Discovering criminal classes Flashcards
Who were the criminal classes made up of?
- Known thieves and depredators
- Receivers of stolen goods
- Prostitutes
- Suspected people
- Vagrants and Tramps
Where was the term ‘criminal classes widely used?
France, Britain, and Italy
What did the criminal classes express Britain’s anxiety around?
Poverty, crime, and criminality
Where was the idea of criminals as social outsiders widely viewed throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries?
Britain
What did urbanisation and industrialisation create?
Large working-class suburbs
What did the language of class & conflict impact?
Understandings of crime
What was the idea of an entire class responsible for?
Committing crime
What were there similar ideas surrounding the criminal classes?
The continent (revolution)
Where was the belief that “the poor and inactive classes were and always will be the best breeding ground for all kinds of criminals” held?
Italy
What was a significant concern involving the criminal classes?
Difficult to locate geographically
What were the significant 19th-century anxieties surrounding the criminal classes?
- The middle and upper class in upper Britain/France were concerned about the dangerous classes
- Cities were seen as sick
- Problems with hygiene and population in Paris
- An imbalance of genders
- Diseases due to crowded housing and poor water
What were the concerns of the ruling class in the early 19th-century?
- The new rebellious working class
- Political disorder
- Italy and England blamed problems of unification on criminal poor
What were the concerns in France regarding the criminal classes?
- Fears about the crime epidemic in the 2nd half of the 19th century
- Concerns about declining birth rate, disease, infanticide, and alcoholism
- Fear around the uprooted, outcast, hungry “dangerous classes.”
Where were hard work and morality seen?
in societies where work was seen as a civic and national duty and laziness was seen as immoral
What were Fregier’s views?
- Thought poor were not like middle and upper class
- Thought that the poor did not work and gave in to their passions
- Wanted poor to adopt middle-class values
Given there was no one theory about criminal classes, what did some people label?
All workers as criminals
Who argued that “moral entrepreneurs were among those who spread the idea about criminal classes?”
David Phillips
What were some of Henry Mayhew’s views?
- Sympathise to the poor
- Understand that poor parenting and abusive employers might lead someone to a crime
- Believed criminality was connected to the offender’s dislike of steady work
What were the views of dangerous women, particularly in France?
- The prostitute became to act as the symbol for the female criminal classes
- Females less likely to commit a crime
What did the connection between laziness and crime inform ideas about?
Reform and punishment in prisons
What did police in Britain, France, and Germany become more focused on in the 19th century?
Criminal classes
What do studies of criminal classes help stimulate?
Biological theories of crime
