#criminal class

[wewerealwaysthere]

In honor of Gay Pride Month, I thought I’d try something a little different today… some photographs by English artist and photographer Keith Vaughan. He lived in an era where he could be jailed for being homosexual. He wrote in his diary,

“It is difficult to bear in mind, that with all one’s honours, distinctions, success, etc., one remains a member of the criminal class.”

(Homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain in 1965.)

[j-august]

He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.

Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

[asagava]

Love this scene 🌝

[akwamaryn2004]

Sara

[furryalligator]

#repost @the.daily.don: Day 447: In which the Michelangelo of cartoonishly corrupt and shifty lawyers saves a spot for his mobster Medici. #resist #magaisformorons #michaelcohen #lockthemup #trumpcrimefamily #cartoon #donthecon #dumptrump #dailydrawing #thedailydon

[backstagecurtain]

criminal class (source)

[by-yildirir]

The Gentlemen

IMDB - 7.9

İzle / Watch

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Much of the renewed interest in the history of crime and punishment over the past two decades has centered on various aspects of the nineteenth-century notion of the existence of a criminal class. Although little of this research has focused on a systematic examination of recidivists, recidivism was widely regarded as the defining feature of the criminal class by most penal officials. Consequently, in an effort to increase our understanding of the recidivist population and its judicial treatment, this analysis investigated differences between recidivists and first-time committals to jail in relation to a number of individual and offense-related factors, as well as in terms of the nature and extent of recidivism-related differences in case outcomes.

Looking first at the question of the effect of various sociodemographic and offense-related factors on recidivism, the results show that those with the greatest probability of repeat committals were unskilled or semiskilled workers, Canadian born, intemperate, and charged with vagrancy. Clearly then, the probability of being committed to jail more than once in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not equally distributed across all groups in society. Importantly, however, those most likely to be repeat committals and to be officially defined as recidivists bore little resemblance to contemporary stereotypes about the criminal class. In particular, contrary to nineteenth-century beliefs, neither illiteracy nor Irish immigrant status were significant predictors of recidivism. Nor did repeat committals conform to the stereotype of professional criminals since they were less likely than firsttime committals to be charged with larceny. By and large, recidivists were petty offenders arrested for drunkenness and vagrancy who represented no great threat to public safety.

These results differ in some ways from prior research, which suggests that few factors differentiated recidivists from first-time committals in Ontario local jails. In the most systematic and comprehensive analysis to date, Michael Katz, Michael Doucet, and Mark Stern (1982) found that only gender and offense type differentiated repeat committals from those jailed only once in Wentworth County Jail, Ontario, for the period from 1850 to 1866. That is, women were more likely than men to be recidivists, and recidivists were most often charged with various public order offenses. Other more limited analyses of Ontario jail registers in the nineteenth century reinforce the conclusions that recidivists were most often charged with drunkenness or vagrancy, and while women were not necessarily more likely than men to be repeat offenders, women recidivists tended to have more extensive records of repeated committals than male recidivists for public order offenses.

In contrast, the results from this analysis suggest that several other factors including birthplace and intemperance clearly distinguished recidivists from first-time committals across the decades spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, of particular significance is the finding that those with the greatest probability of repeat committals were in the lowest occupational groups. Taken together, the social and offense related traits which distinguished recidivists both reflected and reinforced their greater social marginality, and they serve to highlight most clearly the disproportionate criminalization of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

It has become axiomatic in recent historical studies to emphasize the ways in which the criminal justice system and the idea of a criminal class from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries operated to control the lower classes and to reinforce the larger structures of inequality in society. The findings from this study suggest that what differentiated recidivists was not so much that they constituted a distinct criminal class in the sense promulgated by authorities, but rather that the characteristics of social and economic disadvantage which typified jail populations as a whole were simply more pronounced among repeat committals. As in the United States, in Canada throughout the period considered, those who were most vulnerable to repeat committals were the visible populations that already constituted the focus of most police attention—the poor, the apparently idle or transient, as well as those who were drunk, disorderly, or rowdy in public places. The preeminent focus of municipal police forces on these offenders and offenses contributed to a self-fulfilling prophecy. To the extent that immorality and idleness were viewed as self-evident causes of criminality, aggressive enforcement of these offenses was thought to prevent more serious criminal depredations among these offenders. At the same time, defining a criminal class through aggressive enforcement of these behaviors strengthened and justified prevailing stereotypes of crime and criminality. In this way, the dominant ideology of crime and criminals was operationalized and reinforced.   

The examination of case outcomes revealed both similarities and differences in the factors associated with the harsher outcome of a prison sentence for recidivists and first-time committals. As expected, controlling for all other factors, recidivists were punished more severely than first-time committals, being more likely to receive a prison sentence. However, that a large proportion of recidivists (and the majority of first-time committals) was simply discharged without a prison sentence suggests that judges in Middlesex County as elsewhere did not regard or treat a significant proportion of those they dealt with on a daily basis as constituting a dangerous criminal class representing a serious threat to society. Consequently, despite the intense concern of prison officials with recidivism and calls for judges to impose harsher sentences, judges themselves appear to have been less convinced of the need to impose prison sentences on a sizable proportion of repeat committals who came before the courts.

Beyond this finding, the basic fact of social inequality was an important independent influence on sentence outcome among first-time committals, with unskilled workers being significantly more likely than higher occupational groups to be convicted and sentenced to prison. As well, within both groups, offenders who were single, or who had more than one arrest charge, were much more likely to receive the harsher outcome of a prison sentence. A further similarity noted between recidivists and first-time committals was that offenders charged with assault were least likely to receive a prison sentence. In large part, this finding reflects the fact that only cases of the least serious form of assault were included in this analysis. Throughout the era considered, most cases of common assault consisted of relatively minor disputes and quarrels between family members and friends and drunken altercations associated with tavern life, which the courts did not regard or punish as particularly serious offenses.

Notwithstanding these similarities, some important recidivism-related differences in the determinants of case outcomes emerged, most notably the differential effect of gender, moral habits, offense type, and time period. First, the harsh treatment of women offenders was reserved for recidivists as gender was not a significant determinant of case outcomes for first-time committals. Although women represented a small proportion of recidivists, even after controlling for all other variables, they were punished more severely than male recidivists.These results reinforce the conclusions from prior historical research with respect to the ways in which gender stereotypes, and women’s social status, were translated into the harsher treatment of women offenders deemed to be immoral or hopelessly incorrigible by prevailing standards. Throughout this era, most women were arrested for various public order offenses and especially vagrancy, which included prostitution. Moreover, as noted previously, the available evidence suggests that women tended to accumulate more extensive arrest records for these offenses than men. The greater loss of respectability experienced by women who came before the courts, and the unforgiving condemnation of women who repeatedly violated expected standards of feminine conduct, are exemplified in the disproportionately harsh dispositions meted out to female recidivists.   

Second, despite the importance attached to alcohol as a cause of crime during this period—a belief given official recognition in the recording of prisoners’ drinking habits in the jail registers—intemperance was a significant determinant of a prison sentence only among first-time committals. It would appear that, in sentencing first-time committals, judges took particular note of their drinking habits and were harsher with those deemed intemperate. In contrast, among recidivists of whom intemperance was probably assumed to be a given, this failing obviously had little influence on judges’ sentencing decisions. 

Third, the results highlight the important and dissimilar effect of offense type on sentencing decisions for recidivists and first-time committals. Among recidivists, there were no significant differences in the likelihood of receiving a prison sentence for larceny, drunkenness, or vagrancy—all were treated by the courts as more or less interchangeable in a manner consistent with the dominant ideology of the criminal class. In contrast, among first-time committals, clear distinctions in case outcomes by offense type were evident. Those treated most harshly were charged with larceny, while drunkenness and vagrancy were treated considerably more leniently. To this extent, the influence of offense type on case outcomes points to judges having substantially different assessments of the seriousness of various offenses and using different criteria in their sentencing decisions with respect to these two groups. 

Finally, the findings with respect to differences between recidivists and first-time committals in case outcomes highlight the enduring concern of correctional authorities with the large number of recidivists, and especially vagrancy committals, in Ontario jails throughout this era. And, in the context of these concerns, recidivism served as an important means of separating the deserving from the undeserving poor. Consequently, recidivists charged with vagrancy were significantly more likely than first-time committals charged with vagrancy to be sentenced to prison. Equally important, it is clear that attempts to reduce the number of repeat committals through harsh punishment were not limited to the nineteenth century and that the various criminal justice reforms implemented by the early part of the twentieth century emphasizing rehabilitation had little impact in changing traditional sentencing patterns in this regard. In fact, the probability that a recidivist would be sentenced to prison was actually greater in the early twentieth century than in the late nineteenth century. So, while Ontario officials may not have resorted to the repressive nineteenth-century solutions of American tramp legislation or British habitual criminal legislation, they nonetheless shared the social anxieties and fiscal concerns that prompted these punitive responses well into the twentieth century. Consequently, as prison officials continued to call for harsher penal measures against recidivists, and both local authorities and the provincial government continued to resist the implementation of noncarceral solutions to the problems of homelessness, unemployment, and personal tragedy which contributed to the problem of repeat committals in local jails, the harsh treatment of recidivists became even more pronounced in the early decades of the twentieth century.”   

-  Helen Boritch, “The Criminal Class Revisited: Recidivism and Punishment in Ontario, 1871–1920.” Social Science History 29:1 (spring 2005), pp. 160-165.