Crime in the U.S. and the institutions for its control are deeply embedded in and shaped by history. The historical origins have often become invisible, and their recovery difficult, but any understanding of the contemporary situation requires historical context. For over twenty-five years Eric H. Monkkonen has worked on some of the puzzles and problems in recovering the history of crime and police.

Much of his work has appeared in articles, often in specialized journals or not in English, which this book collects for the first time. In addition to Monkkonen’s major published articles, this volume includes several new ones. The topics embrace violence, public disorder, policing, popular culture, and contrasts between the U.S. and Europe. Some articles illuminate special methodological and source issues that challenge historians of criminal justice. As well as dealing with serious crime, this book includes several articles on specifically urban problems and solutions associated with disorder, crime, and poverty.

In contrast to the more technical articles, several chapters, which originally appeared as op-ed pieces, show how historical understanding can help address current policy issues in crime and crime control. All too often, current policy debates occur without proper historical background. As a result, old ideas that have been tried and rejected are re-introduced, or new and sometimes simple ideas are ignored.

That the city and the factory cause crime and poverty has become an operative assumption for most Americans. This book is a study of an inarticulate group of people whose defining characteristic is the behavior that got them into criminal court or the poorhouse. Nineteenth-century observers tended to group criminals together with poor people into what Charles Loring Brace called “the dangerous class.” The question asked in this book is whether urbanization and industrialization, the two most central social processes in nineteenth-century American history, caused poverty and crime.

Using seldom consulted records of poorhouses and criminal courts, the author shows that the kinds of crime and the structure of crime changed, with very few paupers becoming criminals. Cities and industry affected the quality but not the quantity of crime and impoverishment. Overall no dramatic crime trends are discerned and major crimes were ubiquitous in rural and urban areas. Furthermore, the criminal class declined as Columbus grew and industrialized.

An important work in the new social history, Eric Monkkonen’s research modifies theories that the city drives its inhabitants into deviance and that status and stability inhered in the skilled occupations. He also lends clarity to the views about what kinds of criminal incidents represent pre-political rebellion.