A new edition of the most comprehensive, authoritative and accessible history of crime in eighteenth and nineteenth century England. Explores the value of criminal statistics, the significance of contemporary notions of class and gender in understanding and formulating the image of the criminal Describes developments in policing and the shifting ideas that led to a decline in corporate and capital punishments and an increasing focus on the prison Challenges the view that crime can be attributed to the behaviour of a criminal class, and the ideas that crime patterns can be explained simply in terms of the trade cycle Examines changes in crime and the criminal justice system against the larger changes in an industrialising society Includes a new section on Crime in the Media, with visual representations