The period 1829-1856 witnessed the introduction of the 'New Police' to Great Britain and Ireland. Via a series of key legislative acts, traditional mechanisms of policing were abolished and new, supposedly more efficient, forces were raised in their stead. Subsequently, the introduction of the 'New Police' has been represented as a watershed in the development of the systems of policing we know today. But just how sweeping were the changes made to the maintenance of law and order during the nineteenth century? The articles collected in this volume (written by some of the foremost criminal justice historians) show a process which, while cumulatively dramatic, was also at times protracted and acrimonious. There were significant changes to the way in which Britain and Ireland were policed during the nineteenth century, but these changes were by no means as straightforward or as progressive as they have at times been represented.

Scholarly interest in the history of crime has grown dramatically in recent years and, because scholars associated with this work have relied on a broad social definition of crime which includes acts that are against the law as well as acts of social banditry and political rebellion, crime history has become a major aspect not only of social history, but also of cultural as well as legal studies. This collection explores how the history of crime provides a way to study time, place and culture. Adopting an international and interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the historical discourses of crime in Europe and the United States from the sixteenth to the late twentieth century, these original works provide new approaches to understanding the meaning of crime in modern western culture and underscore the new importance given to crime and criminal events in historical studies. Written by both well-known historians and younger scholars from across the globe, the essays reveal that there are important continuities in the history of crime and its representations in modern culture, despite particularities of time and place.