Serious Offenders A Historical Study of Habitual Criminals

Serious Offenders: A Historical Study of Habitual Criminals examines the persistent offending careers of men and women operating in northwest England between the 1840s and 1940s. The book focuses on a group of serious and persistent offenders who as well as offending in the region, had lengthy offending careers spanning several decades in various other locations. These were highly mobile persistent serious offenders who appear not to have been so closely bound in to the processes and structures which aided desistence from offending for the vast majority of the petty offenders. The authors discuss questions such as: Why did some people remain minor offenders, whilst others developed into serious offenders? What were the triggers which propelled previously minor offenders towards persistent serious criminality? What part did changes in criminal legislation play in these processes? They conclude by drawing on the lessons to be learnt for today's debates about the regulation and surveillance of serious habitual offenders.

1 - Serious Offenders and their Researchers
2 - Our Methodology
3 - Serious Offenders, and the Legislation that 'Produced' them
4 - Understanding the Evidence
5 - The Impact of Social and Personal Factors on Serious Offending
6 - Hunting Men down to Honesty and Respectability
7 - Making Sense of Historical and Modern Systems of Control and Surveillance

Professor Barry Godfrey of Keele University has authored or co-authored eight books on the history of crime, policing, and long term trends in sentencing offenders, including Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending. Dr David J. Cox is Research Fellow at the Law and Criminal Justice Centre, University of Plymouth, and Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University. He has a PhD on policing in the early 19th century, and is the co-author of Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending. Professor Stephen Farrall is Director of the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Sheffield. He has previously worked at the Universities of Oxford and Keele. He is the author of over 40 journal articles and is the co-author of Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending.