. This was true of the black population of early nineteenth-century
England (Myers, 1996: 56–81) and is equally true of the African-Caribbean population
of Britain today (Modood et al., 1997). Other distinctive immigrant
groups, such as the nineteenth-century Irish and Eastern European Jews, have
also been socially disadvantaged within British society. Given that there has traditionally
been a clear association between the lower socio-economic groups and
involvement in the criminal justice system among the indigenous population
(see Chapter 4), it is perhaps not surprising to find that the same often also
applies to immigrants and ethnic minorities.
This is not, however, an infallible rule. The example of the London’s East End
Jewish community shows that a socially disadvantaged ethnic minority is not
inevitably drawn into the criminal justice system in disproportionate numbers.
Similarly, current research indicates a striking difference in rates of imprisonment
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between South Asian and black people, despite the similarities in their socioeconomic
positions. Low social status can only form part of any analysis of ethnicity
and crime. A consideration of the media stereotypes and public prejudices
directed at different groups leads us towards a second reason why immigrants
and ethnic minority groups were (and are) more likely to feature in criminal statistics:
They were (and are) more likely to be watched by the police.
Social groups such as the Irish immigrants of the nineteenth century, and to a
lesser extent the African-Caribbean population of the 1970s, lived in socially
disadvantaged, geographically concentrated communities. As such, they were
very ‘visible’ within contemporary society. This statement of course applies to
most ethnic minority communities. However, as has been argued, the nineteenth
century Irish and the African-Caribbean communities of 1970s were also widely
believed to be culturally predisposed towards certain types of criminality.
Hence, it is likely that these communities were ‘over-policed’ relative to their
numbers. Certainly there is evidence that police officers of all levels during the
nineteenth century shared working-class antipathy towards the Irish, and were
ready to suspect them of crime. Equally, Whitfield (2004) notes that although the
Metropolitan Police began racial-awareness training for recruits in 1964, this
was for many years largely ‘tokenistic’. There is also much evidence to suggest
that, at least until the 1990s, young black men were far more likely to be stopped
and searched without good cause than their white counterparts (Phillips and
Bowling, 2002: 595–7). Both the issue of the long-term social disadvantage often
suffered by immigrant minorities and the increased likelihood of intrusive policing
demonstrate how deep the historical roots of the link between crime and
ethnicity are.
The perpetuation of adverse ethnic stereotypes
It has been argued above that a major factor in the over-representation of ethnic
minorities in the criminal justice system was (and is) their position in British
society. Often languishing in the lower socio-economic groups, they are also
often concentrated in segregated communities which become highly ‘visible’
and targeted (in the past at least) by intrusive patterns of policing. A broader
variable behind this, it has been further argued, are the adverse associations
made by the media and public opinion between ethnic minority communities
and crime. By linking crime to ‘foreign’ elements, British society avoids the need
to critically examine itself. Consider the following two extracts relating to ethnicity
and crime. Although separated in time by almost 150 years, there are
some noteworthy similarities – for example, the way ethnicity is linked to crime.
Yet how reliable are these two different types of historical sources? Moreover,
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what effect might each of these publications have had on the operation of the
criminal justice system?
Report of the Royal Commission on a Constabulary Force, 1839
Extract from pages 95–97, evidence for the Manchester region
97. Much of the new population of these districts consists of strangers
who have immigrated [sic] from other parts of the United Kingdom […] In
Manchester alone there are nearly 30,000 Irish […]
Mr S. Thomas, deputy constable of the township of Manchester:- ‘The
principal charge against the Irish is brutal and disorderly conduct, the
result of their drunken rows. The beer shops are the source of a great deal
of crime, and many of them are kept by the Irish. Illicit spirits are often clandestinely
hawked about by the Irish women. We have sometimes fights
and serious affrays, in which we are forced to show (though we never use)
cutlasses with the Irish […] It is extremely dangerous to execute a warrant
in a factory where many Irish are employed; they will throw bricks and
stones on the officers’ heads as they are coming up stairs, and frequently
succeed in driving them off [….]
The following is an extract from the evidence of Mr Aaron Lees, cotton
manufacturer of Manchester, to the Factory Commissioners:
‘What character do the Irish bear in Manchester?- They are the worst part
of the population; usually the first to turn out, the first to commence riots,
and, in fact, there is no recklessness of conduct which they do not at times
display. I brought a mill a short time ago at Crompsall, and the first thing I
did was to get every Irishman out of the cottages, giving them money as
an inducement to depart quietly. In twelve of these cottages, built back to
back, there were 131 people living in the greatest dirt and destitution. Their
manners are so different to those of the English that, though they receive
the same wages, they always live in misery and dirt, and addicted to spirituous
liquors’.
The Times, 16 April 1981: p. 15, col F
Letters to the Editor – ‘Brixton riots: the ethnic factors’
Sir, Some clear conclusions emerge from the recent riot. First […] given
the attitude of many young West Indians to the police, their apparently low
threshold before violence, and the high level of crime in some areas of
Brixton, the immediate cause is not the important cause. […]
But it is not good enough to blame unemployment and poor housing.
Areas of Glasgow, Liverpool and other big cities have endured such conditions
without erupting into riot. Must we not recognize a specifically ethnic
factor which predisposes West Indian youth – either through things
uniquely done to them or through their own upbringing – to reject police
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and other authority, to turn more readily to crime, and to look to outside
causes for their own misfortunes? […] While analysis remains at its present
superficial level, problems are unlikely to be improved by throwing even
more money at them. […]
Police ability to control riots is clearly inadequate. They suffered heavy
casualties, much property was destroyed and crime proceeded without
check for several hours. Their equipment and tactics need thorough investigating
[…]
On the other hand, rioters themselves receive little deterrent. Their activities
are rewarded by painless excitement, large amounts of loot and the
prize of 200 injured policemen. Only a small proportion of those involved
are arrested, and so far have received derisory sentences. […]
Rioters will be assured of spiritual comfort from social workers, clerics and
politicians who will declare the guilt of society and of the police for what
happens. In view of the readiness with which such statements spring to
the lips of the rioters themselves, it would be interesting to know what
responsibility our social reformers bear for eroding inhibitions against such
an outbreak of violence. Yours faithfully.
In considering the historical worth of both of these sources, caution should be
exercised. The first extract is from a parliamentary Royal Commission report. As
such, it forms part of the printed parliamentary record. One might think that
this would guarantee a certain level of objectivity. Far from it, in this case. In
1836 the Home Secretary had agreed to Sir Edwin Chadwick’s requests for a
Commission to investigate rural policing. Chadwick was keen to extend the
influence of central government and set up new police forces, and ran the
Commission accordingly. He asked leading questions of witnesses and distorted
the evidence presented to the Commission’s other members (Storch and Phillips,
1999: 111–35). Hence, while still an interesting and potentially useful document,
the 1839 Royal Commission Report should definitely be handled with care. The
second extract is from the letters page of The Times. Clearly, The Times is an
extremely prestigious newspaper. It has a small circulation, however, and very
much represents the view of an elite ‘establishment’. Moreover, the extract is
drawn from the letters page. Hence, the value of this evidence is hard to assess.
It might be argued that it is just the opinion of one reader. However, while the
mechanism for which letters are selected for publication is opaque, the letter
presumably expresses sentiments which are not entirely at odds with the
paper’s editorial line.
Both extracts show a clear focus on the criminality of particular ethnic groups –
Irish and West Indians. However, neither displays a simple association between
ethnicity and all types of crime. In the case of the evidence presented to the Royal
Commission there is a view that drink is a major cause of crime (a perception
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which was also very common in relation to the English working class at the
time). In addition, there is a strong focus on disorderly behaviour, fighting and
even rioting. The Irish are perceived to be very resistant to the authority of the
police and these issues are seen as part of a distinctive, and repellent, Irish culture.
As one witness noted, ‘their manners are so different to those of the
English’. Very similar themes can be seen in the extract from The Times. The
author of the letter clearly associates West Indians with crime, but again discounts
economic factors (as in the extract on the Irish, where it was noted they
‘receive the same wages as the English’). Rather, the author highlights an ‘ethnic
factor’ – something uniquely West Indian – which predisposes this group to
criminality. Components of this include a rejection of police and other authority,
a low threshold before violence, and a love of ‘painless excitement’. It might
therefore be argued that there are a lot of similarities in the attitudes these two
extracts reveal.
However, as regards the impact that perceptions such as these might have had
on the operation of the criminal justice system, this is a much harder question
to answer. Obviously, single pieces of evidence such as these would have had no
individual impact at all. What is important is to assess how common such
stereotypes were. If they were extremely common, then it is likely that the pressure
of public opinion they represent would have had an impact on the actions
of the police and central government. Here, perhaps, we may perceive a difference
between the extracts. It is probably fair to say that the prejudices evident
in the 1839 extract were shared by a significant section (if not a majority) of the
English population. In 1981, the views expressed were probably rather less
mainstream. In both cases, however, what we can say is that the background
prejudices of the public in relation to crime and ethnicity were significant in
informing the priorities of the police and of central government in relation to
minority communities.
Summary
Immigration has a long history in Great Britain, and prejudice against racial and
ethnic minorities is equally longstanding. What, however, can we pick out from
this overview of the last two centuries which can help to interpret current
debates on race and crime?
Firstly, it is noteworthy that during the early nineteenth century, there was no
‘race and crime’ issue. This was not due to a lack of minority groups, a lack of
prejudice or indeed a lack of crime. Rather, it was because a) there were relatively
few immigrants living in Britain; b) the daily press had yet to assume its
current form (Hampton, 2004); and c) there was little discussion of crime as a
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generic, abstract social problem. All of these factors underwent rapid change by
the mid-nineteenth century and from that point on ethnic minorities have usually
been associated with criminality of one kind or another.
Secondly, large ethnic minorities have always attracted opprobrium of various
kinds in Britain (although antipathy has never been the sole attitude on display).
However, a study of the Irish of the mid-nineteenth century, and the African-
Caribbean population of the 1970s and 1980s, reveals many similarities in perceptions
and treatment. Both populations were seen as potentially criminal and
both were the target of invasive patterns of policing. One other point of comparison
stands out. Both were associated with disorderly behaviour, a trait which
has traditionally drawn more swift official response than many other sorts of
criminality.
This link provides one possible key as to why immigrants and ethnic minorities
(and, in particular, these immigrants and ethnic minorities) have so often
been linked to criminality. Orderliness is often considered as a quintessentially
English virtue (primarily by the English, it has to be said). As Conley has argued,
it was believed during the nineteenth century that ‘civilized behaviour was what
distinguished Englishmen from others’ (Conley, 2005: 777). Certainly, a common
discursive trope in discussions of criminality during the period was to view
criminality as somehow ‘foreign’, in contrast to ‘British’ values of order, stability,
politeness. For example, in 1872, a report in The Times of an Assize Court in
the North of England described ‘a succession of murder and minor outrages’ as
presenting ‘a picture of drunken brutality such as might be more fitly expected
in some savage island in the far Pacifics’ (Conley, 2005: 777). Given this habit of
describing crime, particularly violent, disorderly crime, as something essentially
foreign to the British way of life, it is a relatively short step from this to actually
associating criminality with immigrants and ethnic minorities within Great
Britain. By defining criminality as something intrinsically alien to the British
national character, it becomes thus something external to ‘British society’. This
enables internal social problems with violence, poverty and alienation to be
externalized and effectively ignored.
Looking back, it becomes apparent that many of the issues discussed in contemporary
criminological literature on race, ethnicity and crime have a long history.
This deep past needs to be unearthed if contemporary patterns of offending
and prejudice are to be combated. As Gilroy has argued, ‘racism is not akin to
a coat of paint on the external structures of social relations which can be scraped
off if the right ideological tools and political elbow grease are conscientiously
applied to the task’ (Gilroy, 1987: 11). Racial prejudice, the linking of ethnicity
and crime in the media and public opinion, and the patterns of policing and justice
this has engendered, are intrinsic to social relations in Great Britain today.
It is only via an appropriate awareness of the way in which these social relations
have built up over successive decades that change in the future will be possible.
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STUDY QUESTIONS
1 Over the last two centuries, what part has the media played in linking together immigration
and crime?
2 What are the similarities and differences between the treatment of Irish immigrants in the
nineteenth century, and West Indian settlers to the UK in the twentieth century?
3 How important have notions of British identity been to the construction of ‘foreign’ traits of
criminality? And why does popular and press opinion tend to ignore structural factors such
as poverty of recent immigrants?
4 Has racism shown itself to be endemic to the criminal justice system since the eighteenth
century, or is it a more recent phenomenon?
FURTHER READING
Gilroy, P. (1987) There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, Routledge: London.
Holmes, C. (1988) John Bull’s Island. Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971, Macmillan:
London.
Myers, N. (1996) Reconstructing the Black Past. Blacks in Britain, c.1780–1830, Frank Cass:
London.
Swift, R. and Gilley, S. (eds) (1989) The Irish in Britain 1815–1931, Barnes and Noble: London.
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SURVEILLANCE: FROM THE WORKPLACE TO THE STREETS?
7
Surveillance: From the
Workplace to the
Streets?
Chapter Contents
Workplace crime and workplace surveillance, 1750–2005 130
The growth of a Big Brother state, 1829–2005? 136
Dystopian futures? 140
The Panopticon revisited 142
Summary 145
Study questions 146
Further reading 146
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OVERVIEW
Chapter 7:
• Provides an overview of the current state of surveillance in the UK today. Over 4 million
cameras watch over the citizens of the UK. To what end? How did surveillance over daily
life grow to these proportions, and has increased surveillance delivered the benefits it
promised?
• Follows the history of surveillance from the private to the public arena. The factory has provided
a strong model for surveillance since the mid-nineteenth century, but how did the
principles and practices of factory surveillance transfer to the streets?
• Explores the possibilities and achievements of surveillance from the growth of a national
police system from 1829 to the introduction of CCTV cameras. Have surveillance techniques
controlled crime and violence – or prevented terrorism?
• Concludes with Bentham’s prison ideas and asks whether, in the twenty-first century, the
UK has become ‘the Panopticon society’.
KEY TERMS
Surveillance Big Brother CCTV Panopticon
At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and
all-powerful… Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the
hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he
will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he
was born... in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens
under constant surveillance. [Now] every citizen, or at least every citizen
important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four
hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda,
with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility
of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete
uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.
(Orwell, 1948).
Of course, we do not have TV screens in our houses reporting back every movement
to a shadowy authority, but nevertheless, some allege that the routine
recording of normal activities such as taking cash from an ATM, filling in forms
that require a huge amount of biographical detail, using biometric passports, and
the prospect of compulsory identity cards, all point to a growing control by the
State over the lives of ordinary people. Most notably there are the seemingly
omnipresent CCTV cameras that watch over us and scrutinize our actions. In the
past decade, the use of CCTV has grown to unprecedented levels. In Britain over
£250 million per year is now spent on a surveillance industry resulting in an estimated
4.2 million cameras surveying public areas – far more cameras than there
are in the whole of the United States. In fact, the UK has one camera for every
14 people. Even quiet backwaters and country villages with low crime rates are
installing CCTV surveillance of public areas, housing estates, car parks and public
facilities, and every year this market grows by 15–20% (Davies, 1996: 183).
It is not surprising that the growth of surveillance has been noticed by sociologists
and criminologists, who have used Foucault’s (1977) work on Bentham’s
ideal prison design of the 1780s to inform their own studies. As Rock (2003)
noted: ‘Michel Foucault’s dramatic simile of Jeremy Bentham’s model prison,
the Panopticon, was put to massive use in criminology… Foucault and those
who followed him wished to argue, modern society is coming to exemplify the
perfection of the automatic exercise of power through generalized surveillance’
(Rock, 2003: 64). Are we, as seems to be an accepted view, living in a Big Brother
society, and if we are, how did we get to this position?
The eyes of God, or at least His earthly agents, had watched over medieval
and early modern society, acting as a strong agent of social control bolstered by
the military power of rulers. When embryonic nation states evolved throughout
the globe in the modern period, and scientific rationalism started to make
inroads against the dominance of religious conformity, armies of the State faced
external enemies, and a host of agencies enforced laws at home against those
who disturbed the peace or the prosperity of the powerful. After the introduction
of the New Police in 1829 and the creation of County forces in 1856, there
was not an un-policed space in the land, at least not in theory. This extension
in surveillance over those considered to be problematic to good public order,
and the extension in centralized governmental control that it seemed to facilitate,
have been considered in Chapters 4 and 5 (along with the other implications
of the introduction of formal uniformed policing). This chapter explores
the history of policing (in its broadest terms) and surveillance as capitalistic
society developed, and begins with an examination of the origins of surveillance
in the workplace.
The factory ranks alongside the prison and the barracks as a totemic symbol
of panopticism for social theorists. For Foucault (1977), Melossi and Pavarini
(1981), and others, the differences between working conditions and prison conditions
were minimal:
‘For the worker the factory is like a prison’ (loss of liberty and subordination);
‘for the inmate the prison is like a factory’ (work and discipline)… The
ideological meaning of this complex reality can be summarised by the
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attempt to rationalise and conceptualise a duel analogy: prisoners must be
workers, workers must be prisoners. (Melossi and Pavarini, 1981: 188,
emphasis added)
They believe that the factory did not consciously imitate the prison, nor the
prison the factory, but both evolved from ideas concerning the control of time
and space. Giddens (1995) stated that: ‘The commodification of time, and its differentiation
from further processes of the commodification of space, hold the
key to the deepest transformations of day-to-day social life that are brought
about by the emergence of capitalism’. Clearly, the factory environment with its
overbearing surveillance was thought by some to benefit capitalistic society by
encouraging workers to be disciplined, compliant and ‘civilized’ to middle-class
standards of morality. However, the following section argues that social theorists
have overstated their case somewhat, and that a review of empirical evidence
may help to re-balance the theoretical position.
Workplace crime and workplace surveillance, 1750–20051
In the industries of eighteenth-century England, many workers labouring as
family units considered it a customary right to keep for themselves some part
of the materials used in their stage of production (which was routinely carried
out in their own cottages).2 The taking of waste materials was rife, particularly
in the textile industry of south west and northern England where it
involved taking pieces of workplace material or some of the waste goods produced
in manufacturing, i.e. the thrums (cloth or woollen waste). Indeed,
most industries saw some form of appropriation of finished goods or raw
materials. Perhaps the most discussed example of eighteenth-century workplace
appropriation is the taking of ‘chips’ (pieces of wood) from the Royal
Dockyards. However, Emsley (2004: 143–73), Styles (1983) and Rule (1981, 1986)
have catalogued a series of out-worker appropriations – including ‘bugging’ by
hatters and shoemakers (whereby cheap material was substituted for the
more valuable material they were supposed to use). These practices were
viewed as a kind of traditional entitlement or perquisite (perk) which had
been passed down through the ages and, as such, they became part of the customary
world that granted rights that were deeply entrenched in (particularly
rural) communities.
However, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, many of the traditional
rights of countryside dwellers were gradually criminalized. These
included gleaning (collecting corn left after harvesting), firebote (gathering small
amounts of wood from forests for the fireplace), the rights of grazing (on common
130
land), and the poaching of small game, which all became subject to the criminal
code in the late eighteenth century.
Like the countryside, the workplace became a conceptual battleground
between the rights of custom and tradition, and the rights of property (Godfrey,
1997). The ‘rights’ of workers to work at their own pace, take home waste material,
and have some autonomy over the conditions of their employment, had
been gradually eroded from the eighteenth century onwards. Linebaugh (1991)
and Hobsbawm (1968) have asserted that both the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries saw the employers attempt to criminalize customary rights within the
workplace (see also Davis, 1987 and 1989), just as other historians have argued
that a parallel process was occurring in the countryside. Indeed, historians such
as Linebaugh place the large body of eighteenth-century legislation against
workplace frauds within the context of what they believe was a defining character
of eighteenth-century criminal law – the transformation of a large number
of infractions that had previously been violations of trust or corporate obligation
into criminal offences against property. This view is typified in the work of Hay
(1983: 27) who said:
the custom of... payment in perquisites, either part of the product or raw
materials, became the subject of extensive penal legislation. Employers
did not always want to eliminate perks: allowing such appropriation by
employees could be a way of escaping employers’ wage-fixing agreements
in times of labour shortage, and also a way of avoiding monetary
wage payment during downturns in the trade cycle. At such times both
capital and labour tacitly agreed on the custom, within limits, of taking
perks. But those limits were always contested, and in the long term, with
expanding inventories, larger workforces, and a sharpening interest in
accurate book-keeping, employers requested, and received, criminal legislation
that designated such appropriation as theft.
In 1777 the textile manufacturers of Yorkshire persuaded Parliament to enact
legislation which outlawed customary perquisites, and established the Worsted
Inspectorate to patrol the region, search suspects’ houses, and apprehend those
suspected of theft from work. Between 1840 and 1880 this agency (which was
controlled by the Worsted Committee made up of leading manufacturers) prosecuted
approximately 3,000 workers.3
However, the introduction of the factory system has been seen as the key
weapon in the employers’ fight to control the employee in the workplace. When
workers were collected together in the centralized production areas of the factory
it offered the employers the possibility of far greater control over their
workers’ time and behaviour. The factory facilitated higher levels of surveillance
over employees, and allowed employers to use both informal punishments and
the law to ‘police’ the behaviour of their workers. It established a complex and
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hierarchical system of managers, supervisors, foremen and overseers who could
watch over the behaviour of the workers. The factory also had physical boundaries
(gatehouses and walls) which helped to prevent theft. Later, mechanization
governed the pace of production, and also the start and finish times of shifts,
which required a strict control over workers’ time, and punishments were
imposed on those who ‘wasted’ their employer’s time by talking to neighbours,
and so on (see Ashton, 1955; Thompson, 1967). Some employers also attempted
to control their workers’ time outside of work by establishing factory sports
teams or providing workers’ outings in order to foster community spirit, but also
to emphasize morality, punctuality and sobriety.
The factory established rigidly organized hierarchies of surveillance, and
numerous sets of rules for workers to abide by, together with a list of punishments
for those that ignored the rules (see the rules of Calderdale Mill and
Stansfield Mill in Godfrey and Lawrence, 2005). Factory rules governing the use
of time and space within the factory were comprehensive, but they would be little
more than rhetorical if there was no-one to enforce them. The overlookers,
overseers and foremen who policed the factory were organized within a system
of delegated authority, and had the ability to mete out informal and formal punishment,
thereby taking up a crucial role in the disciplining of labour.
For those that were caught by the foreman breaking the factory rules, there
were three informal punishments: a fine (some mills were imposing fines on up
to 600 workers a week); physical punishments; or dismissal from employment.
Alternatively he could take the offender to the Worsted Inspector for prosecution
either in the civil court (where financial damages could be claimed by the
employer), or the criminal courts where the offender could receive a month in
prison under the Worsted Acts, or even a capital sentence under the larceny acts
(Godfrey, 1997; Locker and Godfrey, 2006).
The criminal law was clearly an important weapon in the employers’
armoury, but some believe that it was changes in the organization of the workplace
which had the greatest impact on levels of workplace appropriation.
Indeed some have suggested that the factory can be ranked alongside the
prison, the asylum, and the barracks, as a ‘total institution’ (see Foucault, 1977;
Ignatieff, 1983). A number of commentators have debated the existence of ‘total
institutions’ (which controlled most aspects of their inhabitants’ lives) in the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, and have drawn out the similarities between
the factory and the prison (Melossi and Pavarini, 1981). Marxist historians of
management and workplace organization have agreed with this position. For
example, the development of the factory accomplished four aims in Dickson’s
(1989) opinion: first, the suppression of ‘embezzlement’; second, control over
the pace of production; third, the centralization of labour which both facilitated
machine technology, and allowed the control of the worker’s adverse reaction to
new machinery; and lastly, it made capitalists indispensable to production
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because the factories needed large and frequent capital investments. Although
the first two aims were explicitly concerned with labour control, Dickson,
rightly, saw the other aims as also being primarily work discipline measures.
The origins of the factory were therefore embedded in the desire to control
labour, and this desire inevitably spawned supervisors and surveillance techniques
in the workplace. Marglin (1976 and 1984) asserts that this explains why
factories were established with the kind of technology already in place in much
of the cottage textile industry, and also why many factories did not mechanize
until years after their establishment. After all, Gott’s mill in Leeds, a huge and
highly developed complex, was managed for 25 years without mechanization
taking place in any key area of production.
The assumption that centralization, and the concomitant surveillance systems,
were successful in controlling the workers and eradicating workplace theft must
be questioned, firstly, since the criminal law continued to be used until the midtwentieth
century, well beyond the point when the factory was supposed to have
made the law redundant and informal internal disciplines the norm. Secondly,
we have evidence that workplace theft, although no longer considered a customary
right, was still practised well into the twentieth century. For example, a publicity
leaflet for the Worsted Inspectorate issued in 1934 gave details of nine girls
employed in Wakefield who were imprisoned for a month for taking home waste;
a rag and waste dealer was fined £50 for receiving waste from an employee; three
women employed in a mill at Bradford were imprisoned for 21 days for stealing
yarn; and lastly a weaver was convicted of purloining botany weft piece ends and
spools and was fined £5 or 21 days’ imprisonment in default.
These cases may be singular or extraordinary, or possibly the most serious
cases and thought to deserve prosecution where other minor cases may not.
Whatever the case, they do illustrate that the law was still being used to discipline
offending workers (and that workers were still illegally removing goods
from work) well into the 1950s as Godfrey and Lawrence (2005) demonstrated.
Traditional ideologies about crime focused predominantly upon the lowerclass
offender as the chief social problem, and although there was no great public
debate about workplace theft, the poor weavers and factory labourers would
also have been classed as common or garden criminals. However, by the midnineteenth
century the Victorian public was becoming increasingly aware of
breaches of financial trust associated with higher status employees, such as
clerks and departmental supervisors. As Locker (2005) noted: ‘Cases of fraudulence
and dishonesty were seen with growing frequency both within the public
and private arenas of Victorian England, bringing not only media attention but
also higher levels of scrutiny and supervision in the business environment (see
Emsley, 2006: 298; Wiener, 1990: 244–56).
Traditional family businesses controlled their small number of employees
who had financial duties simply by working in the same physical space as them
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and developing personal ties (Anderson, 1976: 30; Hall, 1952; Robb, 1992;
Fukuyama, 1996: 63–4). Where these social bonds between employers and
employees were strong, opportunities and temptations to commit acts of fraud
were reduced. But these subtle controls were removed in the large joint-stock
companies that grew in the Victorian period (Cressey, 1971). Joint-stock companies
were financed through shareholders, tended to be large and complex organizations
employing large numbers of staff, and generated large amounts of
revenue (Perkin, 1971: 179). The opportunities for fraud and embezzlement
amongst the growing class of clerks and accountants grew alongside the joint
stock companies. Charles Dickens, the author and social commentator, noted in
1860 that ‘The leading delinquency of the present day, is the robbery of jointstock
companies by confidential servants’ (Dickens, 1860a: 202). The employers
responded by sacking or prosecuting offenders, making ‘trusted’ employees provide
sureties to indemnify their employers against fraudulent losses, and
increased levels of surveillance. By the end of the nineteenth century, Van Oss
(1898: 734, quoted in Locker and Godfrey, 2006) commented:
For better or for worse, the shareholder has for good supplanted the old
private proprietor, and a permanent change has come over British business.
It can scarcely be doubted that this change has, to put it mildly, been
a change for the worse… Personal ownership has ceased to be the controlling
power in trade; and when it left it took along with it that personal
care, personal supervision, and personal responsibility which made our
business great, and which so long kept it great… Instead of men who
depend for their very living upon their zeal, their energy, and their judgment
we have… men who depend for their living upon the salaries paid to them
by companies. Instead of people who work for their business day and
night we have people who as it were stand outside the business they govern,
who take things easy, meet once a week or once a fortnight, and leave
the rest to hirelings who, though they may do their best, must in the nature
of things be less efficient than direct owners, and who must become commercially
demoralised by the knowledge that they serve a concern which
virtually has no supervising head, and which neither restrains by rigid discipline
nor encourages with the prospect of gratitude… if [British business
is] really deteriorating it deteriorates chiefly because the system of personal
responsibility which made it, and which so long kept it great, is
gone… A board of directors or a general manager cannot be in touch with
employees in the same way as a master is with his men, and certainly cannot
have the same influence.
Surveillance was therefore expanding to cover all areas of the business enterprise
and all types of workers by the start of the twentieth century. If anything,
however, it was even harder to watch over the activities of higher-grade staff
than it was over the shop floor. The appointment of investigating accountants,
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internal auditors, and the regular checking of the books did not eradicate fraud,
as Locker and Godfrey (2006: 985) demonstrated: ‘As a continual stream of
cases attested, throughout the nineteenth century inadequacies in the internal
supervisory mechanisms of many companies enabled white-collar employees,
with the opportunity and knowledge, to manipulate paper documents and
appropriate company money, often remaining undetected over considerable
periods of time’.4
Whilst some have interpreted the use of the criminal law against the higher
staff echelons as evidence that the State did not bear down solely on the labouring
classes, Lea has been quick to remind us that embezzling clerks can not be
considered to be members of a managerial class (Lea, 2002: 58). In fact, one
could even argue that surveillance helped to lower the status of clerks in a sense,
reducing them to the same level as shop-floor workers. However, we should not
be too quick to see the State’s hand here at all. The victim-led prosecution system
had been declining in importance throughout the late nineteenth-century
(see Kearon and Godfrey, 2007), but the State had never been enthusiastic about
governing private workspaces, with the prosecution of both higher- and lowergrade
workers being left with the victimized business owners. For example,
between 1777 and 1880, the police routinely left cases of workplace appropriation
to private security agencies (mainly the Worsted Inspectorate). In the midtwentieth
century, the Crime Prevention Department of the city of London
Police Force issued a booklet also emphasizing that the security of the office
workspace was not primarily a police responsibility. The message was reinforced
by the booklet featuring advertisements for Chubb safes and locks, the
Burgot Burglar Alarm, the British Insurance offices and Securicor.
The organization of discipline and surveillance in the factory clearly had great
symbolic importance (to contemporaries and to modern theorists), and was
arguably effective in combating time-wasting and helping to shape a factory culture
in which work indiscipline was increasingly disapproved of by workers and
employers alike. Nevertheless, workplace appropriation remained, and ebbed
and flowed with economic conditions. It seems clear that the factory system is
not, and has never been, sufficient by itself to eradicate workplace ‘theft’. It is
a similar story with higher-grade workers and fraudulent accounting practices.
The new controls and more rigorous checks on clerks and foremen, and the
investigating accounting departments, did not eradicate embezzlement and
financial fraud. Until at least the 1950s, employers still used the criminal law to
punish workplace offenders. By that date, the factory environment, particularly
in the USA, had been altered in accordance with Fordist styles of labour organization
which appeared to offer new and even more dominant techniques of surveillance.
However, even production line work organization, with dedicated
workers forming a continual process of production from raw material to finished
product, was rife with ‘fiddling’. Moreover, Henry (1978), Mars (1982), and
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Ditton (1995) all found that underlying notions of customary entitlement persisted
well into the twentieth century. Whether inside the factory system, or in
less-supervised areas of work, some – maybe many – employees continued to
cheerfully appropriate their employer’s property.
In the twenty-first century, a reformation of work organization has again
brought new disciplines and new techniques of surveillance over employees –
for example, call centre workers have their interactions with customers
recorded, timed and examined (Hamerlink, 2000; Jewkes, 2003), and Jewkes
(2003: 196) states that, the ‘information-gathering net’ is constantly expanding
to encompass aspects of workers’ private lives, personal characteristics,
appearance, and so on. Genetic testing and screening are being introduced into
the workplace to allow employers to assess the behavioural dispositions of
potential employees and their propensities to certain illnesses’. It is possible
that workplace supervision could be refined, by innovations such as these
amongst others, to a point where it completely eradicates workplace ‘theft’,
but it does appear that all attempts at this have hitherto been incomplete, inadequate
and ill-founded.
The history of surveillance of the workplace, especially for the late twentieth
century, is beginning to be well-documented in criminological texts. In general,
however, it was not the surveillance of workplaces that attracted media attention.
The growing surveillance over public areas has prompted more comment,
and latterly, anxiety. The following section asks how surveillance of the streets
came to be so embedded in daily life – and to what extent the workplace was
the model for that extension of surveillance into the public sphere.
The growth of a Big Brother state, 1829–2005?
Whilst historians have debated the efficiency of Parish Watches and private
forces, generally the introduction of the New Police in 1829 has been seen as the
moment when the State achieved the possibility of maintaining public order (see
Godfrey and Lawrence 2005, and Chapter 4). Indeed, for Williams, ‘the beat
policeman was designed as, amongst other things, a machine for surveillance.
He was to monitor a defined area, bringing it under his view, and reporting what
went on to his superior officers’ (Williams 2003: 9), but his attention was not
solely on criminal acts. Robert Storch (1976: 481) argued that policemen did far
more than prevent and fight crime. He argued that the wider mission was ‘to act
as an all-purpose lever of urban discipline… to mould a labouring class
amenable to new disciplines of both work and leisure’. The uniformed ‘domestic
missionary’ would thereby reform behaviour and instill middle-class moral
codes into the working classes. If that was the intention, then surveillance
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would be as crucial in the public streets as it was thought to be in the workplace.
Police activity was therefore always focused upon particular areas and sections
of society, protecting the prosperous areas by watching the dwellers of the
poorer areas. By the 1850s the segregation of the poor and the wealthy into different
parts of the Victorian city, and later processes of suburbanization, had
created distinct areas where the problem populations were said to dwell. For
Brogden (1982: 62–3), this meant that the police mission was ‘to divide off, to
map out, the lower class areas’– and the behaviour that occurred within the
problem areas – ‘“disorderly boys’, ‘children trundling hoops’, ‘rough characters’,
‘prostitutes’, ‘hawkers’, ‘Arab children’, and adults playing pitch and toss”’.
The areas the constables patrolled most actively were not chosen accidentally,
and neither was the choice of persons he watched. Strangers, the disrespectful
and disreputable, were all targets as ‘police property’.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, policing practice grew more sophisticated
and the calibre of officers improved; both of these (together with nascent
criminological and social theory) persuaded police officers that more dangerous
enemies of society lurked in the shadows – a hard core professional ‘class’ of
criminals who were deemed incorrigible, their criminal habits thought to be
embedded as hereditary moral weaknesses or as family practices (see Godfrey
and Lawrence, 2005; Godfrey et al., 2007, and Chapter 5). Social policy and
policing practice reoriented to contain this putative criminal class. The Habitual
Criminals Act of 1869 and the Prevention of Crime Act of 1871 both identified
repeat offenders as the primary threat to law and order (Wiener, 1990; Bailey,
1993), and charged the police with supervising released prisoners for a period
of seven years post-release. There had long been a desire to locate and watch
over those thought prone to criminality. Bertillon in France, and the colonial
authorities in British India, had attempted to register the more serious offenders,
and the Habitual Offenders registers assisted this process, but it wasn’t until
1897 that a serious attempt to aid police officers on the streets was made (see
Ireland, 2004). The Habitual Offenders Registry at the Home Office was moved
to the Metropolitan Police HQ and information on released prisoners began to
be circulated to police forces. If the police were required to keep surveillance
over the habitually criminal, however, they left the field open for non-official
policing agencies to fill the breach.
A whole host of quasi-criminal activities were brought under legislation during
the nineteenth century; from street-trading to fairs, from common-lodging houses
to licensing legislation. The army of local authority appointees – charity workers
(from the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Royal Society
for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Royal Society for Protection of
Birds); nuisance, market, sanitary and truancy inspectors; and tax and rate inspectors
– which marched along together from the 1880s, were more active than the
police in prosecuting infringements of legislation, official regulations and by-laws.
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From 1880, approximately half the prosecutions at local magistrates’ courts were
for ‘regulatory’ type offences. The police had largely replaced individual victims
as the main prosecuting agency by 1880, only to be largely replaced themselves
by officials and charity workers by 1900. When the First and Second World Wars
necessitated greater control of lighting, retailing and transport, the general surveillance
of daily life was probably greater than it ever had been before.
This was, of course, a surveillance regime that relied heavily on diligent personnel.
After the Second World War, however, technological innovation seemed
to offer a more sophisticated method of control, and the inability of the police
to cope with crime on limited resources made the use of unit beats, mobile
patrols and CCTV attractive. The first experiments in police CCTV began during
the 1960s. When the CCTV system was first installed in London around
Trafalgar Square, the House of Commons and Hyde Park, the rationale was as
rudimentary as the cameras. Whilst to some it was a way of watching over the
safety of Parliament, to others it was for traffic control, and for others a way of
preventing disorder during political demonstrations (Williams, 2003: 12).
Whatever the reasons, the Liverpool police force also thought it worth experimenting
with camera systems. In order to reassure the public that their privacy
was not to be compromised without reason, the Chief Constable of Liverpool
announced that this was a valuable way of protecting the public from violent
attacks. Although during the experiment it did nothing to detect crimes of violence,
this became (and still is) a common justification for CCTV in the UK. A
telling quote from the Commander of Special Branch came in 1966 – cameras
would mount a ‘psychological attack upon the criminal’. The deterrent effect of
cameras was clearly an important idea at this time, although it was broadly
acknowledged that for this to be effective, police officers would need to be on
hand to catch anyone who offended within sight of a camera.
Experiments in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s (including outdoor CCTV
in Bournemouth in 1985), eventually led to several larger trial programmes in
the early 1990s. These were deemed successful in the government report ‘CCTV:
Looking Out For You’, issued by the Home Office in 1994, and paved the way
for a massive increase in the number of CCTV systems installed. The exact number
of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known but a 2002 working paper by
Michael McCahill and Clive Norris, based on a small sample in Putney High
Street, ‘guesstimated’ the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in
London as around 400,000 and that the total number of cameras in the UK could
be as high as four million.
As previously noted, some commentators (Coleman and Sim, 2000; Coleman
2004) have condemned CCTV as yet another funnel of power pushing down upon
the poor, whilst ignoring the crimes of the powerful. Marx (2002) does point out
that many modern forms of surveillance do actually target the activities of the
propertied consumer, but these commentators are effectively discussing different
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forms and technologies of surveillance. CCTV merely refines policing practices
albeit in indirect ways and without using police personnel, whilst Marx
focuses on more subtle forms of information-gathering which is designed for
other purposes. Others have alleged that the passive-intrusive gaze of CCTV
has allowed police to be successively removed from the community they are
protecting, and reduced the relationship between the police and ordinary people
(Crawford, 1998).5
Nevertheless, increasingly, police forces, local authorities and residents’ associations
are placing camera systems into housing estates and areas where prostitution
or ‘street violence’ is concentrated. Tens of thousands of cameras
operate in public places, in phone booths, vending machines, buses, trains, taxis,
alongside roads and particularly motorways, inside Cashpoints (Automatic Teller
Machines) and in a host of public areas.6 Many town and city centres in Britain
are now covered by remote surveillance camera systems involving a linked system
of cameras with full pan, tilt, zoom and infrared capacity. Their use on private
property is also becoming popular. CCTV surveillance has the potential to
creep inside the home, with many products offering to survey and protect the
area around the house from troublesome teenagers and cold callers. Andrew
May, Assistant Chief Constable of South Wales, has urged victims of domestic
violence to conceal video cameras in their homes to collect evidence, and technology
is already being used in hospitals in Staffordshire to support covert surveillance
of parents suspected of abusing their children. According to the Home
Office booklet, ‘CCTV: Looking out for you’ (1994), the technology can be a solution
for problems such as vandalism, drug use, drunkenness, racial harassment,
sexual harassment, loitering and disorderly behaviour (see Garland, 2002; Lea,
2002; Honess and Charman, 1992). Advocates of CCTV now champion it as a
weapon in the fight against terrorism. The Terrorism Act (2006) contains a comprehensive
package of measures designed to ensure that the police, intelligence
agencies and courts have all the tools they require to tackle terrorism and bring
perpetrators to justice.7 As Jewkes (2005: 185) stated ‘As communications intelligence
has moved its operations from narcotics trafficking, money laundering
and terrorism to intercept “ordinary” citizens’ personal and commercial telex
messages, mobile phone communications, e-mails and Internet traffic, notions of
what is “acceptable” in the interests of security are once again coming under
scrutiny.’ As in the nineteenth-century context, surveillance is not neutral, but
falls disproportionately on Muslim, Asian or even just ‘foreign looking’ suspects
(See Lyon, 2001; and essays in Zureik and Salter, 2005).
Despite the claims made for CCTV in the realm of crime and terrorism control,
however, its successes have been limited. It may have had some success in
reducing fear of crime (although not even this is certain, since the presence of
CCTV cameras often provoked unease that one is entering an area ‘where crime
happens’); and it may have reduced or at least displaced car crime and prostitution.
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It has helped to convict defendants who were caught on camera. But these
successes were not on the scale envisaged by champions of CCTV. The introduction
of CCTV has not reduced crime or deterred criminal behaviour on a large
scale; they have displaced rather than reduced crime; they have been expensive;
and they have not engendered a general increase in surveillance but an increase in
general surveillance. The CCTV camera has become a totemic symbol of surveillance,
but is one of the least subtle and least effective methods of surveillance.
Moreover, as Norris and Armstrong (1999) have also pointed out, CCTV cameras
have an inability to provide ‘coverage’ and terrorists have planted explosives out
of camera-shot with relative ease. Not surprisingly, many commentators (from
both sides of the political spectrum) have questioned the nature and efficiency
of surveillance in the UK and the direction it is taking.
Dystopian futures?
For Lyon (1994) and Dandaker (1990), there has been a growing sophistication
of surveillance techniques since the crude attempts to oversee factory labour.
Indeed these authors chart a long history of surveillance. In the modern period,
patronage and personal favour as a form of control was largely replaced with
impersonal bureaucratic power; the nation states formed not only armies to
guard their borders, but also domestic forces of control to watch over their subjects;
the processes of manufacture required the collecting together of thousands
of workers, controlled with a hierarchy of supervisors; the protection of citizens
from harm required the new sciences of psychology and criminology to categorize
and identify the potentially dangerous; electronic technology enabled massive
amounts of information not only to be stored, but also quickly processed
and shared between the powerful bureaucracies; and the information age which
defines modernity is born, or as Lyon said:
organizations of many kinds know us only as coded sequences of numbers
and letters. This was once worked out on pieces of paper collated in folders
and kept in filing cabinets, but now the same tasks – and many others,
unimaginable to a Victorian clerk – are performed by computer. Precise
details of our personal lives are collected, stored, retrieved and processed
every day within huge computer databases belonging to big corporations
and government departments. This is ‘surveillance society’. (Lyon, 1994: 3)
Few would doubt that the capacity of the government and private enterprise
to know more about ‘us’ has increased, and that those agencies do regularly take
advantage of this capacity. But perhaps the routine transfer of information from
the citizen to the state is part of participatory democracy. For example, many
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agree that a certain level of personal freedom must be sacrificed in dangerous
times, and with the justification of avoiding terrorist outrages, governments
across the Western world now feel able to claim more and more information
about the daily activities of ordinary people. Moreover, the ease with which people
give over personal information could be taken as a demonstration of
increased trust in society, not fear (though many would dispute this).
But Lianos asks how it is possible to have total surveillance in a society with
pluralistic sources of power and authority – where are the Big Brothers in our
society who could combine to produce a totalitarian surveillance? ‘The organization
and the nature of power cannot remain immutable and subject to atemporal
criteria whilst sociality transforms itself in a radical way. Once the
dynamics of the social universe are disregarded, it is easy to produce dark
visions by simply focusing on the likely operation of future technological systems,
which will presumably become more complex and accurate in their interaction
with human behaviour, social, private or intimate’ (Lianos, 2003: 418).
This was a line that can be traced back to a seminal article by Philp Stenning
and Clifford Shearing: ‘Surveillance is pervasive but it is the antithesis of the
blatant control of the Orwellian state: its source is not government and its vehicle
is not Big Bother. The order of instrumental discipline is not the unitary
order of a central state but diffuse and separate orders defined by private
authorities responsible for the feudal-like domains of Disney World, condominium
estates, commercial complexes and the like’ (Shearing and Stenning,
1996:). However, whether the central control of the surveillance enterprise is
one embedded in State control or a pluralistic and diffuse network of interlinked
private and commercial agendas, this chapter has demonstrated that the demand
for information on the powerless by the powerful is not new. The historical road
from the factory foreman in private businesses to the anonymous controller of
CCTV cameras on public streets has been a long and uncomfortable one.
Moreover the progress of surveillance recalls historical concerns, theories and
practices which have hitherto been thought dormant. For example, John Lea
recently commented that the ‘reliance by police agencies on technological surveillance
rather than public communication’ and the proclivity and ability
of private persons (the propertied) to install private surveillance around their
homes and businesses suggests that society is returned to earlier forms of privatized
public protection – to a time before the New Police were formed (Lea,
2002: 184). The categorization of personal – bodily – information, i.e. retinal
scans, fingerprints, facial video recognition, and so on, in modern times also
restates the anthropomorphic-centred criminology of the nineteenth-century
Lombrosian School, again placing the body at the centre of police attention.
Modern surveillance therefore recalls nineteenth-century theorists, equals their
ambition, but fails to complete their project. Is it time to also revisit the
Panopticon as a model for the surveillance society?
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The Panopticon revisited
The panopticon is now considerably more than a brick and mortar edifice,
but is also easily the leading scholarly model or metaphor for analyzing
surveillance. In this latter role the panopticon has also become oppressive.
The sheer number of works that invoke the panopticon is overwhelming…
(Haggerty, 2006)
Yar (2003: 254–5) has usefully categorized some of the studies that Haggerty
may have been thinking of. He sketches out the ideas of those who broadly support
the extension of panopticism into society (Norris and Armstrong, 1998,
1999; McCahill, 2002); those that believe it was a historically located moment
which has given way to more sophisticated logics of control (Deleuze, 1995;
Rose, 1999, 2000). Lastly, there are those who have posited super-panopticism
(Poster, 1990). These theorists are only some of the large number of researchers
revisiting Fouaultian theories, and by extension therefore revisiting Bentham’s
original views of a Panoptic prison. Why has Bentham’s Panopticon been so useful
and malleable to criminological theory, how did the Panopticon develop outside
of theoretical constructs (in bricks and mortar), and is the concept still
useful to describe the Surveillance State?
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), was an English philosopher, non-practising
lawyer, jurist, and political theorist. His major work, an Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation published in 1789, applied utilitarian theory
to morality and the pursuit of the greatest level of happiness for the greatest
number of people. He devised a kind of moral arithmetic for judging the value
of a pleasure or a pain. He argued that self-interests, properly understood, are
harmonious and that the general welfare is bound up with personal happiness.
He also wrote tracts on prison reform, the codification of the laws, and extension
of political franchise, but it was his proposal for a new model prison published
in 1787 that has been the subject of most attention, especially for social
policy theorists:
Panopticon: or the inspection-house: containing the idea of a new principle
of construction applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of
any description are to be kept under inspection; and in particular to penitentiary-
houses, prisons, houses of industry, work-houses, poor-houses,
lazarettos, manufactures, hospitals, mad-houses, and schools: with a plan
of management adapted to the principle: in a series of letters, written in the
year 1787, from crecheff in white russia. to a friend in england by jeremy bentham,
of lincoln’s inn, esquire.
The building is circular. The apartments of the prisoners occupy the circumference.
You may call them, if you please, the cells. These cells are divided
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from one another, and the prisoners by that means secluded from all communication
with each other, by partitions in the form of radii issuing from
the circumference towards the centre, and extending as many feet as shall
be thought necessary to form the largest dimension of the cell. The apartment
of the inspector occupies the centre; you may call it if you please the
inspector’s lodge… Each cell has in the outward circumference, a window,
large enough, not only to light the cell, but, through the cell, to afford light
enough to the correspondent part of the lodge. The inner circumference of
the cell is formed by an iron grating, so light as not to screen any part of
the cell from the inspector’s view. Of this grating, a part sufficiently large
opens, in form of a door, to admit the prisoner at his first entrance; and to
give admission at any time to the inspector or any of his attendants. To cut
off from each prisoner the view of every other, the partitions are carried on
a few feet beyond the grating into the intermediate area: such projecting
parts I call the protracted partitions… To the windows of the lodge there
are blinds, as high up as the eyes of the prisoners in their cells can, by any
means they can employ, be made to reach. To prevent thorough light,
whereby, notwithstanding the blinds, the prisoners would see from the cells
whether or not any person was in the lodge, that apartment is divided into
quarters, by partitions formed by two diameters to the circle, crossing each
other at right angles. For these partitions the thinnest materials might serve;
and they might be made removeable at pleasure; their height, sufficient to
prevent the prisoners seeing over them from the cells… To save the troublesome
exertion of voice that might otherwise be necessary, and to prevent
one prisoner from knowing that the inspector was occupied by
another prisoner at a distance, a small tin tube might reach from each cell
to the inspector’s lodge, passing across the area, and so in at the side of
the correspondent window of the lodge. By means of this implement, the
slightest whisper of the one might be heard by the other…
These proposals were taken by Michel Foucault to epitomize the movement in
disciplinary power from the punishment of the body to the punishment of the
mind (or soul). What interested Foucault primarily was the fact that the centre
of the Panopticon, where surveillance of each cell was possible, need not contain
a human element. Inmates felt that they may be being watched, but never
knew whether this was actually the case. This ‘internalization’ of the perception
of being watched was taken to have a profound and coercive effect on human
behaviour. The idea of the disembodied anonymous operation of surveillant
power infused much of Foucault’s work, and has become a theoretical paradigm
in modern criminology.
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state
of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning
of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its
HISTORY & CRIME
effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power
should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural
apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation
independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should
be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.
To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should
be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he
knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of
being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should
be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his
eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon.
Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at
any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to
make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners,
in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only
venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the
inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass
from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest
noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray
the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating
the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without
ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being
seen. (Foucault, 1977: 195–228)
A very limited number of prisons actually adopted and adapted panoptic ideals,
and only then to a limited extent. These include Joliet in Illinois and the Twin
Towers Facility in Los Angeles. However, in fact, British textile factories were
the first (and really the only true) structures to be built on panoptic principles.
For example, Belper Round Mill was built in 1813 by William Strutt, a member
of the Lunar Society – a group of manufacturers and writers who met monthly
to discuss philosophy, mathematics, architecture and social issues. The factory
incorporated many panoptic features to facilitate the constant supervision of
workers, but was later replaced by mill buildings which were more suited to
mechanized production than the Round Mill. The panoptic gaze, whether incorporated
directly into commercial architecture or not, seemed to bore into the
soul of workers, prisoners, and the ordinary citizen, in a way which disciplined
the general population into routines of self-regulation and self-governmentality
which suited mature capitalist enterprises (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000). The
Panopticon design did not perfect supervision, of prisoners or workers, but as an
idea has dominated academic discourse on surveillance and the informationordering
of society. It has come to epitomize public fears about the apparent
constant extension of police and governmental scrutiny, but have those fears
really been realized?
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Summary
So, in conclusion, it is certainly possible to write a history of progressive
surveillance of the powerful over the less powerful; and the processes and technologies
of surveillance seem to be advancing as evidence presented in this
chapter has shown. One can list a number of surveillance technologies ranging
from the important (preventative policing, CCTV, habitual and later sex
offender registers, and so on) to the seemingly trivial (the placing of cameras in
dustbins to assess the scale of recycling waste materials). All speak to the
greater regulation of society. But some speak softly, and most are inadequate,
incomplete or plain daft. The subjects of surveillance – which at first were the
criminal and the lunatic, then the factory worker, and now the general public
– are increasingly vocal in their resistance to new forms of surveillance. They
seem to have a greater distrust of government to collect information accurately
Figure 7.1 Diagram of the Panopticon
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146
and to use it wisely. Not least this is because the loose web of different forms of
surveillance seem incapable of protecting society – people still fear violent
attacks on the street, commuters and shoppers still anticipate terrorist attacks.
One could contentiously suggest that the public need to decide whether they
should rail against the increase in surveillance or against the fact that there isn’t
enough of it.
The conclusion to this chapter must be that the panoptic project, if it is even
possible to speak of it in those terms, is incomplete. Moreover, it is incoherent.
For much of its history, surveillance technology has been in search of an agenda
to serve; if stopping street crime has not served that purpose then the War
against Terror may well do, for the very incoherence and impossibility of that
aim seems to give surveillance-mindedness free reign. It may well be that 50
years hence we are looking back to the early twenty-first century as the halcyon
days of freedom compared to the surveillance society that may then be in place.
However, the likelihood is that surveillance will increase, but that it will also
continue to fail to deliver what it promises – or threatens.
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 How did surveillance operate in private spaces such as the nineteenth-century textile factories?
2 How were the possibilities of surveillance over public space increased by the extension of
a national police system from 1829 to the introduction of CCTV cameras in the twentieth
century?
3 What are the purposes of general surveillance, and how successful has surveillance been in
achieving those aims?
4 Is Bentham’s Panopticon a relevant analogy for today’s situation?
FURTHER READING
Dandaker, C. (1990) Surveillance, Power and Modernity. Bureaucracy and discipline from
1700 to the present day, Polity Press: Cambridge.
Lyon, D. (1994) The Electronic Eye. The Rise of Surveillance Society, Polity Press: Cambridge.
Lyon, D. (2001) Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life, Open University Press:
Buckingham.
Lyon, D. (2006) ‘The search for surveillance theories’, in D. Lyon (ed.) Theorizing Surveillance.
The Panopticon and beyond, Willan Publishing: Cullompton.
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SURVEILLANCE: FROM THE WORKPLACE TO THE STREETS?
Notes
1 This section of the chapter draws on Godfrey (1999) and Godfrey and Lawrence (2005).
2 The taking home of workplace materials by employees has had various labels attached to it – some
refer to the practice as workplace appropriation, pilfering, ‘fiddling’, or ‘embezzlement’. The multiplicity
of terms for this activity reflects the conceptual differences between customary rights
established by tradition, and theft (see Hobsbawm, 1968).
3 Moreover, by adapting their detective methods to the context of factory production, they continued
as the most important employers’ policing/prosecution agency for approximately 200 years (for a
history of this organization see Soderlund, 1998 and Godfrey, 2002).
4 For a discussion of the historical dimensions of white-collar crime see Locker and Godfrey, 2006;
see also seminal works by Sutherland (1940, 1941, 1945, 1949); and modern studies by Cressey
(1971); for discussion of middle-class crime and how it has been conceived by historians, see
Sindall (1983), Johnston (1998), Jenkins (1987). It would also be worthwhile looking at the development
of trust within the business and commercial environment in Fukuyama (1996).
5 Wells alleges that, along with other factors, automatic detection of speeding motorists has also
brought about a crisis of legitimacy for modern policing (Wells, 2005).
6 The use of these camera is controlled by the Data Protection Act 1998 which in the United
Kingdom led to legal restrictions being imposed on the use to which CCTV footage can be put, and
also mandated their registration with the Data Protection Agency (DPA). The successor to the DPA,
the Information Commissioner in 2004 clarified that this required registration of all CCTV systems
with the Commissioner, and prompt deletion of archived footage. However subsequent case law
(Durant vs FSA) has limited the scope of the legal protection provided by this law, and not all
CCTV systems are currently regulated.
7 Covert surveillance, as used by Public authorities under Part II of the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers Act 2000, falls within two categories: directed surveillance or intrusive surveillance. Directed
surveillance is defined in section 26(2) of the 2000 Act as surveillance which is covert, but not intrusive,
and undertaken for the purposes of a specific investigation or specific operation in such a manner
as is likely to result in the obtaining of private information about a person (whether or not one
specifically identified for the purposes of the investigation or operation) otherwise than by way of an
immediate response to events or circumstances the nature of which is such that it would not be reasonably
practicable for an authorisation under Part II of the 2000 Act to be sought for the carrying
out of the surveillance. Directed surveillance investigations or operations can only be carried out by
those public authorities who are listed in or added to Part I and Part II of schedule 1 of the 2000 Act.
The definition of intrusive surveillance is defined in section 26(3) of the 2000 Act as covert surveillance
that is carried out in relation to anything taking place on any residential premises or in any private
vehicle involving the presence of an individual on the premises or in the vehicle or is carried
out by means of a surveillance device. Applications to carry out intrusive surveillance can only be
made by the senior authorizing officer of those public authorities listed in or added to section 32(6)
of the 2000 Act or by a member or official of those public authorities listed in or added to section
41(1). See http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/counter-terrorism-strategy/legislation/terrorism-act-2006.

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149
8
Incarceration
and
Decarceration
Chapter Contents
Ways of looking at punishment 152
The pre-reform system of punishment 154
The promise of the penitentiary and the reformatory 156
The death penalty, corporal punishment and transportation 159
Reformatory philosophies and their roots 160
The ongoing public debate about prison conditions 162
Punishing the criminal or punishing the crime 165
The role of punishment in the late twentieth century 167
Reviewing changing modes of punishment 168
Summary 171
Study questions 172
Further reading 172
OVERVIEW
Chapter 8:
• Discusses the aims of punishment – deterrence, rehabilitation, capacitation and retribution –
and how these have developed over time.
• Explores the promise of the penitentiary and the reformatory, the use of the death penalty, corporal
punishment, transportation, and the longstanding debate about prison conditions.
• Asks: What about punishment today? If the nineteenth century can be described as the era of
mass imprisonment, and the late twentieth century saw record numbers of prisoners in the UK,
will the twenty-first century be the period of decarceration? This and other questions are considered
in the conclusion to this chapter.
KEY TERMS
mass imprisonment punishment incapacitation decarceration
Historians of criminal justice have long been fascinated with punishment. This is
largely due to the central role in the theorization of the topic that was played by
the French philosopher Michel Foucault. His classic work Discipline and Punish:
the Birth of the Prison was first published in 1975 as Surveiller et Punir, and translated
into English in 1977 (see Chapter 7). In it, Foucault turned the history of the
prison on its head. Gone was the largely positive account that celebrated the history
of the prison as a progressive triumph over the old corrupt and inefficient
penal system, in which a few far-sighted humanitarians overcame vested interests
to produce the efficient, modern and humane system of the present. Instead, he
argued that in the modern system, power was far more ubiquitous and oppressive
than it had previously been, and that whole systems of science and technology
were now devoted to making the prisoner more of a totally controlled subject. His
book involved a series of memorable images and sweeping pronouncements.
Discipline and Punish begins with two detailed pictures of the changing face of
punishment. The first, intended to illustrate the pre-modern tendency to punish
the body, is the horrific execution in 1757 of the French criminal Damiens, convicted
of attempting to kill the King. He was torn apart by horses, while the flesh
was ripped from his body and red-hot metal poured into the wounds. The next is
the daily routine at a reformatory school for young offenders in 1837. The schedule
is so detailed that every minute of the day is controlled, and each inmate is
under constant surveillance. The mind, not the body, was now being punished.
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Over the last 25 years, Foucault’s views about the role that power, knowledge,
and surveillance play in modern society have proved to be very influential in the
way that theorists and historians have seen the world, but the irony is that
although they inspired much research into the history of punishment, most of
this ended up by pointing out the flaws in his analysis (Ignatieff, 1983; Brown,
2003: 7). The most important of these is that although Foucault documented the
changing intentions behind the punishment system, he did not check to see
what happened in practice. Everywhere, this reveals a picture of continuity
rather than abrupt change, and one where complex blueprints for action tended
to break down in practice when matched with limited budgets, conservative
staff and unco-operative prisoners. The visionaries were just one group of ‘stakeholders’
in the prison reform process, and although they might have wanted to
create a new type of ‘total institution’, other stakeholders, notably those who
were asked to pay for systems of non-stop secure supervision, tended to oppose
such grandiose visions, to such an extent that it was only very rarely that they
were allowed free rein. This understanding has meant that broad-brush
approaches to the history of the prison, such as that of Foucault (1977), or of
Michael Ignatieff (1979) are now less in favour. More detailed research however
has picked out a number of common themes, and allows us to give much useful
context to attempts to explain and theorize punishment in the present day.
There are now two main approaches to historical research into punishment:
what were the new visions that each era came up with, and what happened in
practice when the authorities tried to put the ideas into practice? The vision is
much easier to assess and to comment on. It is also relevant even if we know
that it was never put into practice (i.e. Bentham’s Panopticon, see Chapter 7).
The type of punishment that an era thinks ought to be carried out usually gives
a very good indication of the way that it sees the problem of crime, and the
proper role of the criminal justice system. Indeed, this kind of analysis can take
us even further, into understanding how they saw the personality: what made
people act in correct and deviant ways, and what steps could be taken to change
their behaviour? The practical aspects of punishment regimes are also worth
studying: they allow us to make judgements about which factors commonly act
to impede the imposition of the vision. Perhaps the most significant of these is
the hardest to eliminate: the role of society outside the prison, which can never
be wholly removed, no matter how much effort is put into the process. As ever,
therefore, a historical perspective can tell us what (if anything) about crime and
punishment can be attributed to an unchanging ‘human nature’ and what or (if
anything) to changing economic, social and political realities.
Punishment is usually seen by modern theorists of the prison as containing a
number of different elements. These are most often broken down into deterrence,
rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution. Deterrence refers to the
HISTORY & CRIME
effect that the prospect of punishment has on those who might commit crimes:
they will assess the unpleasantness of the punishment, divide it by the likelihood
of getting caught, and decide not to commit the crime. It assumes that the
potential criminal is a rational actor with a realistic understanding of the criminal
justice system. Rehabilitation (or reformation) is the process whereby during
punishment, the criminal is brought to face up to his/her crimes, and adjusts
his/her personality in such a way as to make it less likely that they will reoffend.
Incapacitation refers to the extent that a punishment prevents the criminal from
committing more crimes: the ultimately incapacitating punishments are death
and banishment, but secure imprisonment also temporarily incapacitates.
Retribution (or punishment) refers to the pain of punishment that is delivered to
the prisoner. This is best explicable as a message not to potential miscreants but
to the community at large, to announce the fact that the criminal justice system
delivers a just measure of pain to those who break the law.
Ways of looking at punishment
Punishment has been theorized for hundreds of years. For example, in the sixteenth
century, in both England and the Netherlands, monotonous labour was
seen both as a punishment in itself, and as a way of re-integrating anti-social
individuals, such as prostitutes and vagrants, back into society. Giving them
compulsory work in a ‘House of Correction’ such as London’s Bridewell or
Amsterdam’s Tuchthuis was intended to make them used to working in the
world outside, and hence prevent them from being a burden on the wider society
on their release. It was largely, therefore, presented and justified as a form
of rehabilitation. It tended to be applied not to those who had committed a single
serious identifiable crime, but instead to individuals whose lifestyle was
judged to be immoral in some way, usually because of idleness. There is another
reason why it was used however. It reinforced the values of the wider society,
which stressed that all should work, and should also all fit in to social hierarchies,
largely contained within households, which provided the basic structure
of authority in early modern society. Bridewell was a substitute family for those
who had none, and performed the important role of the household in giving all
men and women an identifiable master, who was responsible for moulding and
guiding their behaviour. Thus in European prison workhouses, there were officials
whose job titles were ‘father’ and ‘mother’ (Spierenburg, 1995: 68–9).
Punishment was never just a random activity, but always one which fitted into
the society of which it was a part, and there is often evidence from contemporaries
that they recognized how and why it fitted in, and tried to justify it
accordingly.
152
A specific criminology of punishment, with claims to scientific understanding,
and a view of the way that things ought to be, first developed in the late eighteenth
century. In punishment as in policing, the Italian philosopher Beccaria
made a major impact (see Chapter 2). His work, On Crimes and Punishments –
written in Italian in 1764 and available in English by 1767 – advocated a move
away from a system based on very harsh punishments which were usually
evaded for one reason or another, towards one based on better policing, and the
greater certainty of punishment, which would allow for each individual punishment
to be less harsh. Many of the proposals that he made had already been
advocated in Britain, but his was the first work to bring them together into a
coherent system (Dunthorne, 1999). Beccaria pointed to parts of Europe which,
in his opinion, already exhibited the innovations that he wanted to see put into
practice, and this was also a feature of the first British ‘prison reformers’. When
the Bedfordshire Christian gentleman John Howard wrote his work The State of
the Prisons, he set out a vision for humane punishment that was in part derived
from overseas experience, and in subsequent editions of the book, published
from 1791 regularly up to his death (of a disease contracted in a Russian prison),
he included more and more material gleaned from visits to prisons around
Europe. In Randall McGowen’s words ‘Howard introduced the idea that a proper
prison regime already existed, only somewhere else’ (McGowen, 1995: 87).
This idea was immensely powerful through the nineteenth century, and it is
impossible to consider the process of prison development without taking into
account the growth and influence of international examples. This was not limited
to Europe. Reformers in Britain and the United States collaborated in developments
that led to the creation of the discipline of penology, which saw itself
as creating a science of punishment. Between 1775 and 1820, exchange of ideas
between the US and Britain helped to define a body of professional penological
knowledge:
By initially utilising their ready-made networks, and then extending these in
the formation of specialist groups, the early penal reformers found effective
ways to inform themselves and others. But they also sought to justify
their calls for penal reform by reference to a respectable branch of scientific
knowledge (both empirical and philosophical). ... Penology, then, was
a discipline in the making, and knowledge and expertise were essential to
its development. (Burgoyne, 1997: 195)
Bilateral contacts and individual research expeditions such as Howard’s developed
into an international infrastructure. An international Prison Reform Congress
was held in Frankfurt in 1846, and, by 1910, ten further international penal and
prison congresses had been held in Europe and the United States. These acted as
a forcing-house for theories of crime and criminology, and in many cases, the
example of ‘more progressive countries’ was invoked by prison reformers in their
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home states in order to obtain political backing for innovations that they wished
to carry out. Penology was one of the earliest components of the discipline later
described as criminology to organize itself (see Chapter 2).
Many of these penologists formed themselves into organizations to study
prison conditions and lobby for a more rational and efficient approach to punishment.
The most important such group in Britain is the Howard League
(named after the prison reformer John Howard). Since the late twentieth century
the Howard League has generally been seen as an organization that points out
injustices against prisoners and works to secure their rights, but this has not
always been the case: in the late nineteenth century its spokesman and organizer
was a frequent correspondent to the newspapers, arguing that it was
important to keep prison conditions harsh enough to act as a deterrent.
The dominance of a progressive and scientific view of the penal enterprise led
to a view of the history of the prison that saw it as an inevitable progress towards
a more humane, rational and effective system. This view placed reformers such
as Howard at the centre of the picture, and accepted without question their views
of what constituted the best model of punishment. Research over the last 30 years,
inspired by writers such as Foucault, has tended to paint a much less cosy and
simplistic view of the history of the prison. In association with this, the modern
era has focused more on the victim of crime as an identifiable individual whose
needs have to be met by more than just an abstract accounting between the perpetrator
of crime and the state. Although the entire period of prison reform has
been subjected to a powerful conservative critique which argues that the balance
has been tilted too far towards the perpetrator, the modern identification of the
victim was not performed by this group. Instead, it came from the liberal wing of
the penal law reform movement, in the shape of Margery Fry, a prominent Quaker
campaigner for prisoners’ rights, who launched a campaign in the 1950s entitled
‘What about the victim?’. It was this which prompted the creation of the modern
system of criminal injury compensation, whereby the state elects to pay compensation
to people who have been the victims of crime. The liberal reformers who
backed Fry’s campaign, though, did so for two reasons. In the words of one of
Fry’s supporters, eminent lawyer Hartley Shawcross, this was because they realized
‘that the absence of any provision for compensation to the victim tended to
accentuate the public’s desire for vengeance against the criminal, and so stood in
the way of a more efficient system of punishment’ (‘FD’, 1958).
The pre-reform system of punishment
What was the prison that so revolted John Howard and other reformers? In the
eighteenth century, prisons were not the highly controlled places that we know
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today. The great London prisons such as Newgate, Marshalsea, the Fleet and the
Clink functioned mainly as compounds to secure malefactors. Inside them, prisoners
were expected to make their own arrangements for food, and superior
accommodation could be obtained by paying off the gaoler. Alcohol, sex and
gambling were all apparent. It was during this century that a number of prison
reformers, the most famous of whom is the evangelical Christian John Howard,
began to complain about practices such as this, but we must not project their
outrage on to our understanding of the past, nor judge it by our standards.
Prison practice in the pre-reform era looks like something that we would call
‘corrupt’, but a fee-based system, in which the gaoler was a contractor who purchased
the post as a franchise, was standard practice for the eighteenth century,
and ought not to be dismissed as corruption. One of the factors that most
offended the reformer was that various different categories of prisoner were
mixed together. Not only were juveniles and adults mixed together, but so were
those convicted of serious and trivial offences, as were prisoners awaiting trial
with those who had already been sentenced. In addition, a large number of prisoners
were debtors: people who had got into debt and been placed in prison by
those to whom they owed money as an incentive to pay. Obviously, imprisonment
did not make repayment easier, but this treatment was justified as a deterrent:
it kept people honest in their business dealings, since, if they were afraid
of being sent to prison, they would in theory be much less likely to trade while
insolvent. Despite what we might think of as a lax regime, these prisons were
not popular places with Londoners, and during the Gordon riots of 1780 many
were burned down by the rioters. Whereas today the vast majority of the prison
population have been sentenced to spend a certain period of time confined in
prison as a punishment, this was not the case in the eighteenth century. Prisons
were largely used as convenient places where offenders could be held until it
was possible to try them, or while they were waiting to have their sentence carried
out, with only a minority being imprisoned there as a punishment in itself.
The most overt punishment in England, as in the rest of Europe, was the
death penalty. This was the punishment for scores of different offences in the
eighteenth century (the so called ‘Bloody Code’). The vast majority of these
offences were obscure and often claimed no lives at all. The vast majority of
those who faced the death penalty were charged with one of a few Common
Law offences: murder, rape, burglary, robbery, forgery, coining (issuing counterfeit
coins), and above all ‘felony theft’. The latter accounted for the largest proportion
of offenders. It encompassed non-violent theft of goods worth more
than one shilling. This wide ranging scope of capital offences (ones carrying the
death penalty) has been called ‘Draconian’. To do so is to miss the point of it –
Draco was an Athenian tyrant who was famous for a harsh penal code which
was ruthlessly and remorselessly applied to all malefactors. The death penalty
had no such reach. Barring those charged with a couple of offences (murder and
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forgery), the vast majority of offenders who faced the death penalty had it
remitted to transportation for life, either by the judge at the time that sentence
was passed, or afterwards by the King following a plea for mercy. The old legal
concept of ‘benefit of clergy’ was used to give all non-violent thieves (the vast
majority of the total) immunity from prosecution for their first offence –
although they were branded on the hand in order to make clear their status if
caught again. Juries were reluctant to convict if they thought that the offender
did not deserve the death penalty, or else they ignored the true value of stolen
items and instead judged them to be worth less than one shilling, thus removing
the crime from the death penalty. Judges were perfectly happy to free the
accused if there had been any error in the prosecution document, however
minor. If we must have a classical word to describe the system, then
‘Damoclean’ is probably better. In Greek myth, the sword of Damocles hung
over the hero’s head on a thread, always threatening to fall on him. This is a far
better description of the way that the death penalty worked in England: often
threatened, but rarely carried out, its existence was intended to produce a feeling
of dread in the minds of criminals. It also, in a direct way, showed them that
the law was dominant, and that the best way to get clemency was to plead loyalty
to those in power (Hay, 1975).
Those who escaped the gallows but were convicted of a capital crime faced
the prospect of transportation. This was to the eastern shore of the American
colonies, chiefly to the colonies of Maryland and Delaware on Chesapeake Bay.
There, convicts were sold as indentured servants, to work for a master, usually
for around seven years, before gaining their freedom, although in theory they
remained banned from Britain. Between 1718, when the Transportation Act
made this process much easier, and 1776, when transportation was ended by the
American War, this involved significant numbers of people – between 1771
and 1775, one county in Maryland received 849 convicts (Ekirch, 1987: 50).
Transportation was unlike the rest of the eighteenth-century criminal justice system
in the important respect that it was not a public punishment. Prisons were
not shut away, but porous institutions whose inmates could be inspected.
Executions were carried out in public, as were corporal punishments such as
whipping or exhibition in the pillory. Thus the public theatre of punishment was
very important, stressing the deterrent function: reformers argued that this was
at the expense of rehabilitation and incapacitation.
The promise of the penitentiary and the reformatory
In penology as in policing, the period between about 1770 and about 1840 laid the
foundations for the institutions that were still in existence in the late twentieth
156
century. As with policing, the great spur to these changes was the period of
industrialization and population growth which saw the basic form of British
society change greatly over this period. The Industrial Revolution was not the
only influence on these developments, though, and other factors – notably the
autonomous role of legal and penological thought – cannot be ignored if we are
to explain what happened, when and why.
The first national initiative in Britain to set up a recognizably modern system
of prisons came with the Penitentiary Act of 1779. This was introduced at a time
when transportation of convicts outside the country was in a hiatus, owing to
the outbreak of the American revolt. As the title suggests, it was intended to set
up an institution designed to produce ‘penitence’ – the recognition by sinners
that they have done wrong, and the desire for forgiveness and re-integration. It
is important to note the central role played by religion in the conceptualization
of punishment in the adult prison system right up to the mid-twentieth century
and even later (though in less overt terms) in the juvenile punishment and treatment
sector through the work of Christian charities such as the Rainer
Foundation. In an era where questions of right and wrong were largely (though
not exclusively) defined in religious terms, this is unsurprising.
There were several factors behind the Act. One was an increasing tendency of
magistrates and judges to use longer prison sentences as a punishment in themselves
(Beattie, 1986: 538–40). This pre-dated the arrival of Beccaria’s work into
Britain, and thus appears to suggest that one reason this was so popular was that
it justified and described policies which were already in being. The precipitating
event was the interruption of transportation owing to the American War,
which gave penal reformers in the government the opportunity to put their
plans into practice (Deveraux, 1999). The Act provided for two new prisons,
devoted to hard labour, to be built in or near London. The internal regime was
described in detail: inmates were to be housed at night in cells, and during the
day set to labour which would involve as little association as possible. As well
as being divided by background, they were to be allocated to three different
classes, depending on their behaviour; those of the highest class could even be
trusted with some supervisory duties. Systems of different class of inmate, who
could earn more privileges via good behaviour; or lose them for misbehaviour,
remained a feature of most British prison regimes: sometimes they involved a
highly complex accounting of ‘marks’ which could be earned or forfeited, and
could result in remission of sentence.
The Act marked the arrival of the penitentiary ideal into Britain, but the prisons
it described were never built, chiefly because of the great sums of money
that would have been required to complete them. Yet it provided a blueprint
through which local prisons reformed themselves. These were paid for and
directed at the county level, and in the last third of the eighteenth century, often
under the influence of Howard and his followers, many were re-modelled to
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incorporate the penitentiary ideal and its goal of rehabilitation. Fees were ended,
uniforms introduced, and new and expensive buildings were constructed, so
that various categories of prisoner could be kept segregated from one another.
One influential figure in this development was a follower of Howard, the architect
William Blackburn, who designed 19 prisons before his death in 1790. In
Randall McGowen’s view:
Blackburn expressed the ambition to use space and stone to shape human
nature. His design revealed the implicit belief that architecture could promote
the goals of confinement. Geometry and symmetry triumphed in
these designs, which pursued health, order and more equal conditions. A
rationally organized space, he believed, would foster the development of
reason and self-regulation in its inmates. His plans also sought to
strengthen the position of the jailer within the prison by promoting inspection.
Above all Blackburn sought to secure classification and separation;
he set the main task of prison architecture as the regulation of human
sociability. (McGowen, 1995: 91)
Separation was the key to rehabilitation in this view.
In the atmosphere of enthusiasm for prison reform, many systems of incarceration
were advocated. Perhaps the most famous was Bentham’s Panopticon
(described in Chapter 7). In brief, the Panopticon prison was designed as a four
to six storey building that took the form of an upright cylinder. The cells were
on the inside, accessed by walkways that ran along the inside, and with their
interior walls entirely formed from bars, looking inwards to the central courtyard.
At the centre of this space, on the axis of the cylinder, stood a tower which
rose to the same height as the prison cells. This was occupied by the prison
warders, who could arrange shutters and blinds within the tower so that the
inmates were not aware whether or not they were being watched at that
moment. There was a practical point to this design: it allowed a small number
of employees to watch a large number of prisoners at the same time, thus saving
money. But there was also a broader point. The prisoner knew that at any
time he might be under observation, but he had no way of telling whether or
not he was being watched at that time. Thus there was every chance that he
would act as if he was being watched all the time, and this change in his behaviour
might outlast his term of imprisonment.
The Panopticon provided a compelling and intriguing vision of the possibilities
of total surveillance, as Chapter 7 debates, but it was never built in Britain.
Pentonville Prison, opened in 1842, incorporated some of the practical innovations
of the Panopticon. Later in the nineteenth century, under the influence of
the international penological congresses mentioned above, some prisons were
built on this model in the United States and elsewhere.
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The death penalty, corporal punishment and transportation
As alluded to in the introduction, the birth of the prison in Britain was accompanied
by innovations in other forms of punishment. Again, these were the
focus of arguments about the proper way to punish, and again, they went
through different stages of development.
The modern campaign to limit the death penalty in Britain dates from 1808,
when the politician Samuel Romilly launched a campaign to limit its scope to
the most serious crimes. He took exception to the fact that the decision to execute
was generally taken as a matter of discretion by the judge. Like Bentham,
he opposed random exemplary punishments, and instead advocated a mechanical
and calculated punishment. They also took exception to the public nature of
executions, which they thought served to harden the spectators and make them
cruel as much as it impressed them about the power of the law (McGowen,
1995: 93). In addition, executions were disorderly spectacles, and the prospect
of large, unruly and uncontrolled crowds was not welcome to the reformers.
The process of abolition of the death penalty for property crimes lasted from
1808 to 1837. By 1830, it was retained for murder, but the vast bulk of death
sentences for property crimes had been replaced by sentences of transportation
to the Australian colonies. The organization of the convict system in Australia
went through a number of stages, driven both by the needs of the colony and by
changing fashions in punishment, but some features were constant. They constituted
a vast open prison: outside a very few penal institutions where convicts
who committed further serious crimes were held, the penal colonies were a
labour camp where, if they behaved themselves, the freedom of the convicts
was gradually extended until, at the expiration of their period of transportation,
they were once again free. Many spent the majority of their sentences on a
‘ticket-of-leave’: given freedom from close control so long as they resided in a
certain area and kept out of trouble. Others were indentured to employers; a situation
which led to some abuses, but in the main was not significantly worse
than that of many servants in Britain.
In Australia, as in the UK, the punishment for most convicts who committed
additional offences was a flogging: being beaten with a whip made of heavy
knotted cords, which inflicted permanent (sometimes fatal) damage as well as
pain to the victim. Corporal punishment was a prominent part of the judicial
arsenal in eighteenth-century Britain, as well, but fell out of use, and was abolished
in 1861, only to be reinstated following a panic over street theft in 1863,
and finally struck off the statute book in 1948. That year also saw the abolition
of corporal punishment for juveniles, who were struck by a birch, which was a
considerably less damaging punishment than flogging.
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The paradox of transportation (at least in the British context) is the extraordinary
success that it made of rehabilitation. While a hard core of transportees maintained
their criminal ways after transportation, the majority of the 160,000
transported to Australia between 1788 and 1869 earned their freedom, and
indeed formed the core of a law-abiding society. In an era when the prison was
becoming the centrepiece of the new science of penology, a colony that resisted
attempts to turn it into a prison was a remarkably successful aberration. As
Hirst puts it:
a society peopled so largely by convicts nevertheless maintained the rule
of law for all, imposed no disability on ex-convicts, and gave them the
opportunity for economic success through employment of convict labor. It
is a society without parallel, a strange, late flowering of the ancien régime
in crime and punishment. (Hirst, 1995: 294)
The 1860s, which saw the end of transportation, also saw the end of public
execution (in 1868). Abolitionists had long put effort into singling out the public
nature of execution as one of its drawbacks; this tactic backfired when it was
moved within the walls of the prison, where it stayed for nearly 100 years until
its final abolition.
Reformatory philosophies and their roots
The cellular prison, as created in the early nineteenth century, was no more
than a secure box; the exact plan of regime of punishment and rehabilitation to
be followed within it became the focus of an argument about government policy.
It is worth looking at this argument in detail, as an example of how rival
penal policies, which looked similar on the surface, actually expressed very different
world-views. In the 1830s the two main schools of thought were the ‘separate
system’ and the ‘silent system’.
The separate system was built around the widespread use of solitary confinement,
and was explicitly designed to lead the inmates to a religious rebirth.
Prisoners were to be left on their own in a cell for months at a time, save for
regular visits from the prison chaplain to discuss religious matters. This was
intended to allow them to consider the error of their ways and brood upon the
mistakes that they had made and the sins that they had committed. The intention
was that they would then be glad of the opportunity to attend church and
perform labour; the threat of a return to solitary confinement would also render
them tractable. The greatest triumph of the advocates of the separate system
was the opening of Pentonville Prison in 1842. As McGowen puts it:
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The prison was a monument to faith in an ideal. It became the model for
the construction of many local prisons in the decades that followed and
attracted worldwide attention. The prison held 250 prisoners in separate
cells. Four wings radiated out from a central point, from which one could
observe each cell door. The construction of the walls hindered communication
between prisoners, and even the guards wore padded shoes so
that they would not disturb the silence. The guards were as strictly controlled
as the prisoners, forbidden to talk to the convicts and kept to a
steady patrol by a system of time clocks. ... For a regime that was intended
to individualise punishment, it did its best to erase any trace of individuality.
Prisoners wore hoods when they emerged from their cells. Their names
were replaced by numbers. They had separate stalls in the chapel as well
as separate exercise yards. Pentonville represented the apotheosis of the
idea that a totally controlled environment would produce a reformed and
autonomous individual. (McGowen, 1995: 101)
The separate system’s advocates were mainly evangelical Christians. Advocates
of other schemes often pointed out that one common outcome of prolonged solitary
confinement was insanity.
The silent system, on the other hand, was promoted by men who had more
experience with prisons, and tended to stress its deterrence aspects at the expense
of its ability to reform, although they never rejected this ability outright. They
based their plans on the foundation of ‘associationism’, a school of thought which
held that a man’s associations during his life combined to create his personality.
Prominent associationists included materialist philosophers like Bentham and
Mill, and many for whom religion was not the sole source of inspiration, although
the silent system was not explicitly anti-religious. In the silent system, inmates
would be prevented from interacting with one another, not as a means to reformation,
but strictly as a punishment, and to prevent further contamination. Its
very strictness was designed to lead to breaches of discipline which would be
swiftly and mercilessly punished. Prisoners would ‘defy the system and for perhaps
the first time in their lives would encounter immediate pain as a result of
prison punishment for breaking the silence’ (Forsythe, 1987: 32). This process was
designed to force them to the conclusion that obedience was the only policy.
Advocates of the silent system saw prison as a place largely of punishment and
deterrence, where the personality was altered not through a sudden religious conversion
deriving from within an individual, but through the activity of a carefully
thought-out system of punishments and rewards. In Bentham’s plan:
The individual tendencies of prisoners would need to be taken into account
and the regime tailored for each. Staff would need to inspect closely the
progress of each prisoner’s reformation and new skills would need to be
taught to them so that the newly acquired attitude to work, for example,
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would bear fruit after release. Certain groups were deemed easier to
reform than others, in particular the young, whose experience of crime as
pleasurable was seen as smaller than that of older offenders. (Forsythe,
1987: 13)
If reformation in these institutions failed, then Bentham advocated incapacitation:
the prisoner would be held for life.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argued that the main shift in punishment in
the modern era was from punishing the body to punishing the mind. The
‘model’ prisons of the nineteenth century, with their treadmills and brutally
inadequate diets, certainly continued to punish the body, but we can see from
both the silent and (especially) the separate systems that they certainly
attempted to punish the mind. Prisons in the eighteenth century may have been
places of ill-health and corruption, but they allowed the inmates to interact and
to maintain a sort of human society, with an often surprising degree of integration
with the world outside the prison. The nineteenth century changed this,
and set the pattern which persists today, of the prison as a place where the
authorities claim the right (even though they do not always exercise it) to control
every aspect of the prisoner’s life.
The ongoing public debate about prison conditions
For more than 200 years – since before the publication of the pamphlet ‘Hanging
Not Punishment Enough’ in London in 1701 – the public have been divided in
their response to prison conditions. Although reformers like John Howard, usually
motivated by religious belief in universal human worth, criticized the harshness
of prison conditions, and obtained a significant degree of public support for
their position, many other commentators have expressed disquiet about the perceived
leniency of these conditions. One way to think about this was provided by
the pioneering French sociologist Emille Durkheim at the end of the nineteenth
century. Durkheim described the criminal justice system as a way of enforcing
the norms of the community against those who would break them. He believed
that prison and punishments, therefore, had to have a certain level of harshness
in order to be effective at protecting society as a whole. Given this, it is unsurprising
that there has been an almost constant refrain from many politicians that
prison is too lenient to give the necessary deterrent message to potential lawbreakers,
that the chief culprits in this situation are the penal reformers, and that
the chief victims are the public at large who are the victims of crime. This view
is remarkably constant, despite the fact that it usually expresses itself in dynamic
terms, involving an ongoing slide in morals and standards of behaviour. This was
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examined by Geoff Pearson in his 1983 book Hooligan: a History of Respectable
Fears, which summed up the debate in England following the end of transportation
in the 1860s thus:
At the moment of its inception, however, the reformed system of criminal justice
was greeted with howling disapproval...Respectable England was
haunted by the fear that the ‘safety of society would soon be at an end’ and
that the ‘dangerous classes’ were gaining the upper hand because of the
weakened authority of the law. It was immediately much regretted that the
death penalty could not be applied to burglars and footpads, and the prison
system was the object of particularly fierce criticism. Punch [the satirical
magazine] regularly indicated the mildness of magistrates and the ‘luxurious’
convenience of a ‘snug cell in prison’ which...‘unless the Government interfere
to make the living less luxurious...will be popularly looked upon as one
of the most comfortable ways of spending life.’ ‘The present gaols are really
beautiful penal toys’, wrote a complaining correspondent to The Times in
1863 , ‘the perfection of lodging-houses-for-single-men architecture...in a
better situation [location] Pentonville would sell well as ‘chambers’ for Bank
clerks and MPs of limited income.’
The moral vocabulary of these accusations against sentimentality, leniency
and crinolined philanthropy that unfolded in the wake of the great legislative
transformations of this era is one which we would find entirely familiar
in our own historical time, and which has rolled down to us virtually
unchanged across more than a century of resistance to penal reform.
(Pearson, 1983: 127–8)
This matter has always been linked to the provision of state welfare to the
poor in general. In Britain, first the Poor Laws, and then the welfare state, guaranteed
that everybody would be kept alive by the state – although the ablebodied
poor might be forced to work for their keep. Under the New Poor Law,
which was in existence for a century after 1835, those who could not support
themselves were usually taken into a workhouse as a condition of support.
Workhouses, many of which enforced separation of families, were seen as a
place of oppression by members of the working classes, at the same time that
local ratepayers, who had to finance them, were concerned lest their taxes were
being used to unnecessarily coddle the poor. Thus workhouse conditions were
kept spartan, and the diet was cut to the minimum necessary to support life. The
conditions in the workhouse immediately gave a baseline of provision; if prisons
offered conditions which were (or were seen to be) better than those on
offer to the law-abiding poor, they came under criticism on two grounds. Firstly,
that this was an injustice in itself to society in general, the wronged party who
were financing the prisoner’s punishment and hence lifestyle. Secondly, that in
itself this acted as a magnet for crime, for which working person would meekly
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submit to an inferior diet in the workhouse when the worst reward of crime
would be a better standard of living? This latter argument, of course, implied
that there was no stigma attached to imprisonment for the lower classes, and
that the only punishment whose effects could be relied upon was the harshness
of physical conditions in the prison.
Diet was a punishment in itself: the nineteenth-century British prison diet
was pared down to such an extent that it was barely able to keep inmates
alive. Convicts working on forced labour were generally not given enough to
sustain them over the long term. For example, Alyson Brown has found that
among those convicts sentenced to dig out the naval base at Chatham in the
1860s:
One indication of the severity of penal servitude in this period is the evidence
of persistent conflicts over food. Several references were made by
convict prison medical officers and discharged convicts to the items that
hunger induced the convicts to eat: these included dead shellfish found on
the works, candles, and worms. (Brown, 2003: 92)
Yet although conditions of such hardship were routine in convict prisons
(those run by the central government, which housed serious offenders), they
were not much known outside, and public pressure for harsher punishments in
the face of perceived crime waves remained high in the 1860s.
This was caused, to a large extent, by the final ending of transportation to
Australia. Transportation had served to remove the most serious offenders from
the United Kingdom, and although by the 1860s the numbers of convicts transported
had fallen, it still had an important symbolic role to play in the criminal
justice system. It was replaced by the sentence of ‘penal servitude’ in a convict
prison. The first third of this was to be spent in solitary confinement, the next
carrying out hard labour, and the third released on a ticket-of-leave, earned by
good behaviour in prison. When London was struck by a number of (heavily
reported) violent robberies which became known as ‘garottings’, the ticket-ofleave
system became the focus for public anxiety about crime, and ‘ticket-ofleave
men’ were blamed for many outbreaks of crime and disorder. This
perceived crisis in punishment also led to further centralization of the prison
system, and in 1877 this was nationalized: the local prisons, which held the vast
majority of offenders, were put under the control of the Home Office’s Prison
Commission, which until then had been responsible only for the convict prisons.
This had the effect of worsening the conditions in local prisons, in an effort
both to save money and to produce a uniform deterrent effect throughout the
country. It was also a consequence of the assumptions underlying the philosophy
of punishment, which stressed that uniformity of treatment was the best
way to reform prisoners:
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To a behaviourist, good punishment was that which was most deterrent,
and the most deterrent was likely to be as severe as public sentiment and
political opinion would tolerate. The move from locally administered local
prisons to nationally administered local prisons was therefore bound to
mean an overall increase in severity. (McConville, 1995: 146)
In the 1880s, the prison establishment in the UK became as tough as it has ever
been.
Punishing the criminal or punishing the crime
The notion of equality under the law suggests that the punishment should fit the
crime; that everyone who carries out a similar crime should receive a similar sentence.
Opposed to this is the notion that the punishment should instead fit the criminal:
that it should be tailored to provide the maximum deterrent effect. At one end
of the spectrum this can be seen if the prisoner’s previous record of good behaviour
or earlier convictions influences the length of their sentence. At the other end, this
is manifest in laws which prescribe long prison sentences for repeat offenders, no
matter what the seriousness of the crime that precipitated the sentence, or even in
sentences of preventive detention which could be indefinite, and were ended (or
suspended) only when the offender was deemed no longer a threat to the public.
The first step in establishing such a regime was to identify the habitual criminal.
The 1869 Habitual Criminal Act created a national register of all those
imprisoned for a serious offence, which included a list of their known aliases and
distinguishing marks. This tracking process was intended to identify habitual
offenders, who would be forced to register with the police after they were
released from prison. Thus the reach of the criminal justice system was extended
outside the prison system itself. In practice, this register was too unwieldy to
serve to track ex-offenders, and would remain so until the introduction of a successful
fingerprint index at the start of the twentieth century. Fingerprints were
only moderately useful for detection of crimes, but for the first time they offered
a reliable means of tracking an individual offender through the criminal justice
system, and being able to overcome the widespread use of aliases by criminals.
The 1908 Prevention of Crimes Act allowed for up to five years to be added to
the sentence of those repeat offenders who were judged to be ‘habitual criminals’.
This type of sentence was devoted entirely to incapacitation: to protecting the public
from a repeat offender. Prisoners jailed under it actually received (or were supposed
in theory to receive) better treatment than others, on the grounds that the
deterrent and retribution portions of their sentence had already been served. No
effort was made to rehabilitate them: their designation as habitual criminals
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implied that this would have a low chance of succeeding. This class of sentence
was attacked, and rendered less popular, by Winston Churchill when he became
Home Secretary in 1910. Churchill was pointedly in favour of civil liberties and
equality under the law for all, including convicted criminals, and he was concerned
that this system of preventive detention was contrary to traditional English
ideas of freedom. He famously told the House of Commons in 1910, ‘The mood
and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one
of the most unfailing tests of civilisation in any country.’ By pointing out a number
of anomalous cases where petty criminals received long sentences for minor
offences, Churchill helped to reduce the frequency that the 1908 Act was used to
just 31 cases per year in the 1920s. (McConville, 1995: 165, 156).
The British penal system reached a peak of uniformity around 1880: all prisons
were run according to standardized rules, with the object being the maximum conformity,
and the greatest severity of punishment that was consistent with the minimum
of health of the prisoner. This state of affairs, though, was gradually
challenged, and the prison system was subject to a number of influences that led
towards decarceration – the process whereby fewer inmates are sent to prison.
One of them was the identification of the core group of habitual recidivists: as the
assumed characteristics of this group became more closely defined, and it became
labelled as a criminal residuum, offenders who did not fit into it began to stand out
further. During this period, a number of offenders who did not fit into this category
began to go public about their experiences in prison. More and more white-collar
offenders were receiving prison sentences for fraud and other ‘middle-class’ crimes,
and these men were articulate and literate. Several of them published memoirs
which outlined the brutal arbitrariness of the system, and although most of these
drew the conclusion that it was correct to apply this to brutalize convicts, they
exposed its contradictions and petty cruelties to public attention. Other groups of
prison memorialists saw themselves as political prisoners, and mounted sustained
political campaigns against the abuses of the prison system. These included Irish
Nationalists, whose political party had a significant presence in Parliament, as well
as prisoners of conscience who had deliberately put themselves in prison rather
than co-operate with what they saw as unjust laws. These groups included members
of the Salvation Army arrested for obstruction, as well as anti-vaccination campaigners,
and radical left activists. All these voices added up to a potent lobby which
rejected the notion that everyone in prison was a hardened criminal who deserved
all that they got; instead they drew attention to the fact that the pain and degradation
inflicted in the prison system might harm the offender, but it seemed to do little
to deter, and nothing to reform, him or her. Beyond the activities of the specific
anti-incarceration lobby, a generally increasing humanitarian sensibility objected to
the systematic infliction of pain, even in cases where the behaviour of the offender
appeared to justify this. By the end of the century, even Home Office officials were
ready to recognize that there was a distinction between ‘criminals’, who were
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professionals devoted to a life of crime and as such fit subjects for deterrence and
punishment, and ‘offenders’, whose law-breaking activity was not serious enough
to justify this degree of harsh treatment (Wiener, 1990: 328–36).
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the uniformity of the British prison
system had been presented as its chief virtue and justification; by the end, even
its defenders were acknowledging that it was a drawback: ‘punishing the crime’
without regard to the condition of the criminal was becoming less popular, in
favour of ‘punishing the criminal’.
A greater focus on the offender, and a less insistent one on the crime, led to a
new innovation in punishment in the early twentieth century: probation. Like
many other innovations, this grew out of an informal practice, which was intended
to prevent the alleged ‘contamination’ of first-time offenders by imprisonment, and
the First Offenders Act of 1887 which was designed to divert many from a period
of imprisonment. Magistrates in London, wary of sending minor criminals to prisons
which they regarded simply as nurseries of crime, released them instead into
the care of the London Police Court Mission, whose missionaries’ job was to supervise
them for a set period in order to help them to get, and keep, gainful employment
and hence stay out of trouble. From 1907, courts were given the power to
employ probation officers, thus converting the informal practice into a legal and
institutional one. In numerical terms, its impact was relatively minor until the
1920s and 1930s, when the probation service was expanded. Probation helped to
divert thousands of offenders from prison, but like a number of secondary punishments,
from transportation to reformatory schools, it provided an additional punishment
for petty offenders, who may well have otherwise escaped punishment
altogether. Thus the net of the criminal justice system was widened.
Increasingly in the twentieth century, the criminal justice system re-oriented
itself towards the concept of ‘penal welfare’. Prison was treated as a last resort for
the most serious offenders, while an increasing use was made of special prisons
and reformatories for juveniles. Psychiatric treatment was also used in prisons and
in special hospitals: the inmate was at once an offender and also a medical subject,
whose welfare the system was responsible for. Intertwined with this focus on
welfare, though, was the continuing belief that all aspects of the prisoner’s life
were in the power of the penal authorities.
The role of punishment in the late twentieth century
Prisons are expensive buildings, and their design is often a practical and (literally)
concrete expression of a particular penal philosophy. Thus the bricks and mortar
of an earlier age can frustrate the prison reformers who inherit buildings which are
inherently difficult to run in ways that the designer did not intend. One example
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of this issue in practice is the predominance in late twentieth-century Britain of an
inherited Victorian prison estate which was built on the basis that confinement in
cells was the central point of prison practice (McConville, 1995: 154). This made it
difficult to put into use rehabilitation practices that relied on allowing prisoners to
socialise. Yet despite the ever-changing sociological and psychological theories of
what creates criminal behaviour and what can be done to change it, rates of reoffending
remained stubbornly high. By the 1970s, a new wave of criminological
theory was even reduced (largely on the basis of re-offending research) to conclude
that ‘nothing works’ (Sullivan, 2000: 30). Prison was not deterring, but it did not
seem to be rehabilitating either. This orthodoxy was best expressed by a
Conservative Home Secretary in the 1980s, who claimed that without a workable
programme for rehabilitation, prison was merely ‘an expensive way of making bad
people worse’. Nevertheless, a few years later, another Home Secretary from the
same party felt able to claim that ‘prison works’, yet the substantive and credible
claims that he made for it involved only incapacitation – a far cry from the promise
of the penitentiary.
Reviewing changing modes of punishment
By reviewing the aims of punishment through documentary sources, we can see
that historically situated ideas about deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution and
incapacitation have influenced all forms of punishment throughout history. Yet
as we have seen, these themes are not constants; some forms of punishment
attempt to combine them all, but others merely stress one or the other, as can
be seen from the following extracts.
Jonas Hanway (1712–86) was a London merchant who took a keen interest in the
social development of his city. In 1756 he founded the Marine Society, a charity
which educated orphan or poor boys and trained them for careers at sea. This passage
refers to the Bridewell hospital in London, the original ’Bridewell’. In the eighteenth
century, ‘hospital’ referred to any public residential institution, not merely
one where ill people were treated. This extract immediately follows a reference to
the recent rebuilding of some of the institution’s accommodation. The Lord Mayor,
Alderman, and Chamberlain of London all had judicial powers, and the Mayor also
worked as the City’s chief magistrate during the year of his term of office.
Jonas Hanway (1775) The defects of police the cause of immorality,
London, p. 35.
I hope that sufficient room is left for the more essential purposes, of providing
for the due correction of offenders, and what else belongs to the
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peace of the city and the common safety; which it may be also presumed,
will be hereafter regarded with the tender circumspective eyes of good
magistrates and faithful citizens.
The purpose for which the governors profess to employ the Hospital,
is for the correction of harlots, night-walkers, pick-pockets, vagrants,
disobedient servants, and such as are not to be reformed by the ordinary
means of authority of parents and masters. These are committed
by the Lord Mayor or Alderman. Apprentices are also sent by the
Chamberlain of London. By the standing regulation the prisoners are
obliged to beat hemp; and, supposing the nature of the offence to
require it, they are whipped. –When I made the Hospital a visit, I did not
discover that such rigid discipline was in use, except on extraordinary
occasions. In more early days it might be presumed, that where labour
began, vice ended.
The ancient mansion is spacious, but the labour done in it contributes so
little to reformation, the objects sent out from their imprisonment are
generally reputed to be much less moral than when they came into it.
The next extract was written about half a century after Hanway’s, and was part
of the evidence given to a Select Committee – a Parliamentary inquiry into a policy
area. The format of these sources is that the question which follows the
number was spoken by a member of the committee, and the text after the question
mark repeats the answer from the witness, in this case Governor George
Arthur, who was the recently retired Governor of the penal colony of Van
Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in Australia. As the numbers imply, the
responses given below are from two different lines of questioning, but both from
the same day.
Colonel George Arthur, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land [Tasmania]
1823–36, from evidence to 1837 Select Committee on Transportation,
pp. 289, 304 and 305.
4308. Then, according to your account, although a considerable degree
of suffering is experienced in the colony, yet hardly any terror is produced
in England by it?- I do not know what the effect is in England; I
have seen the effect from those letters [from convicts, alluded to earlier
in Arthur’s evidence], but how far it has produced any further effect I do
not know.
4309. Do you conceive that there was any apprehension in the minds of
the criminals before they were fully informed of the system in Van Diemen’s
Land?- It always appeared to me, when they were liable; it always
appeared to me to impress them in a very striking manner, and therefore I
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infer from that circumstance that they could not have been sensible of the
extent of the punishment they would be liable to when they embarked.
4310. Then, according to your notion, they had no idea, or even a vague
impression of the amount of suffering which might be inflicted upon
them when they arrived in the colony?- I do not think they had the least
conception of it.
4311. By the least conception, do you mean that they thought it less than
it was in reality?- My opinion is, that that body of persons have very little
reflection at all; they have a notion that they are going out to a colony, and
that they are going to be assigned as servants, where they will get food
and clothing.
4312. But if they are a set of people who have not any reflection at all,
would it not be difficult to make any system of transportation so terrifying
as to cause them to reflect?- I would answer that generally by saying, if the
real state of convicts and the punishment to which they were liable were
well known in this country, I think it would have as much effect in deterring
men from committing crime as any punishment ever will have.
… 4466. You never contemplated the practicability of anything like complete
separation in the colony?- Yes my Lord, I have tried the effect at Hobart
Town of punishing men who have been sentenced to solitary confinement
and hard labour on the tread-wheel. In the first place, they were sentenced
to solitary confinement; that I found, after trying it some considerable time,
to be almost wholly inoperative, the man appeared to me to adapt himself
after a few days to his situation, and I do not think he felt the punishment of
solitary confinement, neither did solitary confinement strictly operate beneficially
as an example to others; they knew not what passed within the cell.
4479. Do you think in order to carry on a good system of road parties, that
communication between the men should be cut off?- As far as possible; I
would not say they should be placed in solitary confinement.
4480. That they should be prevented communicating with each other by
words or signs?- Probably that is carried rather too far; I do not know that
any advantage is derived from total silence; I think the contrary.
In the first extract, Hanway discusses the Bridewell in London. It is notable
that the Bridewell is practising imprisonment largely for those who are convicted
of less serious offences, whose main problem is seen to be a disorderly lifestyle,
and who are out of control of the traditional sources of authority in eighteenthcentury
England: heads of household or employers. Clearly, the institution is supposed
to be devoted to the reformation of prisoners through manual labour, and
also in some cases to their punishment through whipping. The labour in question –
pounding hemp plants with hammers – was remarkably monotonous work,
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which would not train the inmates in any useful skills. It is perhaps this factor,
or maybe the lack of discipline that Hanway complained his work revealed, that
makes him pessimistic about the Bridewell’s ability to reform its inmates.
Although he does not make this clear, it is likely that he thinks that the reason
the released inmates are less moral than those who enter is because of the idleness
they experience there, which gives them time to educate and socialize one
another in criminal ways: the concept of ‘contagion’ which John Howard referred
to in his 1777 work The State of the Prisons.
In the second extract, two of the themes are present. In the first part reproduced
here (4308–4312) Arthur is responding to questions about the extent to
which transportation of convicts could function as a deterrent, given that however
harsh its conditions were, it was so far away from the United Kingdom that
there was very little chance of the population having objective knowledge of the
conditions. In the second half (4466–4480) Arthur is referring to the function of
rehabilitation, through both the separate and the silent systems, which were
designed to be imposed inside a prison rather than in a penal colony, and stating
that he is not in favour of either. In both parts, the practicalities of transportation
are interfering with the realization of the objects of punishment. In the
first case, by its very nature transportation does not deter well, since any punishment
is shrouded in mystery and occurs far away. In the second, Arthur
appears to think that neither of the two penitentiary systems could be practically
combined with penal labour.
Summary
In the early years of the twenty-first century, we can see two apparently contradictory
trends – a fast-rising prison population leading to the largest total number
of prisoners (nearly 80,000 in 2007); and the growth of a wide range of
alternatives to custodial sentences. Anne Worrall, a leading authority on community
sentences, has a pessimistic view of these developments:
Our conceptual analysis of non-incarcerative sanctions was impoverished
by our inability to think of them [community penalties] as anything other
than ‘alternatives’ to prison… on the contrary, to the extent that they blur
the boundaries between freedom and captivity, they cease to be genuine
‘alternatives’ and are merely poor substitutes for the ‘real thing’. Life for
many offenders at the end of the [twentieth] century is not so good that
we can make limitless demands on them in the belief that they will endure
anything to avoid prison. And we must stop pretending that the criminal
justice system can find the answer to crime. (Worrall, 1997: 150)