ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts in the preceding chapters of this book. Geography, boundaries and spaces were key to the power of the police courts' contribution to nineteenth-century Scotland. Their practice was generally similar across urban environments, embedding this form of justice far and wide throughout Scotland. The courts in Glasgow and Edinburgh provided models for local practice elsewhere via widespread coverage in regional newspapers, condemning those accused and convicted in these courts to notoriety across the breadth of the country. The practice of the police courts also helped to define character of and assumptions about different urban spaces. Some streets, parishes and neighbourhoods were understood to be dangerous, and especially so at particular times of the day and night, a perception that was created by the geographical and temporal information provided in police returns and projected further by compliant media sources.
