Crime Dynamics in European Russia Guberniyas in 1896-1912: Statistical and Geoinformational Analysis of Regional Data on the Number of Convicts

The article addresses crime dynamics in European Russia provinces (guberniyas) in 1896-1912 accounting for data on the number of convicts. It studies regional features of the process as well as its differences from the general dynamics in the Russian Empire. The focus is two groups of convicts. The first one is those sentenced for personal crimes, the second one is those sentenced for property offences. The author has created thematic maps distributing convicts within guberniyas in 1896 and 1912. Moreover, she has correlated this information with the data on the size of the urban, rural and working population at the beginning and the end of the period and has visualized the dynamics of the convict number growth in 10 guberniyas of different regions of European Russia. The article concludes that the regional dynamics of the convict number growth differs from that characteristic of the Russian Empire as a whole. A GIS method applied has demonstrated that guberniyas grouped by convict numbers are similar at the beginning and the end of the period understudy. The author has revealed a correlation between the number of convicts sentenced for personal crimes and property offences. Moreover, taking into account the number of property convicts the study demonstrates rapid increase of the number of property offences by the end of the period understudy.  

The Scope of Policing

This chapter explores the urban police role in the nineteenth century, examining what the police did and how they were deployed in the city. It details how both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ police were given an ‘omnibus mandate’, covering crime control, urban order, sanitation, and public safety. Police statistics reveal that police interventions were far more common for minor, impersonal, regulatory offences than for more serious, personal crimes of theft and violence. Hence, rather than specialist crime-fighting agencies, nineteenth-century police forces were key institutions of urban improvement. Furthermore, the chapter illuminates the strategy of preventative policing, revealing the geography and temporality of patrol, the tactics of police surveillance, and the broad powers of arrest with which they were entrusted.

criminal law, Roman

“Crime” lacks a fully agreed definition across modern societies, but competing versions tend to stress notions like punishment, protection of public or collective interests, and a pervasive role for the state in proceedings. Over time the Romans used a series of different procedures (successively, trial before the assemblies, by specialized juries, or by imperial inquisitors) to try most of their offences that would be more or less recognizably criminal today. Substantively, the core of this group were offences against the state in an institutional sense (e.g., sedition, electoral malpractice, abuse of public office, forgery). Over time it also came to include an increasing number of (personal) crimes of violence. Some core modern criminal offences such as forms of theft and forgery of private documents came to be grouped in with these only at a very late date and incompletely. “Moral” offences that are treated as criminal more sporadically today (e.g., use of intoxicants, gambling, prostitution) were not criminalized. Penalties in earlier periods included fines, civic disgrace, and exile; later periods introduced finer differentiation of penalties, as well as execution. Imprisonment was not a formal penalty. Roman criminal law had a deeper and more complicated relationship to politics than did the private, civil law. This is true both in the sense that the jurists were relatively uninterested in the criminal law, especially before the late 2nd century ce, and that known trials in the criminal courts seem to have been little governed by niceties of the law. Common-sense notions of guilt and innocence were relevant, but not legal technicalities.

Positivist Victimology: A Critique

This article traces the development of two main theoretical accounts of victimisation. The first of its two parts is an intellectual history of positivist victimology. In its attempt to define victimisation by an examination of those held to be victims, positivist victimology has traditionally pursued three major concerns: the identification of factors in individuals or their environment that conduce to a non-random risk of victimisation, a concentration on inter-personal crimes of violence, and the identification of victims who may be held to have contributed to their victimisation. The article argues that each of these concerns suffers from serious difficulties which have inevitably limited the potential of positivist victimology to explain the everyday social process of identifying and responding to victimising events. The second part argues that this process performs a central role in social life; it is a principal means by which societies maintain their values and identify the limits of non-compliance with them. Critical victimology argues that as the process of labelling individuals as victims involves a statement of values, it is essential to analyse how, when and why some who sustain injury are labelled victims, and others not. The article draws on work within social psychology to explain the main parameters of these decisions.

Trends in Serious Juvenile Crime

Throughout the past decade, serious juvenile crime has been the focus of considerable attention by legislators, law enforcement personnel, academic criminologists, media, and the public. Despite this attention, however, misunderstanding, misperception, and confusion still exist and, in some instances, seem to dominate both research and public policy. Utilizing National Crime Survey (NCS) victimization data as an alternative to official and self-report data, this analysis focuses on the patterns of juvenile offending in serious personal crimes from 1973 to 1980. The NCS data do not support the contention that serious juvenile crime has risen dramatically over the last 8 years. Moreover, the types of personal crimes committed by juveniles has not changed substantially over the 1973 to 1980 period. To the extent that recent legislation calling for more severe handling of juvenile offenders is based on substantial upswings in juvenile crime in recent years or changes in the types of crimes committed by juveniles, NCS data cannot provide support for such policy changes.