Social Aspects of Crime in England between the Wars

Hermann Mannheim

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367135294
• eBook ISBN: 9780429640124
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1940. This ground-breaking work formed the foundation for modern criminology becoming an academic discipline within UK sociological studies. It concerns the history of crime, its causes and treatment in England during the preceding twenty-five years or so. Mannheim, through this and later studies, went on to found the criminology department at LSE.

The book offers an evaluation of the criminological implications of the War and early post-War period as well as an examination of the practical working of the new penal machinery built up by the Reform Acts passed just prior to the War. The author produced a scientific account of the post-War state of crime, beginning with a critical examination of the structure and interpretation of English Criminal Statistics followed by a survey of the principal criminological features of the period between the two Wars. Significant aspects are dealt with in a separate chapters - four devoted to problems of work and leisure (Unemployment and Strikes, Business Administration, Alcoholism, and Gambling), four others to those of certain specific sections of the population (Juvenile Delinquency, Female Delinquency and Prostitution, Recidivism).

This is a fascinating read for both the historian and the criminologist.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

THE mere fact of the publication of this book as well as its special structure would seem to demand some little explanation. Surely, it may appear somewhat presumptuous for a criminologist who is not a native of this country to deal with one of the most complex chapters in recent English social history and to undertake to tell a story of which he has witnessed only the latest events. The more his work proceeded, the more did the author himself become convinced that his venture was foredoomed to failure, and it was mainly due to the constant encouragement which he received from the many quarters mentioned in the Preface that he did not abandon his attempt. The book in its present form, it is true, bears only a slight resemblance to that which the author had originally in mind, thus presenting one more proof of the truth of the old dictum Habent sua fata libelli. Structure and contents cannot have remained untouched by the fact that the investigation had to be spread over nearly four years and that its final completion was, more than once, interrupted by unforeseen circumstances which were entirely beyond the author’s control. The first research programme w^rhich was submitted to the Leon Bequest Committee in 1936 was based upon the belief that there existed a noticeable gap in criminological and penological research which might profitably be filled—a gap concerning the history of crime, its causes and treatment in England during the previous twenty-five years or so. That is not to say that in the author’s view research into problems of this kind had been generally neglected in this country. On the contrary, they have formed the object of continuous effort by English scholars for more than a century and a half. It was only recently that our attention was once more drawn to this fact in a useful and learned article by two American criminologists.¹ From John Howard and the brothers Fielding to Colquhoun, Bentham and Whately, from Mary Carpenter, M. Davenport Hill and Henry Mayhew to Luke Owen Pike, W. D. Morrison and Charles E. B. Russell—from the Reports on Criminal Commitments and Convictions of 1827–28 to the Gladstone Report of 1895 and the Report on Capital Punishment of 1930, hardly a single decade passed without witnessing an English contribution of outstanding importance to contemporary criminological and penological thought. Considering the lack of adequate scientific method possessed by those official investigators and private scholars, the average quality of their work must be regarded as of surprisingly high standard.¹ Moreover, it is an interesting fact that information concerning the social causes of crime in the England of the Industrial Revolution can be gathered not only from Opposition quarters² but at least as well from highly official enquiries. In the course of time, it is true, these sources have become more and more scanty until, finally, the War of 1914–18 almost entirely dried them up. In all probability, this lack of activity was not due to mere chance nor can it sufficiently be explained as a natural consequence of that state of mental exhaustion which follows an upheaval of such dimensions. Rather may it be ascribed to the fact that the time had not yet arrived for a systematic and scientific account of the post-War state of crime which would have been detached enough to be impartial. Such detachment was needed both for an evaluation of the criminological implications of the War and early post-War period as well as for an examination of the practical working of the new penal machinery built up by those great Reform Acts passed just prior to the War: The Probation of Offenders Act of 1907, the Prevention of Crime Act of 1908 and the Children Act of the same year, the Criminal Justice Administration Act of 1914—to mention only those with a direct bearing upon the Penal System— had more or less to remain scraps of paper during the actual fighting.

¹ Yale Levin and Alfred Lindesmith, “English Ecology and Criminology,” journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. xxvii, no. 6, March–April 1937.

¹ As far as the special problem of Juvenile Delinquency is concerned, the author may be permitted to refer to his survey of previous investigations on the subject, written for the forthcoming Home Office Report.

² This is the view expressed by the well-known Dutch criminologist, W. A. Bonger, Introduction to Criminology (English translation, 1936), p. 42.

In 1936, after seventeen years of peace, however, it appeared possible to attempt at least a preliminary survey of certain sections of the whole field. American “Crime Surveys,” beginning with the pioneer Cleveland Survey of 192.2,¹ “individual case studies,” initiated by Dr. William Healy, and “follow-up studies,” the domain of the Gluecks, had shown the way. If they should not yet have succeeded in bringing about any substantial improvement in the American crime rate, surely this is not the fault of the workers engaged in those model investigations.

“The surveys,” writes Mr. Bettman,² “have opened the eyes of the people in this country to the complex nature of the crime problem and to the possibilities of an intelligent and scientific approach to the study of that problem. They have forged some technique for that study … and they have formulated or furnished the basis for the formulation of many conclusions which can be accepted as parts of a comprehensive program of reforms.”

The same applies to the individual case and follow-up studies.

However excellent these American surveys are as representing an ideal, it was clear that, for our present purposes, they could not simply be copied. Considerations of a technical as well as of a psychological nature would have prevented such an imitation, considerations which have proved decisive for the scope and method of the present investigation. Evidence of this will be found in the following summary of the sources and material at our disposal.

I. Technical difficulties necessarily arose, in the first place, from the fact that the author had to work single-handed where the American crime surveys employed whole armies of field-workers, statisticians, and other research assistants. This made it imperative to restrict the scope of the present investigation so as to adapt it to the proper dimensions of a one-man job with a more or less fixed time limit. Consequently, many items which should ordinarily have been included in a crime survey had to be dropped from the very beginning, as, in particular, the survey of criminal administration in the Courts, the work of the Police and the functioning of the various categories of penal institutions and of probation. To leave out these aspects for the time being seemed all the more appropriate as in the course of the last thirteen years many of them have been made the subject of important official and private publications, as in particular the Reports on

¹ Criminal Justice in Cleveland, conducted by the Cleveland Foundation and published by that Foundation, 1922. A detailed analysis of these Criminal Justice Surveys up to 1931 is given by Mr. Alfred Bettman in the Report of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Wickersham Commission), Report No. 4: “On Prosecution,” Washington, 1931, pp. 39–223.

² Op cit., p. 185.

The Treatment of Young Offenders, 1927.

Police Powers and Procedure, 1929.

Capital Punishment, 1930.

Persistent Offenders, 1932.

Sterilisation, 1934.

Imprisonment by Courts of Summary Jurisdiction in Default of Payment of Fines, etc., 1934.

Employment of Prisoners, Part I, 1933; Part II, 1935.

Social Services in Courts on Summary Jurisdiction, 1936.¹

Coroners, 1936.

Courts of Summary Jurisdiction in the Metropolitan Area, 1937.

Corporal Punishment, 1938.

In addition, there are the five Reports of the Children’s Branch, Home Office (1923, 1924, 1925, 1928, 1938) and the Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Prisons for England and Wales.

Though many of these Reports give an exhaustive and first-rate account of those special sections with which they are concerned, together they do not, and are not intended to, cover the whole penal system of the country. The most conspicuous gaps left refer to the actual working of the Courts and the Prison and Borstal Institutions. It is to some of these sections that recent efforts of private investigators have been directed: before 1936, only two books of this kind had appeared, English Prisons To-day, edited by Stephen Hobhouse and A. Fenner Brockway (1922), and S. Barman, The English Borstal System (1934), while Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise’s The English Prison System (1921) and Mr. L. W. Fox’s The Modern English Prison (1934), useful and illuminating as they are, belong to the category of semi-official publications. After 1936, however, admirable private accounts of the present English prison system have been given by Mr. Leo Page¹ and Mr. John A. F.Watson.² Recent memoirs by ex-prisoners endowed with special gifts of observation and expression have, more vividly than ever before, aroused the interest of the general public in prison problems. Moreover, the work of the Juvenile Courts has been reviewed in Miss Winifred A. Elkin’s stimulating book on the subject.³ All these researches represent the most valuable preparatory material for comprehensive surveys of the future. Much supplementary work will, of course, still be needed, particularly in view of the changes effected by the present War.

Entirely different is the position in the field of post-War criminological research into the criminal types and the causes of crime. Here, with very few exceptions, there has as yet been no concerted effort to study those causal factors the knowledge of which is an almost indispensable preliminary requirement for the building up of any efficient penal system. Since the publication of Dr. Charles Goring’s painstaking Report on The English Convict, which appeared shortly before the Great War, only one criminological work of outstanding importance has been published, Professor Cyril Burt’s The Young Delinquent (first edition 1925), in addition to which a few books of a more popular character, as Mrs. L. le Mesurier’s Boys in Trouble and the writings of Sir William Clarke Hall and Roy Calvert, deserve mentioning. Of post-War official Reports only the following are essentially devoted to criminological problems: the Reports on

Sexual Offences against Young Persons,⁴ 1925.

Persistent Offenders, 1932.

Psychological Treatment of Crime, 1939.

Abortion, 1939.

¹ This Report, which deals particularly with the Probation System, finds an excellent supplement in the Handbook of Probation, edited by Mrs. L. le Mesurier under the auspices of the National Association of Probation Officers, 1935.

¹ Crime and the Community (1938).

² Meet the Prisoner (1939).

³ English Juvenile Courts (1938).

⁴ This Report is concerned with questions of Court procedure, too. These and problems of treatment occupy, in fact, much more space than those sections referring to the offender, his mental condition and social status, etc. Similar considerations apply to the Report on Street Offences, 1928.

There are, in addition, several short Reports by local authorities on Juvenile Delinquency, some of them unpublished.¹

It was this apparent lack of systematic research into the causal factors of crime, and particularly into its social aspects,² that induced the author to concentrate upon them. Investigations of this kind can, as a rule, be based either on statistical or on individual case material. As far as the latter is concerned, it was the author’s plan to delve into those huge accumulations of case records collected by Prison and Borstal authorities, Probation Officers, Approved Schools, and others, for the purpose of giving a comprehensive account of the principal causative factors of crime and delinquency for the period under investigation. At the time when the plan for this book was conceived no attempt had yet been made to unearth the treasures that might have been hidden in these mountains. There was, however, one obvious difficulty, arising from the fact that it became necessary to go back to a time when the understanding of the technique of recording case histories was not yet sufficiently developed. Consequently, after having worked his way through a few thousand records of probation cases it became clear to the author that this material was neither uniform nor detailed enough for scientific purposes.³ Moreover, in the meantime the welcome news had become known that not only the Borstal authorities were engaged in carrying out very extensive investigations into cases of boys passing through the collecting centre at H.M. Prison Wormwood Scrubs, but also that the Home Office intended to conduct a full enquiry into the causes of juvenile delinquency mainly based upon Juvenile Court cases. The fact that the enquiry is being based upon current records specially collected for this purpose shows that here, too, it has not been regarded as practicable to use the material already available.

¹ Outstanding among them are the Reports of the London County Council, Education Officer, of 1937, and of the City of Birmingham Education Committee of 1938, and the unpublished Report on an Enquiry into the Relationship of Juvenile Delinquency and Environment in an Industrial Town, by Mr. Albert Royds, M.Ed.,. B.Sc., describing conditions in Oldham.

² Research into the mental aspects of crime was carried out up to the present War at Wormwood Scrubs Prison (see the Report on The Psychological Treatment of Crime, by Dr. W. Norwood East and Dr. W. H. de B. Hubert, 1939) and at the Institute for the Scient...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Author’s Preface
• Contents
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Part I. Structure and Interpretation of the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales
• Part II. Social Aspects of Crime in England between the Wars
• Index
• Contents of Statistical Tables