The Place of History in British Criminology: 20th-Century Developments

While the relevance of historical research and analysis for the development of a critical criminology in the United States in the 1970s has recently received some attention by historical criminologists, the place of history in British criminology—and British critical criminology in particular—remains a largely unexplored area of academic inquiry. This article fills this gap in the history of historical criminology by reviewing the uses of history in British criminology before and after the emergence of critical criminology in the 1970s. The article first reviews the precritical uses of history found in the writings of the key figures responsible for the establishment of academic criminology in Britain in the mid-20th century, namely, Leon Radzinowicz, Hermann Mannheim, and Max Grünhut. These scholars made a valuable contribution to the historical study of crime but the criminological zeitgeist of their time prevented them from outlining a manifesto for a historical criminology. The article then proceeds to show that the critique of ahistorical criminology instigated by critical criminologists in Britain during the 1970s was born out of attempts to historicize the sociology of deviance. Lastly, the article goes on to argue that the new criminology envisioned by Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young was instrumental in advancing a conception of critical criminology that is indistinguishable from a fully historical criminology.