Martin Wiener,
Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914, (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Martin Wiener in his
Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914 explores how the image of the criminal shifted during the middle to late nineteenth century in England as well as the concurrent shifts in conceptions about the role of the criminal justice system vis-à-vis the criminal. Arguing that policy "enacts and reshapes cultural premises," Wiener suggests a new way for looking at criminal policy, not just as a reflection of broader societal values at a given time period, but also as a potential creator of those values.
[1]
Wiener begins by discussing the early Victorian and mid-Victorian outlook on the criminal and on the criminal justice system. Fearful that the new industrialization was creating "domestic savagery," early Victorians saw "the need to build popular character" as essential to the criminal justice system.
[2] The law was to set an example, to set boundaries as to what acceptable and non-acceptable behavior were. Through laws such as the 1857 Divorce Act, "non-acceptable behaviors" such as adultery and desertion were legally stigmatized.
[3] However, in addition to setting boundaries between "criminal" and "normal," mid-Victorian criminologists and most of the general public also believed in rehabilitation, that the criminal could be taught not only the difference between "right" and "wrong" but also how to live a "right" life.
[4]
These efforts were largely successful by the 1870s and 1880s, but oddly resulted in the belief in rehabilitation rapidly dissipating during the late Victorian period.
[5] As faith in the "rationality, freedom, and efficacy of the will power of the individual" steadily diminished, fewer criminologists saw the wisdom of rehabilitation.
[6] Furthermore, criminologists shied away from the notion of "moral responsibility," increasingly seeing the criminal—be it the "juvenile offender" or the "mentally insane," for example — as somehow not responsible, and perhaps even a "victim" or situations beyond his/her control.
[7] While early Victorian criminologists would have regarded the poor thief as having made a "moral decision" to commit thievery, late Victorians began to look upon the poor thief as somehow a "victim" of capitalization.
[8] As a result of this shift, Wiener points out, the average daily local prison population fell by more than one-third in just ten years between 1883 and 1893.
[9] Sentences were shortened and a clear distinction began to be made between a very small group of "habitual criminals" and a majority of criminals who were "victims of oppressive social conditions."
[10]
