Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914 - Hardcover

Wiener, Martin Joel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 052135045X ISBN 13: 9780521350457

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Book Description

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.

Review

"Studies of Victorian crime have multiplied rapidly in the last decade but many have been narrowly focused. Martin J. Wiener's book provides an intellectual framework for understanding the varieties and complexities of the topic by considering attitudes and actions in their cultural settings." American Historical Review

"Wiener has given us more than enough to ponder. Handsomely produced it deserves the attention of anyone interested in the development of modern Britain, social policy, or the nineteenth century in general." History

"A break-through study that interprets criminal justice history by relating it to the bedrock of intellectual and cultural change. Reconstructing the Criminal is broadly and deeply researched, and Wiener's historical findings surely have some application to the hugely important problems of crime and punishment in our own time. But I believe the book's preeminent value is in its range of discussion of and depth of insight into cultural issues, whether scientific, religious, philosophical, or literary. This book should have an impact well beyond the confines of criminal justice history." Stanley Palmer, University of Texas at Arlington

"By showing us how ideas about crime and criminality were constructed and reconstructed, he uses the fears of English intellectuals to illuminate their views of character and society. His work helps to make sense of the large transitions in social policy and law effected by the British state during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wiener artfully blends analyses of fiction, social science, and public discourse into a convincing treatment of cultural change. He moves with authority among a wide variety of sources to illuminate fundamental Victorian attitudes which shaped both public privacy and private sanctions." Lynn Hollen Lees, University of Pennsylvania

"The death of Victorian England signified, among other things, the transference of responsibility from the individual to the state. The 'reconstructing' of the criminal went hand in hand with the reconstructing of the citizen. By showing how that process of reconstruction took place, how the criminal was first 'moralized' and then 'demoralized', how the culture affected the law, and how the social ethos impinged on social policy, Martin Wiener has illuminated a major aspect of the moral and social revolution of our own time." Times Literary Supplement

"...a masterful synthesis of much of the scholarly research on the nineteenth-century criminal over the last several years." John R. Reed, Nineteenth Century Prose

"...it provides rich insights into the conception of the criminal in England and, in a broader sense, into how Victorians and Edwardians thought about their world. Reconstructing the Criminal is a considerable achievement." Peter Stansky, Journal of Economic History

"Reconstructing the Criminal is a valuable addition to our stock of knowledge about nineteenth-century penality. It is an original and important work, refreshingly free of jargon, and based on prodigious historical research." Contemporary Sociology

"This lucidly written study displays prodigous research, synthesizing innumerable scholarly studies with extensive published primary sources....breaks new ground in relating images of criminals to punishment over a century....Wiener's significant, illuminating, book materially contributes to the expanding literature on crime." David W. Gutzke, History

"...an excellent book, one that will be helpful to scholars of all stripes and disciplines. The study engages the methods of the cultural historian and criminal justice historian adroitly and responsibly. Also, the emphasis on cultural consensus rather than conflict is careful and refreshing." Beth Kalikoff, Victorian Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 052135045X
• ISBN 13: 9780521350457
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 391