Imperial Crime and Punishment: Approaches from Historical Criminology

Seeking to redress the traditional focus of historical criminology on the West and Global North, Imperial Crime and Punishment brings a fresh perspective to this burgeoning field by drawing instead on imperial contexts. Chapters focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which witnessed the development of the recognisably ‘modern’ institutions of the criminal justice system, including policing and institutions of punishment and care. The collection broadly covers punishment and its institutions, enforcement, a reflection on methodological considerations for digital crime history, and more. Examining imperial contexts such as India and Australia beyond their immediate geographical context, authors highlight the global and imperial context including the movement of ideas between the British state and colonies, the international dimension of global punishments, and movement of labour in this period. Offering empirically-based studies from the archives in order to understand and question beliefs about crime and social harm today, as well as ongoing practices both in, and outside of, the criminal justice system, Imperial Crime and Punishment provides a broad temporal and spatial scope to build the historical criminology literature and better understand and critique the world as it currently is.