Conclusion

By selecting particular topics for discussion in this book – the development of policing and punishment; how criminality, victims of crime and offenders have been conceived; violence; and the rise of surveillance – we have added to the literature which has helped to define a body of knowledge which can be described as ‘crime history’ (together with, for example, Taylor 1998; Rawlings 1999; Emsley 2005). While it is true that a comprehensive study of crime history would be incomplete without most if not all of these topics, the broad boundaries that have been constructed around this subdiscipline will surely expand over time. Crime history (if we can use that term for the large and somewhat sprawling collection of historical studies of criminal justice agencies, offences, legislation and individual offenders that has developed over the last twenty or thirty years) is at a crossroads. The methods used, the approaches taken and the intellectual preoccupations of those who have written on the subject are recognizable to all social historians. The subject would fit seamlessly into a history degree programme, or help to make an academic contribution to modern understandings of social life and political thought in the 1750-1950 period. The acceptance of both qualitative and quantitative approaches (or a mix of both), and the willingness to share sources and ideas, do, perhaps, mark out the crime history community as a distinct group within social historians. However, the concern with rigorous method, the correct appreciation and use of difficult sources, the attempt to understand complex contemporary situations and the motivations of historical actors, all place the subdiscipline under the broad subject banner of ‘history’.