ABSTRACT
One of the major contributions of Victorian social debate to modern British attitudes was the acceptance of the concept of a ‘criminal class’. By 1850, contemporary observers were convinced that such a social stratum existed. 1 They saw it as the product of rapid industrialization and urbanization which, it was felt, had concentrated the lower orders in desperately poor and intrinsically dangerous masses. In the lowest quarters of every major city, it was thought, there existed a geographical area whose inhabitants lived mainly on the proceeds of crime, who enjoyed a lifestyle different from those of both the bourgeoisie and the respectable poor, who spoke a distinctive argot, and who were organized into a unique social hierarchy. This idea of the criminal as a lumpenproletarian, living a separate existence in the city slum, is still with us. Until the rise of a radical approach to criminology in the mid twentieth century, practitioners of the subject still based their approach to the criminal on this stereotype. Poor toilet training, irregular church attendance, and an unwillingness (when of an appropriate age) to participate in youth club activities were among a number of similar factors which were felt to predispose individual young people towards a criminal career: it is no accident that these characteristics were readily attributable to the non-respectable working class. This traditional stereotype of the criminal is still strong among newspaper editors, the writers of television crime series, and the public at large. Its significance as a force for defining deviant behaviour in modern society is, perhaps fortunately, outside the scope of this book; from the 1960s, of course, criminologists with a more radical approach to their discipline have had much to say in criticism of it. 2
