Table of Contents

Introduction: criminal policy as cultural change; 1. The origins of Victorianism: impulse and motivation; 2. Victorian criminal policy I: reforming the law; 3. Victorian criminal policy II: reformed punishment; 4. A changing human image; 5. Late Victorian social policy - a changing context; 6. The demoralizing of criminality; 7. Prosecution and sentencing: the erosion of moral discourse; 8. Disillusion with the prison; 9. The outcome: social debility and positive punishment; Index

Promotional Information

An account of changing conceptions and treatments of criminality in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Reviews

'This account of the penal law and the penal system in Victorian England is worked out with great care and an abundance of documentation ... Martin Wiener has illuminated a major aspect of the moral and social revolution of our own time.' Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Times Literary Supplement 'Reconstructing the Criminal is valuable addition to our stock of knowledge about nineteenth-century penality. It is an original and important work, refreshingly free of jargon, and based on prodigious historical research.' Piers Beirne, Contemporary Sociology 'Martin J. Wiener's book provides an intellectual framework for understanding the varieties and complexities of the topic by considering attitudes and actions in their cultural settings. Borrowing methods from literature and using a wide range of sources, Wiener gives coherence to the practices of nineteenth-century penology and a foundation to those of the twentieth century.' E. M. Palmegiano, American Historical Review