Crime and Punishment in England

Please Recycle: Continuities in Punishment

“…In seeking retribution for the wrong done and to show our disapproval, we remove the individual from the environment that may best be placed to support and change the behaviour. It has only been these last 200 years in which the prison has enjoyed such a prominent position as Barrett and Harrison (1999) and Briggs et al (1996) note that historically, with regards corporal and capital punishment (respectively) a far greater use was made of community and inclusive punishments than those which removed the offender from the society as a whole. Indeed, Roberts and Hough (2002: 5) note that the '.prison is simply the most familiar punishment in the public mind' and 'has a unique public visibility as a result of its history'.…”

“…Barrett & Harrison note that throughout the seventh-to-eleventh centuries '.financial compensation seems to have been preferred to corporal punishment.. Only if the criminal was a notorious evil-doer and a danger to the whole community was corporal punishment insisted upon' (1999: 2). Briggs et al (1996) state that even throughout Britain's most notorious period of punishment, colloquially termed the bloody code, a local justice, judge, or jury were more likely to use a combination of punishments rather than make use of the capital punishments when some 220 offences could receive the death sentence, it's popularity waning as legislation increased in an effort to control behaviour and deter further offending. Yet (as the graph below highlights), by the latter part of the twentieth century the fine had similarly lost much of its appeal, being seen as ineffective and replaced instead by an increasing reliance upon more punitive forms of punishment (Graph 1).…”

Revolution and the Whip of Reaction: Technicians of Power and the Dialectic of Radicalisation

“…There were 1,738 of these justices of the peace in the year 1580. 21 Central government, therefore, "depended for its execution on the voluntary co-operation of a hierarchy of parttime, unpaid officials". 22 In France it was the rich bourgeoisie who performed these functions, meaning virtual autonomy for the bourgeoisie of the towns.…”

Reimagining Rural Crime in England: A Historical Perspective

“…Throughout the early modern period, and into the nineteenth century, the number of crimes punishable by death grew inextricably, and included theft of property (Briggs et al, 1996). It is the traditional distinction between petty and grand larceny that is key to the ability for authorities and juries to grant leniency to the accused (Sharpe, 1984).…”