ABSTRACT
Introduction Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the approach to the governance of poverty and criminality underwent yet another important shift. Though historians disagree about the precise moment of the transformation, there is a general consensus that in Britain and North America, a new approach to governing poverty and criminality emerged, which has been variously termed the ‘modern’ or the ‘welfarist’ approach, around the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. This shift occurred as a number of events – which included a series of economic depressions, the rise of monopoly capitalism, the growth of Communism and socialist ideals and the emergence of the fi rst wave of the women’s movement – drew attention to the contradictions inherent in the laissezfaire approach to governing the economy and society.
