ABSTRACT
Crime and punishment were understood on a sliding continuum in which the trials and tribulations of youth were the most critical but jittery years. Crime was far more hitched to the stages of life and corresponding attitudes about the condition of each age and what it was capable of. Youth was the urgent ‘choosing’ time, and this was reflected in crime and the law. A 1574 Common Council ‘lawe for playes and enterludes’ was a tough response to ‘disorders’ by ‘greate multitudes of people speciallye yowthe’ who flocked to ‘plays, enterludes and shewes’. Father and son, toyed with ideas of crime that saw youth as the key stage for making and breaking future criminals—and therefore society as a whole. In the case of youth, that meant making sure that young people were walking in one direction along the straight and narrow—as it would soon be too late to correct any waywardness.
