Carolyn Conley in her The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent, examines the administration of criminal justice from 1859 to 1890 in the English southeast county of Kent. Drawing from criminal court records, Home Office records, and contemporary Kentish newspapers, Conley contends that British criminal justice enforcement, despite efforts to regularize it during the nineteenth century, still remained highly determined by local values and concerns. [1] Whatever the statute books said or what Parliament had in mind in crafting laws was secondary to the needs and concerns of Kentish society. [2]
This was in large part because of a unique feature of the British legal system: the unprecedented role of amateurs in its operation, whether as Justices of the Peace (JPs) or as jurors. [3] As a result of this amateurishness, Conley argues that JPs (who usually were the largest landowners in a given area) and jurors (who were usually from the middle and upper classes) often brought their individual or class prejudices to bear in meting out criminal justice in Kent. Whereas violence as a form of recreation or in response to a challenge might have been condoned by Victorian justices and jurors as being "manly," violence in property crimes was considered as "cowardice." [4] The use of particular weapons also played an important role in whether one was convicted or acquitted of capital crimes such as murder: 82% of those executed for murder had used knives compared with 25% for those who had used guns. [5] Knives were the principal weapon used by lower-class criminals; guns that of middle and upper class criminals.
Societal prejudices also played a key role in the enforcement or lack thereof of crimes against women. In order for a woman "to merit protection" in the eyes of Kentish JPs and jurors, she had to be submissive and defenseless. [6] But for the most part judges and jurors were loathe to intervene in the private home based on the notion that women were the property of their husbands (or fathers). [7] Likewise the court was reluctant to intervene in child abuse cases, except in cases of gross and deliberate cruelty. [8]
Though the idea of equality before the law was enshrined in the legal code, in practice as Conley points out there were class-based distinctions. Many Kentish judges believed in a "criminal class," distinct from most of society, and whose members were inherently "guilty." [9] This prejudicial category was applied often to the poor, as well as vagrants, soldiers, and the Irish. [10] Though Conley shows the commission of crimes by these groups was not significantly different from those of the "respectable class," many in Victorian Kent fervently believed in such a distinct class. So important was the notion of respectability that members of the "respectable class," when brought to trial for criminal offenses either 1) had their charges dismissed based on the idea that they could not have committed the crime based on their "respectability," 2) they lost their "respectability," or 3) even if they were convicted, the difference between "real" criminals and them was delineated. [11]
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