Reconstructing the criminal : culture, law, and policy in England, 1830-1914
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Reconstructing the criminal : culture, law, and policy in England, 1830-1914
Cambridge University Press, 1990
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This ambitious and imaginative work interprets criminal justice history by relating it to intellectual and cultural history. Starting from the assumption that policies and statutes originate in a society's values and norms, the author skilfully and persuasively demonstrates how changes in criminal law and penal practice were related to the changing values of early, mid, and late Victorian and Edwardian society. Wiener traces changes in the criminal justice system by examining the treatment of offenders. During the Victorian period the system became more punitive and was then reformed in line with welfarist thinking. Wiener's wide-ranging discussion of issues, most notably of free will versus determinism, sheds light on a broad range of Victorian history, beyond crime and punishment.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: criminal policy as cultural change
- 1. The origins of Victorianism: impulse and motivation
- 2. Victorian criminal policy I: reforming the law
- 3. Victorian criminal policy II: reformed punishment
- 4. A changing human image
- 5. Late Victorian social policy - a changing context
- 6. The demoralizing of criminality
- 7. Prosecution and sentencing: the erosion of moral discourse
- 8. Disillusion with the prison
- 9. The outcome: social debility and positive punishment
- Index
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