Author: Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash
ISBN No: 9780 230 224 7
Review date: 14/12/2025
No of pages: 232
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year of publication:
Brief:
Murder, fraud, gangs - at least we can console ourselves that Britain has always had them, as a study of the last 400 years of crime makes plain.
The two chapters of Histories of Crime most of use to working private security people are on white-collar crime; and the police. It’s interesting that Victorian fraud cases show that business people – and the law – were wrestling with the same wrong-doing, and excuses for it, as we are, with the Fraud Act 2006 and Bribery Act 2010. A fraud might be a deceit, for gain; out of greed, for a better lifestyle; or to keep a struggling business going. Sarah Wilson, the author of the fraud chapter – another law academic, from York University – does point out what has changed since the 1800s; computers, for one thing. Also, she argues, ‘financial crimes are becoming ever more accessible across the social spectrum’. Being dishonesty is nothing new, but the technology to act on it is. Why does history matter? While the Crime and Risk paperback seemed quite pricey for the amount of paper you get for your money, Histories of Crime is several (small) books in one, as you get nine chapters, each on the latest research in the fields of crime and punishment. Some seems long gone (’the drama of the scaffold’) while some are fresh (society fearing a criminal underclass).
