ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on repeat offending as a critical aspect of proactive policing. This is significant as the arrest of previously convicted offenders is a potential indicator of policing agents making arrests based on suspicion, rather than information of a specific offence. It investigates whether proactive policing agents deliberately targeted those whom they recognised as repeat offenders, combining existing scholarship on recidivism and a new perspective on the impact of policing on recorded repeat offending. The chapter is based on an analysis of 1828 individuals identified through the Digital Panopticon project’s record linkage as having been tried more than once at the Old Bailey between 1780 and 1850. Situated within a context of growing criminal justice knowledge of repeat offenders, but before formal legislative provision for the police surveillance of convicted offenders, this evidence suggests that some policing agents took opportunities to investigate and apprehend those whom they recognised as previously convicted offenders. In doing so, these policing agents affected recorded repeat offending and perceptions of criminality and recidivism.
