Recent Themes in English Criminal Justice History (original) (raw)
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Law and Human Behavior, 1982
This paper surveys the criminal justice system in i6th and 17th century England, for the purpose of pointing out important similarities between its workings and the operation of the criminal justice system in the modem United States. Topics covered include (1) the nature and incidence of crime; (2) citizen participation in and cooperation with the criminal justice system; and (3) the disposition of persons and cases. The authors conclude that, contrary to popular opinion, early modem England was not a halcyon period of law and order. That the English criminal justice system was beset by problems similar to those faced today seems to indicate that the interaction between law and society is inherently problematic.
British Crime Historians Symposium, University of Leeds, September 2-3, 2021. Book of Abstracts
British Crime Historians Symposium, 2021
This paper explores how members of the English elite attacked jurors' intelligence as a core element of efforts to resist the radical and opposition-led Libel Bill of 1792. It argues that superficially, elite criticism justified the status quo by denying jurymen oversight of questions relating to intent, meaning and effect in libel trials. Behind this offensive was a struggle for power between the elite and the middling sorts who were the backbone of the jury system. Frequent references to jurors' ignorance resulting in prejudice against the crown littered pamphlets and speeches by supporters of the established order. The anxiety of statesupporting writers about allowing middling men to expand their political role lay bare the antagonisms and frictions of the Age of Revolution. Trial by jury was essential to the stability of the eighteenth-century English polity, through which middling men performed the political function of confirming the hegemony of the Whig oligarchy. Proposals to bring libel law intoline with other crimes however, exposed the underlying fragility of this arrangement: as a political 'crime of the literate', libel trials disproportionately pitted the political and social interests of the middling sort against the state. In such cases, as elite writers implied, even truth was not sacrosanct, useful only in defence of elite interests, and something they alleged jurors had little regard for. More than any other area of legal dispute, this conflict reveals that what constituted justice in late eighteenth-century England was a contingent but uneasy accommodation between these social groups.
Lives of the most notorious criminals, popular literature of crime in England, 1675-1775
1999
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‘“The Reckoning”: Disorderly Women, Informing Constables and the Westminster Justices, 1727 – 1733’
Social History, 2009
The study of criminal prosecution has been the touchstone for a generation of historians who have sought to understand the administration of crime and policing and the interactions between the police and the policed in the eighteenth century metropolis. Given the top-down nature of the sources this work has focused most centrally on the systems that governed the control of crime and disorder rather than the nature of the crime itself. In particular, Douglas Hay's seminal chapter, 'Property, Authority and the Criminal Law', published in 1975, remains a powerful and complex exploration of the ways in which social order was manipulated and ultimately maintained by the rulers of eighteenth century England. Hay demonstrated how the criminal justice system was used to maintain 'bonds of obedience and deference' and to legitimize the status quo. 1 To do so he focused much of his attention on the social elites and on the complex web of relations and practices with which they controlled the criminal justice system. Hay's argument has not gone unchallenged. Peter King, John Langbein, Thomas Green, Joanne Innes and John Styles have contributed both correction and refinement to Hay's thesis, greatly expanding our knowledge of the legislative process. 2 King's work has 2 particularly sought to uncover and understand the discretionary elements within the judicial system, 'It remains unclear…precisely which social groups, social interactions, and discursive formulations were decisive in shaping many important arenas within the judicial process'. 3 Whilst this work has analysed those who used the law, why they used the law, and how this was negotiated in the context of eighteenth century social relations, much of it has tended to privilege the interactions of the middling sorts and the elites. The accused and the guilty, the victims and the witnesses, do run through these accounts, however they are inevitably filtered through justice's lens. Whilst we catch sight of the criminal through a series of interactions with justice, most offer only a fleeting glimpse of these negotiations with the criminal justice system. Where the criminal poor have been supposedly at the centre of the stage, plebeian agency is frequently understudy to 'larger' questions of class relations and class struggle. 4 However, there are some notable exceptions. Peter King has done much to negotiate the experiences of different social groups in the eighteenth century; as have the studies of criminal and plebeian experience found in recent work by Mary Clayton and Tim Hitchcock. 5 These detailed reconstructions tell us much about the manner in which plebeian