Article

Theoretical Criminology
16(3) 313­–328
History, criminology and the © The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480611433431
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Paul Lawrence
The Open University, UK

Abstract
This article considers why, despite an apparent congruence of subject matter and
methodologies, the disciplines of sociological criminology and criminal justice history
are not more closely aligned. It contends that intellectual traffic between the two fields is
not usually limited by institutional barriers, nor is it a legacy of the disciplinary antipathy
which existed between history and sociology in Britain during the mid-twentieth century.
Rather, it is due to the different ‘purposes’ with which sociological criminologists and
criminal justice historians imbue their work and to the differing disciplinary perceptions
of the relationship between the past, present and future which result from this. These
different ‘purposes’ are traced via a consideration of the paths of development of the
two disciplines from the 1940s. The article concludes by proposing an arena for future
collaboration between criminal justice historians and sociological criminologists.

Keywords
criminal justice history, historical criminology, historiography, history, postmodernism,
sociological criminology

Introduction
Being an academic surely means engaging in an inherently critical enterprise—one that
requires us to ask awkward questions of power and the existent social order.
(Hillyard et al., 2004: 386)

Historians do not count as ‘proper’ history that written … in the hope of changing the way
politics and society function.
(Daddow, 2007: 431)

Corresponding author:
Paul Lawrence, History Department, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 7AA, UK
Email: p.m.lawrence@open.ac.uk

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314 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

As the fields of sociological criminology and criminal justice history have developed
over the last 30 years, there have been a number of what might be termed ‘manifestos of
collaboration’—calls for a closer alignment of the concerns and members of the two
disciplines (Davies and Pearson, 1999; Emsley and Robert, 1990; Lévy and Robert,
1984). More recently, a number of criminologists have reflected on the role of historical
research in contemporary criminology (Bosworth, 2001; Knepper and Scicluna, 2010),
and the temporal foci of the two fields have also increasingly elided. Criminal justice
historians have begun to explore the post Second World War landscape (for example,
Emsley, 2011; Jackson, 2008; Williams, 2007), while a number of criminologists have
moved in the opposite direction (for example, Rigakos and Hadden, 2001; Zedner, 2006).
Despite this, this article is based on the premise that criminal justice history remains both
largely discrete and rather distant from mainstream criminological research.
Contemporary criminology views itself as, pace Downes, a rendezvous discipline. As
such, there are of course some criminologists who have undergraduate or postgraduate
qualifications in history, and who on occasion work from historical sources as well as
using more present-focused methodologies (see, for example, Godfrey, 2008). There are
also a few sociologically trained criminologists who have at times used historical sources
and methods to great effect (for example, Eisner, 2003). However, such practice is not by
any means a mainstream pursuit. A survey of articles published in the British Journal of
Criminology since 1994 shows that just 5 per cent used what might be termed historical
sources or methods, with the figure falling to just over 3 per cent (or 22 out of 644 arti-
cles) if the 1999 special issue on criminal justice history is omitted from the calculation.
The vast bulk of academic criminological discourse and research is undertaken by indi-
viduals trained within departments of sociology, social policy and law, and hence adopts
the methods and perspectives of those disciplines. Indeed, Appendix C of the Quality
Assurance Agency benchmark document for criminology (2007), entitled ‘What is crim-
inology?’, while referring to criminology as ‘a site at which social scientific disciplines
interact’ (2007: 20), discusses overlap with the approaches of sociology, law, political
science, social policy and forensic psychology but omits all mention of history. This
article will thus contend that (with a number of notable exceptions) the past is not some-
thing most criminologists think about very often.
Among criminal justice historians, the obverse is true. They rarely consider anything
but the past. It might seem rather facile to accuse historians of only thinking historically
but, as will be argued, this has not always been the case. Historians of all hues have been,
at various points since the inception of the discipline during the 19th century, more con-
nected to the concerns of the present, more engaged, than they usually are now. While
many criminal justice historians have been (and remain) motivated by a broad concern
for social justice (for example, King, 2000) they usually stop short of making any explicit
intervention in contemporary debates, which is often a primary goal for criminological
writing. Crime, History and Societies, the foremost journal for criminal justice history
has, since its inception in 1997, published only eight articles (5 per cent of the total)
which could in any way be said to incorporate the primary markers of sociological crimi-
nology (which might be taken crudely to include some or all of: commentary on present-
day debates and practices in the criminal justice field; reflection on and use of theory to
inform methodology; a desire to abstract to some degree from the particular; use of types

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Lawrence 315

of sources and methods particularly linked to social scientific disciplines). There is, of
course, a sense in which works of history which pertain to crime and criminal justice can
be considered, de facto, criminology. However, the point being made here is that crimi-
nal justice history remains a largely discrete intellectual entity, with its own constituency,
avenues of publication, conferences and networks.
This article considers why this remains the case. Given that it is possible for suffi-
ciently motivated individuals to cross the practical boundaries imposed by separate insti-
tutional and funding structures, why are two fields—sociological criminology and
criminal justice history—which seem to have such similar concerns, not more closely
aligned? It will be contended that they lack a shared understanding of the extent to which
the present can be explained and understood via reference to the past. In addition, the
paths of development which the disciplines of sociological criminology and criminal
justice history have taken have given very different types of ‘intent’ or ‘purpose’ to their
work. Sociological criminologists usually seek influence in the present of one form or
another, in order to shape the future. Criminal justice historians largely avoid imbuing
their work with any explicit ‘purpose’. While, it will be argued, many do offer insights
valuable to a contemporary critique of the criminal justice system, these are often con-
structed in ways which result in their contemporary utility remaining opaque to socio-
logical criminologists in search of data with more immediate purchase.
In exploring the ramifications of these differences, this article will briefly consider the
occasionally fractious relationship which developed between the disciplines of history
and sociology from the mid-20th century onwards. It will then outline the main contours
of sociological criminology’s ‘time-consciousness’ and ‘purpose’. The same style of
analysis will then be applied to the field of criminal justice history. The article concludes
by proposing an arena for future discussion between criminal justice historians and
criminologists.

History versus sociology?

At first glance, it is tempting to view the lack of interaction between criminology and
criminal justice history as a subset or legacy of the sometimes fractious relationship which
developed between history and sociology in Britain after the Second World War. From the
later 1940s onwards it was common among British historians to view sociology as largely
divorced from the empirical tradition on which British history-writing was based, and
overly given to sweeping theoretical claims (the elision of ‘sociology’ with ‘sociological
theory’ being common among historians at the time). The inaugural issue of Past and
Present noted, for example, that ‘one need not deny that theories may throw some light on
limited aspects of the subject; but they must be severely kept in their very modest place’
(Morris and Hobsbawm, 1952: ii). A decade later Eric Hobsbawn and others again noted,
at a conference devoted to the topic, how sociologists remained too interested in the gen-
eral over the particular, and Hugh Trevor Roper, giving a paper in 1969 at the London
School of Economics lamented public fawning over ‘the new queen of sciences, sociol-
ogy’ (Aylmer and Adamson, 1964; Trevor Roper, 1969: 4). The first editorial of the influ-
ential History Workshop Journal noted an intent ‘to confront … sociology’s … confidence
in dubious psychological stereotypes, … its exaltation of statistics irrespective of their

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316 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

sources, … its predilection for transhistorical generalization … and its ambitious claim to
the title, “social science”’ (Samuel and Stedman Jones, 1976: 8). In the later 1970s, Gareth
Stedman Jones (1976: 296) still felt justified in his belief that ‘the incoherence of much
sociological reasoning’ was enough ‘finally to convince the historian that theoretical work
is too important to be subcontracted to others’. Similarly, Geoffrey Elton (1977: 208),
speaking as president of the Royal Historical Society, lamented the way in which (in his
view) social scientists were so caught up in the establishment of agreed orthodoxies that
‘they simply have no means of grasping that there are valid forms of knowledge which
achieve their ends in other ways’.
Historical research was equally not something which generated much interest among
British sociologists between 1945 and the later 1970s. Early in the period many predi-
cated their work on the concept of modernity or, later, post-modernity, and, rather enrap-
tured by the presumed novelty of the object of their study—contemporary society—felt
they had little to learn from historical retrospection. Ernest Gellner (1964: 66), for exam-
ple, was only partially tongue in cheek when he claimed that ‘in transitional situations …
men learn nothing from history: they cannot. They have to invent sociology instead.’
Such attitudes were, as Calhoun (1987: 616) has argued, partly a product of the ‘inordi-
nate disdain’ shown by some historians, but this may in turn have been generated by
Marxist infighting, as both the Communist Party Historians Group (who were very influ-
ential in the 1960s and 1970s) and many mid-century sociologists were inspired, if not
informed, by Marxism. The prominent social historian Edward Thompson’s The Poverty
of Theory (1978), for example, was written in direct response to Althusser’s For Marx
(1969) and Reading Capital (1970), with its perceived (by Thompson) attack on the
empirical methodology of British social history. Even from within British sociology
itself, however, there was little reflection on change over time in the decades following
the Second World War. As Calhoun (1987: 615) has argued, the struggle to professional-
ize during this period led to an emphasis on ‘work that could more readily be justified in
terms of its contemporary utility or relevance’.
During the early 1980s, however, a new climate developed. Peter Burke’s Sociology
and History, while acknowledging that ‘sociologists and historians are not always the
best of neighbours’ at least sought to set out what the two camps could learn from each
other (Burke, 1980: 13). On the part of sociologists, Anthony Giddens (1979: 230)
argued that there were ‘no logical or even methodological distinctions between the social
sciences and history—appropriately conceived’. Philip Abrams (1980: 14, 4), while con-
ceding that ‘historians and sociologists still have a long way to go in cultivating a com-
mon rhetoric’ also argued that there was ‘an emerging common mode of practical
explanation’. Further fruitful debate continued in the 1980s but there was something of a
retrenchment on the part of sociologists in the early 1990s, with some arguing that they
had modelled themselves too much on historians, and had thus been seduced away from
general theory (Kiser and Hechter, 1991). Other interventions, such as that of Goldthorpe
(1991: 225), were more nuanced but, nonetheless, re-asserted the superiority of socio-
logical methods, claiming that ‘history and sociology can, and should, still be regarded
as significantly different intellectual enterprises’.
Such debates over idiopathic vs nomothetic methods rumble on (Calhoun, 1998). Yet,
while certainly informing the academic contexts of criminal justice history and sociological

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Lawrence 317

criminology, such altercations can only be part of the answer as to why the two disciplines
intersect relatively rarely even now. Rather, the proper focus has to be on the ‘purpose’ or
‘intent’ with which the two disciplines are invested by their practitioners, and the differing
relationships to past, present and future that these ‘purposes’ generate. More specifically,
sociological criminology has a strong sense of contemporary purpose, and a shallow time/
depth perception. Criminal justice historians tend to have a weak, or at least diffuse, sense of
contemporary purpose, and a strong sense of time perception. To understand these factors
requires a consideration of the development of both disciplines over time.

Criminology and the past, present and future ...

While sociology’s preoccupation with ‘modernity’ has now largely evaporated, many
sociologically trained criminologists have only relatively recently begun to realize the
significance of the past. Adam Crawford put it well when he referred in 2005 to ‘the
(rather sloppy) theoretical assumption that underpins some criminological and social sci-
ence research that we live in ‘new times’ that demand new concepts, ideas, understand-
ings’, an assumption which has ‘tended to suggest a rupture with the past and hence
efface historic continuities’ (Rock, 2005: 474). Yet criminology was not always so
focused on the present. Early ‘modern’ criminology, to use Garland and Spark’s (2000:
193) characterization, had, due to the backgrounds and influence of its ‘pioneers’, a
strong historical bent.
The work of Leon Radzinowicz is of particular interest, partly because he was more
influential than either Mannheim or Grünhut, but also due to his marked interest in the
historical dimensions of criminal justice policy, a facet of his work often disregarded.
His biography is well known (Butler, 1974; Martin, 1988; Radzinowicz, 1999) but it is
perhaps worth pointing out that, after his arrival at Cambridge at the end of the 1930s, his
first project was a consideration of the contribution made by the 19th-century Blue
Books (government compilations of largely statistical information) to the evolution of
criminal justice policy in England. He believed such a consideration was ‘vital’ in order
to understand ‘English penal thought, legislation and policy’ (Radzinowicz, 1999: 156).
A foreword to this early work by the Chairman of the Department of Criminal Science at
Cambridge (a lawyer also much taken by historical research) noted that without such
historical research ‘attempted amendments of the law [would] be one-sided, or even
positively mischievous’ (Winfield, 1943: 180).
Radzinowicz was actively sponsored at Trinity College by George Trevelyan, who
was Master during the 1940s. Trevelyan was arguably the last of the Whig historians and
he and Radzinowicz undoubtedly shared notions of historical progress. Radzinowicz
(1999: 181) certainly believed that in England, ‘the uninterrupted continuity of its devel-
opment’ meant that without adequate historical knowledge ‘the present state of criminal
legislation cannot be fully understood nor the course of its future evolution rightly con-
ceived’. Nor were shared notions of the significance of a historical perspective confined
to the university sector. Viscount Templewood (Samuel Hoare) was invited by
Radzinowicz to give the first annual lecture in criminal science in 1947. In his lecture
Templewood, who as Home Secretary from 1937 to 1939 had tried but failed to introduce
a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill, noted that ‘the history and lessons of crime

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318 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

have been too long neglected’ (Hoare, 1947: 1). He and Radzinowicz were on familiar
terms and it is likely that Hoare’s educational background (he had studied history at New
College, Oxford) was pertinent to their relationship.
Thus early on in the development of modern academic criminology, the ‘use’ of his-
tory directly to explain the present and inform future policy was not conceived of as
problematic. Historical research was something readily accommodated within the world
view of both academic criminologists and Home Office officials. While Radzinowicz’s
influence was ‘more decisive than either Mannheim’s or Grünhut’s’ these latter were also
interested in historical methods (Hood, 2004: 469). Upon his arrival at the London
School of Economics Mannheim gave a course of lectures (1938–1939) which consid-
ered the aims and history of punishment with the professed purposed of ‘giving an insight
into the philosophical basis of punishment and into the historical development of the
various penal methods’ (Rock, 1988a: xviii). Grünhut’s postdoctoral thesis on Anselm
von Feuerbach was primarily a piece of historical-biographical writing and, on his arrival
in England in 1939, he listed one of his specialisms as the history of the criminal law. His
opus Penal Reform (1948) was a historical and comparative study of penal thinking and
policy extending over 150 years, in which he argued that penal policy was always shaped
by broader social concerns. Thus all three interwar pioneers contributed to the develop-
ment of ‘the English pragmatic and humanitarian approach to criminology and criminal
policy’ (Hood, 2004: 470), and part of this approach was a common-sense notion that
discussions of contemporary policy and institutions could and should be informed by a
consideration of the historical conditions out of which they had grown.
This approach changed significantly during the second half of the twentieth century.
There is no need to rework the extant histories of the development of criminology during
this period (see, inter alia, Garland, 1997; Hahn Rafter, 2009; Rock, 1988a, 1988b). It is
germane to note, however, that during the 1950s and early 1960s, criminology was ‘insti-
tutionalized’ to some degree, with the foundation of the Home Office Research Unit in
1956 and the Cambridge Institute of Criminology in 1959. While, as Loader (2006: 566)
has noted, there continued to be a ‘close and proximate relationship’ between govern-
ment officials and criminologists, by the time of the influential White Paper ‘Penal
Practice in a Changing Society’ (1959) criminology was already moving away from any
kind of historical focus. The ‘platonic guardians’ continued to share an elite liberal
worldview (and continued largely to be educated at Oxford and Cambridge in classics,
history and modern languages), but there was a perceptible turn towards an empiricism
focused on the immediate demands of the present.
During the later 1960s and the 1970s, partly as a result of dissatisfaction with this
state of affairs, a more critical and reflexive style of criminology developed, strongly
influenced by the National Deviancy Symposium (NDS) and its expressed disillusion-
ment with ‘official criminology’. Cohen has remarked that the criminologists involved in
the NDS were impatient with the ‘highly empirical, anti-theoretical bias’ of official crim-
inology, which they saw as unduly focused on ‘administrative needs’ (Rock, 1988b: 60).
The NDS engendered much active reflection on the ‘purpose’ of criminological research,
with critical criminology seeking very much to ‘speak truth to power’, a phrase still often
employed by some criminologists (for example, Newman, 2008). During the 1980s and
1990s there was then a partial turn away from such ‘anti-criminology’ towards what

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Lawrence 319

Loader (1998: 193) once pejoratively termed ‘jobbing criminology’, with a broad swing
back towards empirical work designed to solve immediate problems in a practical way.
This article is not the place to trace the complex and multi-layered development of aca-
demic criminology in later 20th century, the import of which is still a topic of lively
debate. However, two points are worth drawing from this overview.
First, it is possible to trace a broad shift from early origins which suggested the pos-
sibility of rapprochement with historians, or at least a confidence that historical data
could inform current policy and practice, to a situation in which sociological criminology
is now generally much less focused on historical reflection and research than during the
immediate post-war period. There are notable exceptions to this, but even among crimi-
nologists interested in the past there is a tendency to use historical data to problematize
criminological assumptions about the present rather than actually to explain the genesis
of contemporary behaviours, policies or institutions. For example, recent historical work
on public/private policing in historical context has served primarily to problematize (as
well as energize) an extant sociological analysis of the present, rather than to provide to
a historical explanation of present phenomena (Zedner, 2006).
Second, throughout the 20th century, criminology has often had a definite ‘purpose’
in the present, consciously debated and reflected upon. Whatever the approach taken to
research, the intention behind much criminological research has not been simply to
understand the present, but to inform and shape policy and opinion in the future. As
Loader and Sparks (2011: 6) note, ‘criminologists are typically drawn to their chosen
field of enquiry at least in part by a reformist impulse’. It is not unusual for criminolo-
gists to aver intent in their research. Elizabeth Stanko, for example, reflecting on her
research, noted that ‘my problem is that I care too passionately about the issue of vio-
lence against women. Sometimes it is difficult to separate my personal commitment to
minimizing the damage of violence from my professional role of analysing that damage’
(Holdaway and Rock, 1998: 35). Equally, Robert Reiner, reflecting on his own work,
noted that:

policing, as the unfortunate necessity of using evil means—violence—to attain good or at least
minimize harm, is ultimately inescapable in some situations. The only viable political and
analytic project is to minimize those situations where violence becomes tragically necessary
and to imbue the dispensers of legitimate violence with the means and culture to achieve
minimal force interventions.
(Holdaway and Rock, 1998: 92)

However much one might agree with Reiner, clearly the motivation behind his research—
to change both policy and practice—indicates an attitude towards research different from
that held (or least publicly espoused) by most historians. Among radical criminologists,
whose aim is less practice-based, an intervention—a political critique of the status quo—
is also still sought, with a view to shifting significantly the contours of the criminal jus-
tice system.
Even criminologists working historically carry this purposive approach with them
into the past. Consider, for example, Mary Bosworth’s article on Salpêtrière, an institu-
tion for the confinement of women in 18th-century Paris. Bosworth (2001: 431) initially

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320 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

notes an intention to ‘consider how historical research into the prison contributes to an
understanding of imprisonment today’, and then sets out ably the ways in which histori-
cal research of this kind can lead towards a revision of the usual criminological chronolo-
gies of punishment. Towards the end of the article, however, the author asks rhetorically
what the purpose of studying punishment might be, and answers ‘surely, one must study
punishment in order to understand and change it’ (2001: 439). She further notes the desir-
ability of a ‘challenge to the current system of incarceration’ and argues that:

only by reconsidering how we engage in research may we be able to envision a new approach
to punishment and perhaps alter some of the current practices and ideologies of what remains,
above all, an institutionalized form of state violence.
(2001: 440)

This is an expressed aim in the present, with arguments based on the past intended (ide-
ally) to shape future policy.
None of the above examples are raised in order to object to such orientations, which
are entirely appropriate to the discipline of criminology. Rather, they are cited in support
of the claim that a key characteristic of criminology is the desire to understand the pres-
ent with a view to influencing the future. This type of discourse has become largely alien
to many historians (criminal justice historians included), for reasons which will be dis-
cussed in the following section. If criminologists on occasion work from historical
sources, and make no attempt to link this work explicitly to the concerns of the present,
they are effectively acting primarily as historians. It is the desire to understand the pres-
ent and shape the future (in the criminal justice sphere) which characterizes sociological
criminology. This is very different to the disciplinary discourse espoused by the majority
of historians.

History and the past, present and future …

There is an increasing body of research which has considered the ways in which western
societies have tended to think about the past, and to incorporate such knowledge into
their explanations of the present (Burrow, 2007; Gallois, 2010; Hartog, 1996; Koselleck,
2004; Nora, 1989). More specifically, there is a somewhat larger body of work reflecting
on the development of ‘history’ as a defined university subject (for example, Berger et al.,
1999; Burke, 2002; Iggers, 1997; Tosh, 2000). As such, there is no need to consider the
development of history writing in detail here. Indeed, it is debatable whether it is even
possible in the 21st century to write of ‘historians’ or ‘the discipline of history’, given the
diversity of methodologies and motivations apparent among those who write about the
past from within an academic context (academic writing being the primary focus of this
argument). However, to give a basic context for the line of argument to be followed, it is
contended that, during the course of the 20th century, there was broad shift from a posi-
tion where it was common for university historians to make explicit statements linking
past, present and future to one where direct statements about the present (and indeed
active engagement in contemporary debate) are now somewhat rarer and engaged inter-
ventions in debates about the future are rarer still.

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The closing decades of the 19th century were arguably the pinnacle of historians’
confidence in their social role. Historians customarily searched for patterns of progress
from a more primitive past to a more sophisticated or enlightened future, and many felt
quite at home making statements about the nature of the present based on the past (which
was nothing new), but also in making explicit statements about the future based on the
past, an approach encapsulated in John Seeley’s (1883: 1) maxim that ‘history … should
pursue a practical object … it should not only gratify the reader’s curiosity, but modify
his view of the present and his forecast of the future’. Notwithstanding a number of
sophisticated reflections on the role and purpose of historical research (Butterfield, 1931;
Collingwood, 1946), such belief in the possibility and desirability of ‘progress’, coupled
with a sense of social purpose, persisted among many English historians until well into
the first half of the 20th century. George Trevelyan (1949: 77), for example, one of
Seeley’s successors as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge freely admitted that his
history of Italian unification (with its unashamed promotion of the ideals of democracy
and national self-determination) was, in his own words, ‘reeking with bias’.
However, during the latter half of the 20th century, there was a profound erosion of
historians’ confidence in the linear development of human affairs. The putative causes of
this shift are manifold. The experience of two world wars and the Holocaust are routinely
cited. Both Hartog and Nora, in addition, discuss the declining significance of the nation-
state and the increasing divergence between popular memory and ‘scientific’ history.
While the postmodern challenge of the 1970s and 1980s arguably had little influence on
the day-to-day practice of historical research as conducted by most historians (Croll,
2002; Gunn and Rawnsley, 2006), it is likely that it, too, contributed to historians’
increasing wariness in linking their work to the present. The key accusations levelled by
postmodern theorists at established historical conventions—that no definitive or ‘true’
knowledge about the past can ever be presented, and that the concerns of the present are
irrevocably intertwined with the enterprise of historical research—led some historians to
respond by confining themselves primarily to the realm of the past, attempting to divorce
their work from explicit statements about and interventions in the present. As Ludmilla
Jordanova (2000: 108) has claimed, one of the prevalent historical fashions of the last 30
years has been the ‘loss of confidence in causal explanations, in our ability to give clear
answers to “why” questions’.
This line of argument should not be read as a narrative of decline, however. The latter
part of the 20th century also witnessed the flowering of a huge variety of innovative new
approaches to the study of the past. Deeper and richer dialogues with source materials
massively expanded the scope of increasingly sophisticated historical methodologies and
dissemination practices. Equally, it should also not be taken to imply that contemporary
historical research has no intended meaning or significance in the present. Rather, the
more limited claim being made is that a shift occurred during the 20th century from an
accepted mode of historical practice which foregrounded the social role of the historian
in making evidence-based claims about the present and future, to a mode wherein the
‘purpose’ of current historical writing tends to be implicit rather than exposed and
actively debated. Historians do still seek relevance in the present (at least, it would be a
rare historian who claimed otherwise), but in ways very different to those sought and
discussed by sociological criminologists. It is this divergence in expressed intent which

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322 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

can provide the key to understanding the lack of interaction between the two fields of
intellectual endeavour. This assertion is perhaps best substantiated here by an example
which draws specifically on the works of criminal justice history.
Consider the history of policing. In the first half of the 20th century, such histories as
were written were very much imbued with the confident, ‘whiggish’ historical prose of
the period. In his many publications of the 1940s and 1950s, Charles Reith (1943a, 1952)
eulogized the British police to occasionally absurd lengths. His work presented them as
a unique exemplar of British exceptionalism, and further attempted to move from this to
an advocation of the adoption of similar systems of policing elsewhere (including, for
example, post-war Germany—Williams, 2001). In tracing the historical development of
the British police system, Reith clearly aimed at both explaining its success in the present
and promoting its expansion in the future. His work was also published in criminology
journals (for example, 1943b) and shared with Radzinowicz’s work on the police the
same kind of common-sense assumption that history could and should inform present
and future policy developments. For Reith, and for others before and after him (Critchley,
1967; Solmes, 1935), advocacy of the police via historical writing bordered on an ideol-
ogy, ‘the literal answer to all worldly problems’ (Robinson, 1979).
Then, during the 1970s, a new generation of police historians motivated by a Marxist
critique of contemporary law and order policies, as well as by the growing ‘history from
below’ movement, moved into the field. Robert Storch, for example, claimed that the
‘new police’ of the 19th century, far from being an embodiment of consensual order
production, had in fact acted to enforce new, middle-class standards of decorum and
public orderliness on the developing working class. Acting as ‘an all-purpose lever of
urban discipline’ (Storch, 1976: 481), they were considered by those who were the pri-
mary object of their attention as a ‘plague of blue locusts’ (Storch, 1975). Storch’s (1976:
509) work contained an implicit but also still, at times, explicit critique of contemporary
methods of policing, noting that:

the basic technique of daily surveillance of the streets and recreational centers [sic] of working-
class districts proved a lasting one, and would ultimately be applied not only to nineteenth-
century Leeds or Manchester but—in highly sophisticated variants—to twentieth-century
police work as well.

However, research into the history of policing during the latter part of the century was
then shaped by a group of highly empirical historians including Clive Emsley, David
Philips and David Taylor. They sought to deconstruct both Whig and Marxist approaches
to the history of policing, as typified by Reith and Storch, viewing the police instead as
a ‘multi-faceted institution used by English people of all classes to oppose, to co-operate
with, and to gain concessions from, each other’ (Emsley, 1991: 6). Emsley’s (1991: xi)
stated aim in writing the history of the English police was simply ‘filling the gaps’ in ‘our
knowledge of … how the institution and job developed’, a strikingly dispassionate and
detached objective in comparison with preceding authors. Recent work has followed this
approach, making detailed and nuanced use of historical data but marshalling it in a far
less ‘engaged’ manner than the police historians of the 1970s and before. There are
exceptions, of course (see Williams, 2003) but, in general, current research into the

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Lawrence 323

history of policing concentrates on historically specific developments, and does not

explicitly seek to connect significantly with the present and future. This is not to say that
it does not have a role to play in contemporary debates, however. It does contain implicit
claims which are of striking relevance to contemporary debates, highlighting (for exam-
ple) both the historically contingent nature of many policing practices and the persistent
tension between the necessity for operational discretion and the desire for centralized
control of personnel. But these interventions are couched in ways which tend to remain
opaque to sociological criminologists used to far more direct discussions of relevance.
Space does not permit, but a similar worked example might be outlined for the extant
histories of the penal system, starting with the Webbs’ (1922) early, uncritical exposition
of ‘progress’, moving through a Marxist-inspired critique (Ignatieff, 1978) towards more
neutrally presented studies of specific historical contexts (McConville, 1991; Wiener,
1994). There are still relevant messages which can be drawn from recent historical work
on prisons—that they are historically contingent forms of punishment of recent advent
and that prison populations decline as well as rise over time, for example—but again
these messages are not writ large within the works themselves.
Thus, the main claim being made in this section of the article is that many (but by no
means all) historians are now often somewhat reticent in actively relating the past to the
present. Criminal justice historians no longer feel that they have a confident rationale for
making ‘true’ statements about contemporary affairs on the basis of their historical
knowledge. Whether due to the shadow cast over empirical methodology by postmod-
ernism, or to problems with stage theory and periodization, or due to a broader crisis in
the idea of linear time, it is possible to argue that historians have retreated into the past
somewhat. Even those studying the very recent past usually stop just short of the present
(bar a few concluding remarks, perhaps). This does not mean that such work has no rel-
evance in the present, but rather that any relevance often remains implicit within histori-
cal works rather than exposed and actively promoted by authors. Criminal justice
historians and sociological criminologists thus lack both a common ‘purpose’ and a
shared methodological framework for making statements about the present and the future
based on the past. It is for this reason that, despite the apparent obviousness of the poten-
tial synergies between criminological and criminal justice history research, there has
been relatively little convergence between the disciplines, despite repeated calls for this
to happen.

Is criminal justice history ‘all in the past’?

It is worth asking, then, why the past ought to be studied at all and what function can be served
by the contemplation of things under the aspect of history. Put another way: is there any reason
why we ought to study things under the aspect of their past-ness rather than under the aspect of
their present-ness, which is the aspect under which everything offers itself for contemplation
immediately.
(White, 1966: 132)

It has been argued above that historians withdrew somewhat from their prior, present-
facing public role during latter part of the 20th century. For various reasons, many

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324 Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

historians often formed the view that ‘the present’ was not their domain, and that even to
engage with a broad public not a key element of their intellectual function. Over the last
decade, however, some historians in Britain have become markedly more assertive in
defence of the role which their discipline might play in the present, claiming that it has
‘a great deal to offer the democratic culture of British society’ (Tosh, 2008: 140).
Criminology, too, appears to have undergone a period of introspection since the turn of
the century, with renewed debate around the question ‘what is the role and value of
criminology in a democratic society?’ In a recent contribution to this debate, Ian Loader
and Richard Sparks have argued in favour of a new form of ‘public criminology’, one
which acts as a ‘democratic under-labourer’ and thereby contributes to ‘a better politics
of crime and its regulation’ (Loader and Sparks, 2011: 116).
Given the congruence between the questions historians and criminologists have
recently been asking about the public relevance of their disciplines, the co-production of
a revitalized public criminology would be a project likely to spark interest among both
criminal justice historians and sociological criminologists. Loader and Sparks identify
three elements to their proposed public criminology—to produce primary knowledge per-
taining to crime and criminal justice policy, to strive to increase the regard for this evi-
dence among the media (which would in turn require a deeper understanding of the way
in which crime problems are selected for public prominence) and a normative function—
seeking to unearth the significance of the crime question within contemporary society. All
three elements could, it might be argued, benefit from a historical dimension.
Considering first the production of primary data about crime and the mechanisms
devoted to its control, historians are obviously engaged in creating data about crime and
justice in the past. Clearly, there is scope for greater collaboration here given the paucity
of criminological articles incorporating historical data. In addition, Loader and Sparks
(2011: 130) note ‘criminology can and should bring to public discussion of its subject
matter a scepticism that refuses to treat at face value the categories, assumptions and
self-understandings that make up “common sense” about crime and its control’ and there
is no reason why historical data should not contribute to this process too. For example,
recent work by criminal justice historians on interpersonal violence has tended, with
some well-argued exceptions, to indicate a marked downward trend over the longue
durée, flatly contradicting contemporary concerns over growing levels of violent behav-
iours of all kinds (King, 2010; Spierenburg, 2008; Wood, 2004). At the least, such per-
spectives could be integrated more closely with more contemporary data.
Regarding the aim to increase the esteem in which data about crime and criminal
justice policy is held, via better understanding of and engagement with the media, this
too is an endeavour to which criminal justice historians could usefully contribute. History
has a high degree of public purchase. Particularly on radio and television, but also in
terms of book sales and the media, the general public is interested in the history of crime
and its control. Historical writing aimed at the public is accessible and able to convey
both meaning and perspective in ways readily understandable to a lay audience. In short,
there is a market for criminal justice history in the public arena. Thus, by working more
closely with historians, sociological criminologists could inculcate more active interro-
gation of data about crime. It is arguably this, rather than the historical data itself, which
might be useful to criminology’s labours. As William Stubbs, Regius Professor at Oxford

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Lawrence 325

noted in 1867, ‘the stock of information accumulated is only secondary in importance to

the habits of judgement formed by the study of it’ (Stubbs, 1886). There is a need for a
cooler consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of different sorts of data about
crime, and interrogating historical data would be one way of defusing the emotive charge
often present in current media debates.
The normative function of public criminology, the interrogation of the social signifi-
cance of fears and debates about crime, could also be aided by drawing on historical
research in a number of ways. Most obviously, a detailed dissection of the ways in
which such debates have changed over time (starting perhaps with the assertion that
before c.1780 ‘the criminal’ was not yet discerned as ‘a social archetype, symbolic of
the nation’s collective ill-health’—Gatrell, 1990: 248) might help foreground crimino-
logical work in this area. In addition, however, consideration of the question ‘why are
certain accounts of the past preferred, even when demonstrably untrue?’ could feed
directly into investigations by criminologists as to why certain issues remain of public
concern even though they are, arguably, of little real social significance. Finally, the
recent ‘affective turn’ in public history (Agnew, 2007) could also be of use in normative
criminological debates. A public appetite for historical television and radio programmes
which explore ‘not so much “what happened” as “what did it feel like to be there?”’
(Salber Phillips, 2008: 56) could serve as a powerful mechanism for encouraging
urgently needed public reflection on the contemporary purposes served by criminal
justice processes (Loader, 2010). Rather than to remind citizens of their obligation to
the past, here the role of the historian would be once again ‘to force upon them an
awareness of how the past could be used to effect an ethically responsible transition
from present to future’ (White, 1966: 132).
Overall, the current aims of both criminal justice history and sociological criminology—
to understand crime and its control in the past and the present, to contribute to a better-
informed and more rational criminal justice policy and to alert participants to the normative
aspects of debates about crime and its control—are congruent. Although, for the reasons of
purpose and temporal focus discussed above, there has been relatively little convergence
between the fields, there are grounds to suggest that the construction of a vibrant public
criminology would be a viable collaborative project, recognizing, of course, the differing
contributions that each discipline has to offer.

Acknowledgements
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biography
Paul Lawrence is the author of History and Crime (SAGE, 2009—co-authored with Barry Godfrey
and Chris Williams) and Crime, Justice and Society 1750–1950 (Willan, 2005—co-authored with
Barry Godfrey), as well as a range of journal articles and book chapters on aspects of criminal
justice history. http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/lawrence.shtml

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