Reconstructing the Criminal Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830}}}1914 [Paperback]

An account of changing conceptions and treatments of criminality in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.Starting from the assumption that policies and statutes originate in a society's values and norms, this text demonstrates how changes in criminal law and penal practice were related to changing values of early, middle, and late Victorian and Edwardian society.Starting from the assumption that policies and statutes originate in a society's values and norms, this text demonstrates how changes in criminal law and penal practice were related to changing values of early, middle, and late Victorian and Edwardian society.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 skillfully 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 then reformed to be more welfarist. This work offers insight into the contemporary Anglo-American penal system. In addition, 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.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 Studies of Victorian crl3„