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Zusatztext 'I'm very taken by it. It's main virtue! as I see it! is the way it delves beneath the theories and legislation of the period with regard to recidivism! to the actual practice of the magistrates and police who were responsible for implementing them! to show how different they were; with both law enforcement agencies avoiding or tempering the more 'repressive' effects of the 1869 and 1871 Acts. So what Parliament enacted was not necessarily a guide to what happened on the ground; a lesson that historians in other areas of British social history might profitably take on board.' Informationen zum Autor Matthew Bach is an Australian historian, teacher and parliamentarian, who completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne. Heis currently a member of parliament in the state of Victoria, representing Melbourne's eastA study of London’s mythical ‘criminal class’ in the late 19th century, the repressive measures brought against them by the state and the effectiveness of this legislation as an apparatus of social control. Zusammenfassung The criminal class was seen as a violent, immoral and dissolute sub-section of Victorian London’s population. Making their living through crime and openly hostile to society, the lives of these criminals were characterised by drunkenness, theft and brutality. This book explores whether this criminal class did indeed truly exist, and the effectivenessof measures brought against it. Tracing the notion of the criminal class from as early as the 16th century, this book questions whether this sub-section of society did indeed exist. Bach discusses how unease of London’s notorious rookeries, the frenzy of media attention and a [ word deleted here] panic among the general public enforced and encouraged the fear of the ‘criminal class’ and perpetuated state efforts of social control. Using the Habitual Criminals Bills, this book explores how and why this legislation was introduced to deal with repeat offenders, and assesses how successful its repressive measures were. Demonstrating how the Metropolitan Police Force and London's Magistrates were not always willing tools of the British state, this book uses court records and private correspondence to reveal how inconsistent and unsuccessful many of these measures and punishments were, and calls into question the notion that the state gained control over recidivists in this period. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction1. Panic and Control2. Failure, Repeal and Reintroduction 3. Identification4. Supervision5. SentencingConclusion...
