## **THE POLITICS OF CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND JUSTICE**

This book explores the impact of right-wing political ideology on crime, the criminal justice system, and attitudes towards punishment in Britain. Grounded in a rigorous analysis of repeated cross-sectional surveys such as the British Social Attitudes Survey and the British Crime Survey, as well as individuallevel cohort data such as the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study, it examines changes in long-term crime rates, criminal justice policies, and their integration with social and economic policies in Britain over four decades. It offers a detailed discussion of how radical social and economic changes affected the fear of crime and attitudes to punishment, and how well Thatcherite social and economic values were embedded in contemporary British society. Drawing on a wide literature across criminology, political science, sociology, and social policy, this book demonstrates how a thorough understanding of crime cannot take place without an examination of the wider social policies enacted, the life-courses of the individuals affected, and their communities and the political environment in which they live. It is essential reading for criminologists, sociologists, political philosophers, and social theorists alike since it combines thinking from political sciences, lifecourses theories, and detailed analyses of the outcomes of social policy change.

**Stephen Farrall** is Professor of Criminology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. He is known for his research into the fear of crime, why people cease offending, and the politics of crime and the criminal justice system. He is the series editor for Routledge's International Series on Desistance and Rehabilitation.

**Emily Gray** is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. Her work focuses on the long-term relationships that connect crime with social policy and youth justice. As PI, she has recently begun to explore the long-term trends pertaining to homicide on non-lethal violence in England and Wales.

"By casting their attention to macrolevel economic and policy changes in the Thatcherite era, Farrall and Gray provide a unique take on the course of both criminal careers and crime policy in contemporary Britain."

**—Robert J. Sampson,** *Harvard University*

# **THE POLITICS OF CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND JUSTICE**

Exploring the Lived Reality and Enduring Legacies of the 1980's Radical Right

*Stephen Farrall and Emily Gray*

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© 2024 Stephen Farrall and Emily Gray

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Funding Grant Number: ES/P002862/1 Funding Project Name: "How Did 'Thatcher's Children' Fare?: Investigating Crime and Victimisation in the Life-Courses of Those Born in 1970"

*British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data* A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

*Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data* Names: Farrall, Stephen, author. | Gray, Emily, 1974- author. Title: The politics of crime, punishment and justice : exploring the lived reality and enduring legacies of the 1980's radical right / Stephen Farrall and Emily Gray. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023042400 (print) | LCCN 2023042401 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032357447 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032357454 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003328339 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Criminal justice, Administration of--Great Britain-- History--20th century. | Crime--Creat Britain--History--20th century. | Right and left (Political science)--Great Britain--History--20th century. | Great Britain--Politics and government--1945- Classification: LCC HV9960.G7 F368 2024 (print) | LCC HV9960.G7 (ebook) | DDC 364.941--dc23/eng/20240110 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023042400 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023042401

ISBN: 978-1-032-35744-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-35745-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32833-9 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003328339

Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

## **CONTENTS**



**vi** Contents

### **FOREWORD BY ROBERT J. SAMPSON**

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most influential and divisive politicians in modern British history, and yet the legacies of her policies for crime and justice have remained obscure. Taking a life-course perspective on criminal careers linked to the social policies of the Thatcher era and beyond, Farrall and Gray give us a much needed corrective. There are many kernels of knowledge that we glean from this important book.

In one example, the authors analyze individual-level longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study and the Birth Cohort Study. Focusing on the 1970s and 1980s, they explore the relationship between economic restructuring and children's later engagement in crime. They find that economic restructuring in the first 10 or so years of an individual's life predicts juvenile crime. These and other analyses in the book explicate how economic and related policy changes filter down to the micro level of criminal careers.

Another finding of note is that there was not a direct line from Thatcher's policies to a punitive approach to criminal justice, contrary to what many have argued. As Farrall and Gray astutely note, not all policy fields are impacted equally by leadership initiatives. To be sure, Thatcher talked tough on crime but she was not focused on ramping up incarceration or other punitive controls during her regime. Criminal justice was only later radicalised, the authors argue, as the end result of radicalism in other policy domains such as the economy and welfare system—indeed Thatcher's true passion was to shrink the welfare state. The "New Right" survived her regime in a pathdependent process, and policy changes in the economy, housing, industrial relations, and social security spending were crucial in setting the stage for evolving ideas about controlling crime.

There are many lessons to be learned here by taking political policies seriously and in a nuanced way. In particular, the book shows how criminal justice policies and ideas often stem from non-criminal justice policy revolutions, a crucial point that we often overlook. In the Thatcher case, Farrall and Gray argue that it is only after she left office that we see the kinds of radical changes in criminal justice policy which warrant the label "Thatcherite." The reason, as they put it, is that Thatcher inspired a series of "post-Thatcher Thatcherites." The punitive sentences of the more recent era, such as in the Blair regime, are seen as the outcome of attempts to satisfy the wider discourse established by Thatcher, further propelled by rises in crime (which the book ties to the consequence of Thatcherite policies in welfare policy) and a growing recognition of popular anxieties about crime. The legacies of economic policy changes for the reception of criminal justice ideas can thus be powerful.

There is much more to *The Politics of Crime, Punishment and Justice*, but I hope to have provided a glimpse of the analytical approach of the authors and some of their original arguments. Readers will find much to contemplate intellectually, as the book challenges criminological mindsets that too often set aside social context. By casting their attention to macro-level economic and policy changes in the Thaterichite era, Farrall and Gray provide a unique take on the course of both criminal careers and crime policy in contemporary Britain.

Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University

## **AUTHORS' PREFACE**

Given that we have produced a considerable volume of work on the legacy of Thatcherism and of the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s, readers might be forgiven for asking "what more could you *possibly* have to say on this topic?" Let us spend a little while, then, explaining the way we have chosen to condense much of what we have already written into this text.

Let us start with the observation that legacies have many outcomes—and that is especially so if one is exploring a period of dramatic and radical change which restructured much of what went before. Academic journals, however, usually ask for papers to be between 6,000 and 10,000 words long. For this reason, all of our papers, by and large, focused on one topic (say, the relationship between housing policies and crime or changing social attitudes) and provided a detailed examination of what happened and what the effects were. Given that some of what we said was contentious (at least outside of academia) or required some considerable discussion to be devoted to the data sets used (few criminologists have used either the National Child Development Study or the 1970 British Cohort Study) or the analyses techniques employed (age-period-cohort analyses are not especially common, although that is changing, thankfully), we were limited in that we only had the room for one topic. However, right from the outset of the wider intellectual project (see Farrall and Hay, 2014, eds), we recognised that this was a story with very many tails (and tales). Cascades, "spill-over" effects, "double-effects," and complex and contingent causal processes, we suspected, were common. What happened in one policy field would have consequences for others, if not immediately, then at some point afterwards. Since each of our previous journal articles on this topic could really only tackle one topic at a time, we felt that bringing highlights from some of these publications together would allow us to more fully explore some of the connections between them in ways which were not possible in the journal articles. This approach also means that we are able to draw out lessons for fields which we had not initially expected to have much to "say to" (such as criminal careers research), but which we now realise our research findings have helped to illuminate some deficiencies with (see Farrall, 2021, on the research design of many criminal careers studies). This book also provides the chance to locate our work in a wider field of recent studies of the politics-crime nexus (which we do in Chapter 1) and to reflect more leisurely on what our and our colleagues' work contributes to the study of crime and politics, and Thatcherism more generally. In short, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

> Stephen Farrall and Emily Gray July 2023

For the sake of completeness, we list our publications, by date order, and the films we have commissioned on this topic here:


#### **Films**


## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

It hasn't escaped us that the first publication from this project emerged in 2006 and it is now 2024. Compared to Margaret Thatcher herself (who was in office "a mere" 10 years and 7 months), we have been woefully tardy in our outputs during the almost two decades we have been exploring the legacies of her period in office. Accordingly, during that time, we have built up a huge array of debts, some of which we will try to acknowledge here.

We need to start with Colin Hay, Will Jennings, and Maria Grasso, with whom we wrote several papers, and whose interest in the topic fuelled our own desires to explore the legacy of Thatcherism in ways which, to be frank, we'd never thought of at the outset of the project. We owe them each, and collectively, a huge gratitude for freely sharing their thoughts and insights and being such lovely people to work with. We additionally owe Phil Jones (with whom we authored Chapter 8 of this book, originally published in the *European Journal of Criminology*), a debt too, since it was Phil, as a geographer, who enabled us to explore Thatcherism's impacts spatially in a way which we had not considered before we had met and worked with him.

Away from the immediate colleagues we worked with, we need also to thank those individuals and study principal investigators who did so much diligent work collecting and collating the data upon which we rely so much. Accordingly, we thank the teams of academic, third sector and governmental social scientists—both past and present—who helped to collect and continue to run the British Crime Survey (now the Crime Survey for England and Wales), the British Social Attitudes Survey, the National Child Development Study, and 1970 Birth Cohort Study (the last of which are now run by colleagues at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at UCL). Alongside these colleagues, we were fortunate enough to be able to call on the insights of Brian Dudgeon, Alissa Goodman, Alice Sullivan, and John Bynner. The late Roger Jowell and the wonderfully insightful Sara Arber both provided crucial insights into additional data sets and the craft of undertaking secondary data analysis. Rob Sampson owes a "thank you" of his own for agreeing to write such a lovely Foreword amongst all of the other pressures on his time.

David Downes, Sarah Childs, Mike Hough, the late David Faulkner, Stephen Savage, Julian Greaves, David Gadd, the late Jason Ditton, Pat Carlen, Miriam Davids, Rowland Atkinson, Sarah Blandy, Tony Bottoms, Danny Dorling, Lisa Miller, Alan Murie, Gill Valentine, Sandra Walklate, Claire Hamilton, David Hayes, Tim Newburn, Gwen Robinson, Layla Skinns, Richard Young, Cyril Benoit, Andrew Gamble, Andy Hindmoor, Peter Kerr, Alex Nunn, and Craig Watkins all provided comments on draft papers as we produced them, and we thank them all for their time and efforts. The University of Sheffield's Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme enabled an undergraduate student (Naomi Burke) to collect some of the material needed for Chapter 7. We would also like to thank Richard Garside and his colleagues at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies for organising a seminar on what became Chapter 8, and to Tom Guiney and Helen Johnston for their comments on that area of our research. Sage Publications was kind enough to allow us to reproduce an earlier version of this chapter which was published in the *European Journal of Criminology* in 2023. The late Roger Hood, Jim Carnie of the Scottish Prisons Service, Fergus McNeill, and Steven Peterson (of the Royal Arsenal History Society) deserve a special word of thanks for helping to identify the former uses of prisons. It was, however, Richard Sparks who suggested to Stephen that he consider what had occupied the sites of current prisons during an early phase of the investigation into the impact of Thatcherism on UK society and the criminal justice system. John Flatley and Joe Traynor at the Office for National Statistics helped us to navigate the weighting variables for the British Crime Survey, and Machi Tseloni, Sylvia Walby, and Jude Towers gave us invaluable insight into the BSC/CSE&W victim forms. Likewise, colleagues at the universities at which we were based during the duration of our studies on Thatcherism (namely, Keele, Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham, and Warwick) have had the good grace to entertain our enthusiasm for the topic to the point of OCD-like fanaticism without once (visibly) allowing their faces to glaze over.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council on no less than three occasions (as awards numbers RES-000-22-2688, ES/K006398/1, and ES/P002862/1) and the British Academy which funded and hosted a two-day seminar in July 2011 which enabled Stephen and Colin Hay to start the process of charting the Thatcherite legacy across a number of policy domains. The ESRC also funded a Festival of Social Science roundtable called "Assessing the Legacy of Thatcherism" with contributions from Andrew Gamble, Alan Walker, Colin Hay, Carole Walker, Danny Dorling, and Adrian Bingham in November 2013. Sarah King-Hele and Vanessa Higgins of the UK Data Service were extremely helpful when it came to running a workshop on the collated versions of the British Crime Survey and the British Social Attitudes Survey which we lodged at the UK Data Archive (as SN7875) and ensured that all of the attendees were well looked after. We have given numerous talks over the years to both professional and lay audiences, and we would like to thank all those who came along to listen to us drone on about Thatcherism or to watch one of the two films we commissioned on this topic, and who, by the simple act of asking questions of us, prompted us to think of topics in new ways or to reconsider some of our earlier stances.

Finally, we thank our families for putting up with us (and at times putting us up when visiting speaker duties permitted it). We couldn't have done it without you.

> Stephen Farrall and Emily Gray July 2023

# **PART I INTRODUCTION**

The first part of our book deals with some of the theoretical approaches which have been adopted to account for the relationships between politics and crime, some of the conceptual matters which we draw upon and utilise during our studies, and the key policy changes of the Thatcher era (which we extend up to include John Major's period in office from November 1990). The first of these chapters delves into the various (and varying) approaches to how we approach the subject matter at hand, and the styles of explanation which have been developed, and which we characterise as being based on narrative accounts of parliamentary processes, a sociological narrative perspective, and a more economically based epistemology. We end with a critique of these bodies of work, which we attempt to build upon both theoretically and in terms of our analyses in Part II. The second chapter in Part I outlines our thinking on matters relating to the life-course perspective and how one can "link" this theoretically and empirically to political processes, most notably political change, whilst the third chapter deals with key policy changes between 1979 and 1997 as they related to economic, housing, social security, education, and criminal justice policies.

# 1 **RE-IMAGINING THE STUDY OF THE POLITICS OF CRIME**

#### **Introduction**

This chapter considers those major studies of the ways in which politics affects crime and related matters (such as criminal justice legislation, the criminal justice systems, and popular opinion about crime and justice). The study of the relationships between politics and crime has developed considerably since the turn of the century, reflecting, perhaps, a keener interest on the part of criminologists in the relationship between what political leaders say and do and the sorts of criminal justice systems which are created. Herein we review the literature produced over the past 20 or so years, with a view to thinking about what we might want to focus our efforts on in the future. We are going to argue that there are a number of different ways of thinking about and studying the politics-crime relationship which have emerged since around the year 2000, and that these focus upon different aspects of both (a) crime and (b) politics (and what these both are and mean), and in so doing have drawn upon different analytic and methodological traditions. However, these traditions do not preclude each other, and we will argue that a synthesis of aspects of all of them is possible.

This literature can trace its roots back to studies by Rusche and Kirchheimer (1969), Hall et al (1978), and Melossi and Pavarini (1981) and has witnessed a considerable growth of late (especially since the turn of the century). Recent contributions are varied in their focus and approach: Wacquant (2009) explored how the poor in the USA are punished; Garland (2001) sought to understand the ways in which "control" has changed since the 1970s in the UK and USA, whilst De Giorgi (2006) used the concept of post-Fordism to explore the sociology of punishment. Miller (2016) focused on exploring how and when crime becomes a key issue in the minds of politicians and the public alike, charting the consequences using data from three countries, whilst Simon (2007) assessed the impact of the USA's war on crime for other areas of social policy, ranging from domestic spaces to schools and places of employment. Enns (2016) explored how media coverage of crime fuelled popular concerns, which mobilise politicians to talk and act tough on crime, and which results in increases in incarceration rates. Alongside this, contributions have sought to assess the role of different styles of capitalism on justice systems (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007), how political culture, institutions, and democratic engagement shaped punishment (Barker, 2009), New Labour's period in office (Tonry, 2004; Bell, 2011), and the roll-out of imprisonment for the purposes of protecting the public in England and Wales (Annison, 2015). Within the ambit of this body of work, the voices of some of those involved in some of these events and processes (at least in the UK) have emerged, with contributions from Faulkner (2014) augmenting the authoritative accounts provided by Windlesham (1993, 1996, 2001), and Rock (2019a, 2019b), Downes (2021), and Downes and Newburn (2022). As such, this literature consists of contributions from political scientists with an interest in the criminal justice system, sociologists of crime and punishment, criminologists who have explored the role of politics in shaping systems of crime control, and the reflections of civil servants (and in some cases politicians) who have published memoirs on the processes associated with policymaking. We are going to structure our overview of this literature by focusing on three approaches to the topic at hand.

#### **Studying Politics and Crime: Three Different Approaches**

The three broad, ideal types of approaches each have their merits and pitfalls. There is no "clear blue water" between these three, and some authors have contributed across them. Nevertheless, approaching the literature in this way allows us to identify trends and omissions across them. The three ideal types of approaches, each of which we outline and illustrate presently, are as follows:

Type A (Parliamentary Narrativism) Type B (Sociological and Political Science Narrativism) Type C (Macro-Economic Perspectives)

#### *Type A: Parliamentary Narrativism*

These studies seek to unpack the precise ways in which political ideologies, ideas, policy imperatives, and the need (at times) to build coalitions of support across partisan groups shaped the outcomes of government policies and Acts. Such studies are concerned with the personnel, problems, and practicalities of delivering criminal justice policies at specific moments, and are chiefly concerned with the *specifics* of *particular* Acts and their passage into law, as represented by the likes of Tonry (2004), Windlesham (1993, 1996, 2001), Rock (2019a, 2019b), and Faulkner (2014). Such authors have explored the ways in which the processes of drafting and enacting laws are shaped by political institutions, social and cultural change, agency, pressure groups and civil servants, and, in some cases, popular opinion. Such studies delve deep into the minutiae of the legislation being examined and illuminate the ways in which specific political actors chose certain courses of action and the role of specific organisations in the criminal justice system. Unlike, for example, the second and third bodies of work, such studies are not *immediately* concerned with wider, more long-term social, economic, cultural, or political shifts or how these might impact criminal justice and how it is delivered (although these matters are *not* absent from these accounts). Tonry (2004) is an exemplar of this approach; *Punishment and Politics* explores the thinking and decisions behind the 2002 Criminal Justice Bill and the 2003 Criminal Justice Act. Tonry argues that the British Labour Party took the electorally expedient decision to follow the lead established by Bill Clinton in the USA in which harsh criminal justice policies were seen as a vote-winner. Hence the explanation for harsher punishments in the UK was due to politicians on the left mimicking tough-minded policies associated with the political right (a point echoed by Enns, 2016: 159).

Tonry argues that New Labour's criminal justice policies were driven by rhetoric, symbolic politics, and "knee-jerk" actions to external events (2004: 25). The impact of the "tough on crime" rhetoric affected the ways in which key officials in the New Labour government thought about the issues they faced and the ways in which these were to be dealt with. This meant that it was assumed that helping offenders in some way harmed victims (2004: 27) or that for victims to be treated with more care by the criminal justice system meant that offenders had to be treated more harshly (2004: 29), neither of which, as Tonry points out, is correct. He also notes how New Labour focused on and created a category of offender ("persistent criminals") which formed the basis of their thinking irrespective of the fact that many young offenders would grow out of crime with time (2004: 32). As Tonry notes, all of the above was pursued in order to create and present the image that New Labour were "tough on crime" (2004: 36).

Windlesham's contributions (1993, 1996, 2001) provide an exhaustive account of the debates and legislative processes involved in the development of the English and Welsh criminal justice system. His books cover everything from the immediate post-war years and the introduction of the 1947 Criminal Justice Bill, to 2001. Faulkner also provides an insider's account of events. If Windlesham had experience borne out of debating and delivering some of this legislation, then Faulkner's experiences were much more at the policy development end of matters. His account focuses on how the Home Office operated, its culture and values, as well as insights into the process of drafting some key legislation. Annison (2015), on the other hand, focuses on the build-up to, drafting, enactment, and consequences of the creation of the Imprisonment for Public Protection sentencing policy, part of the Criminal Justice Act (2003). His reliance on the insights of several dozen interviewees who were party to some of the discussions, drafting, and implementation of IPP provides a real depth of knowledge and understanding of this provision.

Rock's more recent studies provide another example of this approach. Based on interviews and documentary research, Rock extends the focus on detail by focusing on a limited number of Acts. These are the 1965 Murder Act (which ended the death penalty in Britain), the 1967 Abortion Act (which legalised abortion in Britain, with some caveats), the 1967 Sexual Offences Act (which legalised homosexual acts between some men in some cases in England and Wales), the 1971 Courts Act (which introduced Crown Courts), and the Prosecution of Offences Act of 1985 (which created the Crown Prosecution Service). These developments are set within an extremely rich and painstakingly documented discussion of wider changes in UK society and show how individual actors were able to motivate and produce quite wide-ranging changes to the criminal justice system in England and Wales.

The problem (if that is not too pejorative a term to use) with such accounts is that one is left with (in Loader and Sparks' words, 2004: 11) "an internal, Westminster-centric treatment of political events and processes with scant reference to either the economic, social and cultural contexts within which they are played out, or to the criminological and political ideas that relevant actors implicitly or expressly mobilise and tussle over."

Type A, then, explores and provides a narrative account of the ways in which aspirations, constructions, debates, ideas, coalitions, and the practicalities of delivering on manifesto commitments within a large and complex system took place. The magnifying glass of analysis is held very close to the subject, and the focus is on the details of the thinking and the passage of acts of parliament and the operationalisation of policies. Figure 1.1 represents that approach.

One can present all of these variants and the approaches they adopt diagrammatically. For Type A, we see something like the model presented in Figure 1.1. Here political decisions, debates, goals, and practical politics are

**FIGURE 1.1** "Close up" Model of Politics and Punishment Systems

the foci. Realpolitik matters shape decisions, and the focus is on the ways in which ideas shape the systems of punishment produced. This is evident in Tonry's account of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, and the ways in which New Labour emulated harsh US-style punishments in order to prevent the Conservative Party from "getting to the right of them" on crime (2004: ix).

The gains of the Type A approach are that the precise details of what happened when, why certain things did or did not intervene or shape, and the way(s) in which these were related to outcomes for the criminal justice system are brought to light and a greater degree of individual agency and institutional dynamics is presented. The downside is that wider influences on the politics of crime, punishment, and criminal justice are not developed as much as they might be (although Rock (2019a, 2019b) provides an insight into the passage of specific Acts and the creation of two criminal justice institutions). However, Type B does attempt to provide accounts which highlight just those influences, and it is to that body of work that we now turn to.

#### *Type B: Sociological and Political Science Narrativism*

These, more "macro-sociological" accounts, present broad narratives of shifts in societies, their political formations, and crime. Such studies deal with criminal justice systems, the things which shape them from "upstream" and the things which they themselves shape "downstream," and tend to explore global transformations associated with modernity. These accounts narrate changes over long periods of time, rather than report empirical analyses. Scholars such as Young (1999), Garland (2001), Barker (2009), Wacquant (2009), Beckett (1997), and Lacey (2008) have devoted considerable attention to the ways in which shifts in both social forms and both politics and political thinking have shaped issues relating to crime and the criminal justice system. These studies deal with what some have termed "global transformations" of late-modernity (Young, 1999; Garland, 2001; Barker, 2009) and tend to relate to either the USA (Beckett, 1997; Barker, 2009), or the UK or to a range of countries (Lacey, 2008). (Young, 1999), or both of these countries (Garland, 2001; De Giorgi, 2006),

Whilst the models developed by those working at greater scales differ from Type A (in that they are less concerned with individual agency and calculus), the explanatory accounts differ too. For example, Garland (2001) and Young (1999) posit "late-modernity" as the ultimate driver of the changes (Figure 1.2). Late-modernity (with a focus on increased globalisation and changes to the economy) altered the ways in which both welfare and punishment systems operated and resulted in feedback over time. For Garland, latemodernity meant increasingly insecure labour markets, changes to household and family structures and forms, increasing mobility, and the emergence of new forms of security. As Lacey notes (2008: 22–23), Garland argued that

**FIGURE 1.2** Garland's Model of Political Changes and Welfare and Punishment Systems (2001)

broad-sweeping economic and cultural changes have encouraged the development of a "culture of control." This is characterised by a managerialist and repressive approach to the criminal justice system (which – along with economic governance – is used as a key barometer of a government's ability to govern), and which created new systems of managing crime based on situational responses. The culture of wanting and needing to demonstrate control, for Garland, grew out of the wider decline in the power of the state as processes of globalisation encouraged national economies to become increasingly interdependent on one another. Garland presents his model as being a general one (although one clearly based heavily on the experiences of the USA and the UK, Zedner, 2002). However, other European states had experienced similar external challenges and not resorted to an increased reliance on punishment, and Canada had embraced an approach that drew more heavily on ideas of social integration and rehabilitation (in the form of the What Works? movement). As Zedner notes, Garland's account slips between all countries and none (Zedner, 2002) and has a level of generality which some have found "frustrating" (Feeley, 2003: 114). Loader and Sparks (2004: 13), critiquing Garland (2001), also note deficiencies in his approach, in that there is a tendency to focus on punishment and to ignore the actions of specific governments and political actors (2004: 17).

Wacquant, on the other hand, points to neo-liberalism (2009: 302–303) and connects changes in the US criminal justice system to those in the welfare system (Figure 1.3). Wacquant seeks to show how the neo-liberal government of social insecurity is a project which unfolded over decades and which

**FIGURE 1.3** Wacquant's Model of Political Changes and US Welfare and Punishment Systems (2009)

sought to reduce the size of the state via the retreat from economic intervention, labour market regulation, and social protection. It is Wacquant's central thesis that welfare retrenchment of already weakened welfare systems along with the emergence of a punitive approach to welfare has come to characterise the US criminal justice system. He argues that "economic deregulation required […] welfare retrenchment, and the gradual makeover of welfare into workfare, in turn, called for and fed the expansion of the penal apparatus" (p58). This process was driven by neo-liberal hostility towards those sections of society which had come to rely on the welfare state for their economic survival (such as "single mothers," young, Black men, and sex offenders). As such, the welfare and penal systems have shared a common trajectory of change since the 1970s. His model, however, has been criticised for applying more to the USA than it did other western countries (Hudson, 2010; Hornqvist, 2010) and for focusing too centrally on the concept of neo-liberalism (De Giorgi, 2010).

Barker's book (2009: 7) attempts to explain variations in US penal sanctions. She compares three US states (California, Washington, and New York) and the development of their penal regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These states pursued different approaches to penal sanctions (Washington relied on the least repressive sanctions it could; California pursued more punitive and mandatory penal sanctions, whilst New York adopted a managerialist approach, sending some to prison whilst diverting others out of the criminal justice system). Barker argues that differences in the political institutions and democratic traditions of these three states explain variations in penal strategies:

When we see significant changes in the political order, we are likely to see transformation in penal regimes; likewise, when we see variation or differences between political orders, we are likely to see correlative differences in penal regimes.

(2009: 9)

However, and in keeping with the US criminal justice system, which is a state-level rather than a federal-level responsibility, she argues that

penal regime change, continuity, and difference are significantly shaped by place. Penal regime variation is shaped by local and state-level institutional configurations.

(2009: 10)

Barker also cites late-modernity as a driving factor, although the concept appears only fleetingly (p25) in her account (summarised in Figure 1.4). Instead, she builds a model which incorporates local political cultures and institutions, the path dependencies associated with these, the forms of local

**FIGURE 1.4** Barker's Model of Politics and Punishment Systems (2009)

democratic engagement and human agency (both political leadership and grassroots movements).

In Barker's narrative of the changes experienced, welfare systems play a relatively minor role. This is because, until the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996), individual US states had relatively little power over welfare, meaning that the welfare system was a relative constant across the three states she explored. Another observation that can be made about Barker's work is the focus on imprisonment (as opposed to community supervision, or routine policing). Whilst Barker focuses heavily on the history of each state and its collective values and norms about crime and wrongdoers, there is virtually no consideration as to why crime rates rose in the USA during the 1960s and 1970s.

Lacey develops a much more explicitly institutionalist approach to the matters at hand in her attempt to "account for the prevailing differences among the penal systems of democracies at similar levels of economic development" (2008: 56). Her explanation is intended to be comparative (akin to Cavadino and Dignan, 2006) but incorporating institutionism from Hall and Soskice (2001). As such, Lacey highlights the fact that in "first past the post" electoral systems, elected officials prefer to work with their own advisors (rather than a cross section of groups, p72), unpopular policies tend to come early in a period in office, giving way to more populist ones later (p66), whilst proportional representation is more likely to elect left-of-centre governments (p67). Like Barker, she is relatively unconcerned with why crime rose and instead develops an account of the relationship between political processes and punishment systems, which draws on an understanding of political-economic forces and the ways in which these shape criminal justice systems, but are mediated by cultural filters, social, economic, and political institutions, and the actions of specific social actors (2008: 57–76). In keeping with, for example, Garland (2001), Lacey notes that late 1970s, the attitudes which motivated and sustained the welfare state were challenged and eroded by the marketisation of society (p78), and that this, in turn, helps to explain the rise in both crime and levels of punishment

**FIGURE 1.5** Lacey's Model of Political Economy and Punishment Systems (2008)

since the 1980s (p86). In short, the nature of a country's political economy does not directly affect the criminal justice system, as intervening institutions (such as cultural values, the sort of political constitution which the country has adopted, the distribution of decision-making powers, the degree of individualistic values, the selection and tenure of senior judges, the mechanisms for defining crime, and the power of pressure groups and other social and economic institutions) "filter" the impact of these. This extends to the relationships between some of these institutions, with Lacey noting that in the UK and USA, the relationships between the judiciary and the government have become strained (p95). Diagrammatically, this is represented by Figure 1.5.

Miller's and Simon's approaches (Figure 1.6) again do not seek explanations of *why* crime rises, but rather seek to explore what happens when they *do* rise and how political institutions affect both punishments and other social policies, with the latter vulnerable to being pushed off the political agenda by responses to the initial rise in crime (Miller, 2016) or colonised by aspects of the crime control agenda (Simon, 2007). Concepts such as late-modernity or neo-liberalism do not encroach on Miller's or Simon's explanatory approaches.

Miller (2001) studied a specific intervention programme in one city, and how it is that US citizens are unable to get their voices heard whilst prioritising highly organised groups with specific policy interests (such as gun control, civil liberties, and violence against women, whilst broader interest groups struggle to be heard, especially if they seek to promote the interests

**FIGURE 1.6** Miller's (2016) and Simon's Model of Politics Punishment Systems (2007)

of poor Black citizens, 2008: 169). More recently, her work has focused on relationships between political institutions (primarily the separation of power and forms of parliamentary governance, 2016: 5) and the extent to which violent crime becomes more salient in political and policy agendas in three countries. Miller's concern is to understand what happens (in terms of criminal justice policies) when crime becomes a salient issue, finding that when crime rates rise, they become more salient and therefore politicised (p193), with punitive rhetoric contributing to that process (p196). However, the extent to which crime pushes other social policies off the political agenda depends on the power of democratic institutions in being able to facilitate the development of social policies which might also address violent crime (p8).

In Simon's (2007) account, crime has become a dominant, "single issue" topic, to which US politics is easily drawn, and around which entrenched positions can be developed. The nature of the crime itself makes it a useful topic around which to identify "the good" and "the bad" as vague social categories, with the State adopting the role of "the defender" of "us" (the "good") against "them" (the "bad"). In this way, argues Simon, the State develops a strategy in which it tries to "govern through crime," in which the delivery of safety is predicated upon the identification of categories of people (the poor, the young, urban-living ethnic minorities, and the "underclass") invoked as a threat which the remainder of society must be protected against. This protection then takes the form of increased regulation of their activities and presence. This strategy allows the State to reclaim some of its power (via the waging of "wars" against crime, drugs, and so on), whilst at the same time diverting attention away from more fundamental threats to security about which it can do relatively little (such as global economic transformations, and the unemployment and insecurity of work associated with this).

Simon's aim is to understand what governing through crime means and "does" to civil society (2007: 17). He argues that US politicians (of all "levels" and colours) have found it convenient to use crime (and associated issues like policing, sentencing, and punishment) as a way of governing not just crime, but a range of other topics relating to schools, families, and the workplace. Crime is therefore a convenient cover issue to use to smuggle control over non-crime-related (as well as crime-related) matters (2007: 4–5). As Simon explicitly states, he is uninterested in why crime rose, instead focusing on the consequences of crime rises:

The question of causation [of increases in crime rates] is fascinating but ultimately less important than the question of what the "war on crime" actually does to American democracy, our government and legal system, and the open society we have historically enjoyed.

(2007: 25)

Like Miller's and Simon's approaches, Beckett (1997, Figure 1.7) also does *not* seek to explain why crime rose and points to the roles played by both political leaders (especially those opposed to the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement) and criminal justice system leadership, both of which adopted more punitive rhetoric and discourse during the 1960s and 1970s, extending into the 1980s. Beckett used social surveys and speeches by politicians to assess the trajectories of public attitudes about punishment and how this was mobilised by politicians. She argues that the "incidence of crime-related problems, levels of concern about and fear of crime, and support for punitive anti-crime policies" have only "quite tenuous" relationships with public concern about crime (p10). However, public concern about crime is "strongly associated with prior political initiative on the crime and drug issues" (p10), meaning that "support for tough anticrime policies is not merely a reaction to the increased incidence of crime and drug use … and call[s] attention to the political and ideological processes by which punishment and control have been defined as the primary solutions to crime-related problems" (p11). Or, in other words, the US public played follow-your-leader when it came to their attitudes towards crime and punishment. The changes Beckett charts led to an increase in popular punitive attitudes towards wrongdoing and were used (in various ways) to achieve the goal of reducing welfare expenditure and making it focused more centrally on control and less on the alleviation of social and economic needs (Figure 1.7).

Enns (2016) argues that rising crime rates in the USA resulted in increased media attention on the topic of crime and victimisation, which had the effect of increasing popular punitiveness. In response to the rising concern about crime in the public's mind, politicians were prompted to adopt criminal justice topics as a more central part of their political manifestos and public pronouncements, and in so doing tried to reflect the public's desire for tougher punishments. Once adopted, these more punitive discourses became actual policies when these politicians were elected (see Figure 1.8).

from survey questions which tended to overstate the extent of public concern due to their question wordings (Cheliotis, 2020: 78–79) and argues that Xenakis and Cheliotis (2020), however, argue that Enns relied upon data

**FIGURE 1.7** Beckett's Model of Politics and Punishment Systems (1997)

**FIGURE 1.8** Enns' Model of Politics and Punishment Systems (2016)

politicians manipulate public concerns, rather than follow them (Cheliotis, 2020: 79–80). In fact, other topics were consistently more important to members of the public than the topic of crime during the period which Enns studies (2020: 80). Cheliotis goes on to argue that Enns compounds this mistake by assuming that discursive shifts on the part of politicians represent policy changes with regard to the criminal justice system (2020: 81).

Cavadino and Dignan seek to explain imprisonment rates (2006: 5), which they admit is not the ideal variable for choice, but the only one which can reliably be used given their comparative approach. Like Garland, they too see the sorts of transformations with which they are grappling with as part of a process of "late" or "high" modernity (2006: 8). Given that they are able to compare 12 countries, they are able to focus on varying types of political economy, bringing a novel aspect to their study (Figure 1.9).

The types of political economy they refer to are characterised by the extent to which these embrace the free market, have generous or residualised welfare systems, and tolerate high degrees of income inequality, the inclusion or alienation of "outsiders," and the forms of penal ideology which is dominant in each society (Table 1.1, 2006: 15).

#### *Type C: Macro-Economic Perspectives*

The third body of work is concerned with the political economy of crime and is represented by the likes of Sutton (2004, 2013a and 2013b), Weiss et al (2020), Wenzelburger (2018), Boppre et al (2021), Meithe et al (2017), Scheafer and Uggen (2016), and King et al (2012). This work is much more

**FIGURE 1.9** Cavadino and Dignan's Comparative Model of Political Economy and Imprisonment (2006)

disparate and deals with issues relating to political economy and crime. This work eschews a focus on individual actors and their immediate policy concerns, preferring to focus on "big picture" social, economic, and political institutions and the role these play in the production of crime and the criminal justice system (etc.). Associated with this (and setting it aside from Type B) is the relative lack of interest in culture and values, making this essentially the structuralist study of the relationship between the economy and crime and/or punishment. Wenzelburger (2018), for example, explores the extent to which different countries coalesce around economic policies and values, and criminal justice policies, finding that those countries with more employment protection, less inequality, a strong civil service, a culture of solidarity, and electoral systems based on proportional representation tend of have less punitive criminal justice policies. In this approach, the explanatory models developed rest less on the exercise of power by specific individuals and rely more on economic processes (such as the nature of the economic system being studied, or the timing of a business cycle) and institutions (such as the extent to which trade unions are incorporated into the economic management processes). For these studies, political economy is frequently operationalised as rates of unemployment, levels of inequality, consumer optimism, levels of economic restructuring, income inequality, and trade union density, or similar variables, and the analyses are often quantitative or discussions of macrolevel changes and processes. This style of research has the consequence of leaving relatively unexplored other fields of public policy activity (such as schooling or housing provision) and the impact of these policies on crime. Since the major focus is on economic variables, this body of work has tended to follow economics in terms of its analytic *modus operandi* (in that it relies on time series modelling of country-level variables). This means that it is crime and incarceration rates (rather than the geographic location of crimes, or the precise social sections of society affected, or who commits a crime or who is victimised, or the populace's attitudes to crime and punishment) which have become the focus of this body of work.

As such, a different model of change and causality to those developed by the likes of Garland, Wacquant, Miller, or Simon is presented by those working in this tradition (characterised here as Figure 1.10). Here the drivers are

**FIGURE 1.10** Macro-Economic Dominated Models of Politics Punishment Systems

truly macro-logical; there is no agency in the models developed, and instead the focus is on economic processes and types of welfare systems.

For example, Sutton (2004) explores the role of the institutional contexts of economic policymaking and the impacts of these on imprisonment rates. Using data for 15 affluent western democracies for 1960–1990, Sutton shows that whilst higher income inequality is associated with higher imprisonment rates, more generous welfare systems tend to reduce imprisonment rates to an equal effect (2004: 182). In addition to this, trade union density (i.e. the degree to which adults of working age are members of a trade union) and the extent to which left-wing parties are included in executive decision-making also lower imprisonment rates (p182), which is interpreted as meaning that unions and social democratic parties affect trends in employment, as well as reducing income inequalities and rates of imprisonment (p183). However, these findings are strongest when the models are run for the period up to 1985; thereafter the impact of left-leaning political parties is reduced, in keeping with the observation that in many countries such parties started to adopt more punitive policies.

Building on the burgeoning work on institutional anomie theory, Weiss et al (2020) seek to explain rates of imprisonment in 41 countries using insights from this theory. Whilst the percentage of the male population and the homicide rate are both related to the rate of imprisonment a country experiences, their results suggest that the strength of economic institutions and their domination of other, non-economic, institutions are both associated with incarceration rates when the national culture is (a) characterised by individualism, (b) a competitive achievement orientation, or (c) both. However, those countries with national cultures which embrace collectivist values and cooperative orientations experience lower rates of incarceration (in keeping with Messner and Rosenfeld's original thinking, 1994). So, again, where key economic values of individualism dominate, rates of imprisonment are elevated.

King et al (2012) go beyond incarceration rates in their study of US trends, in that they explore rates of criminal deportations between 1908 and 2005. They find that these rise during periods of unemployment, but that the rates of deportation can be affected by political discourses about immigration and labour. They report (2012: 1816) that political discourse about immigration and labour increases when unemployment is high and that this is associated with changes in criminal deportations. However, they also find that after 1987, the rate of deportation declined during a period when the House of Representatives became more Republican (p1811).

Those we have put into this Type still draw much from the work of others mentioned above. De Giorgi (2006) draws approvingly on the work of Wacquant, Garland, and Beckett, for example, in building his own model of the relationship between political economy and punishment (Figure 1.11),

**FIGURE 1.11** De Giorgi's Model of Post-Fordism and Punishment (2006)

which mainly draws on US experiences, but is not specifically located in any country. De Giorgi argues that is it the shift from Fordism (defined as the "enormous mass industrial production" between 1945 and the 1970s, during which the economy was stable, unemployment low, and "the institutions of social control shared with those of the welfare state a program of social inclusion," p39) to a post-Fordist economy which has changed the recent politics-punishment nexus (2006: xiii; 139). This set of processes, which Di Giorgi refers to as "the multitude" (p xiii), has produced changes in the working practices of the labour force, producing a more flexible, mobile, precariously employed or unemployed workforce, meaning that the relationship between the economy and the punishment is no longer a simple correlation (p33). Simultaneously, neo-liberalism (2006: 49–50) has created changes in the welfare provisions offered, with workfare now more prominent than welfare (p50). The nature of work itself has changed too, becoming more fragmented, irregular, less guaranteed, and more "flexible" (i.e. part-time, casual, and intermittent). Those trapped in such forms of employment become increasingly socially excluded (p51), as de Giorgi puts it:

it would seem, in fact, that by restructuring the economy in the name of flexibility, precariousness, insecurity and competition, capitalist power has imposed a neo-Hobbesian condition of "war of all against all" among the labour force itself: growing factions of the workforce find themselves excluded because they fail in the competition against other sections of the same labour force.

(p61)

Where once social policies and penal policies colluded, penal policies are now used to "manage" poverty and to control the labour force (p100), resulting in greater levels of punishment, which has been aided by the seeming death of the rehabilitative ideal (p92). Following Simon, De Giorgi argues that crime became more politicised (p98) and that with that, there was a change in the ways in which it was explained, from anomie and relative deprivation (p92) to free choice (p94).

A few comments can be made with regard to De Giorgi's model; first, it is unclear where the agency can be built into his model (either that of political actors or of "ordinary people"), and although some key politicians are referenced (p92), it is not clear how or in what ways they shaped either economic or criminal justice policies; second, it is unclear the way(s) in which social policies were key in the above (although one well-known US policy is mentioned, Aid for Families with Dependent Children, p99), or how they operated; third, it is unclear what the relationship(s) between neo-liberalism and post-Fordism is, or (fourthly) if changes in the economy are related to changes in actual crime levels, or just in responses to crime. Lacey (2008: 50–51) further notes that De Giorgi's work ignores institutional and cultural influences.

Like De Giorgi, Bell also builds on works by the likes of Garland and Wacquant (2011: 3). However, diverging from Wacquant, Bell argues that punitiveness is not intrinsic to neo-liberalism (we summarise her model in Figure 1.12). Echoing an observation made by Matthews (2005: 187), she asks why it is that neo-liberals would want to devote such vast amounts of resources to the criminal justice system. Instead, the link between neo-liberalism and punitiveness, she argues, is to be found in neo-liberalism's impact on the modern State. Whilst Wacquant acknowledges this, she suggests that the impact on the State is not to the extent as suggested by Wacquant – in fact, she argues, welfare spending in the UK has increased, rather than declined. Rather, Bell argues that

the most significant transformation which the State has undergone as a result of neoliberalism is the move from its role as provider of public services to that of facilitator of market solutions.

(2011: 4)

She goes on to argue that

The changes made to the criminal justice system must be seen in the wider context of neoliberal public service reform which has led to the privatisation and contracting out of core state functions and the importation of the

**FIGURE 1.12** Bell's Model of Neo-Liberalism and Criminal Justice (2011)

logic of the free market into areas formerly thought to be immune from such influences.

(2011: 5)

It is neo-liberalism's impact on the criminal justice system which has increased punitiveness, she argues. This was achieved via the growth of management ideology which has, over time, changed the culture of the criminal justice system, which has become focused on meeting a range of targets, such as the number of offences brought to justice. In the police, this has resulted in the use of summary justice. Other sections of the criminal justice system have become focused on reducing prison escapes, rehabilitation, and surveillance (2011: 5).

For Bell, "it was not neoliberalism itself which led to punitive crime policies in Britain but rather successive governments' attempts to manage the social and political consequences of neoliberal policies without calling them into question" (2011: 163), and which (building on Garland, 1996: 460) created a climate in which desires to deal effectively with offenders made up for the failures to deliver economic security, and which ultimately led to more punitive policies being introduced.

#### *Summarising the Above Approaches*

Thinking about these three bodies of work, it becomes apparent that they each approach the topic not just with different methodologies (broadly speaking, narrativism in Types A and B versus empirical quantitative analyses in Type C), nor with different objects (political and social transformations versus the specifics of the legislative process), but also at different *scales of magnitude*.

Tonry, Windlesham, Annison, and Faulkner (Type A) all hold their analytic magnifying glasses very close to the subject; we are able to see individual agency in action, to see how precise causal orderings and events unfolded within and were shaped by institutional and organisational constraints (on this point, Barker, 2009 similarly focuses on the specifics of the three states she selected for analysis). These authors seek to document the processes by which legislation came into being as it did, rather than seeking to explain crime rates *per se*. What key political leaders and administrations wanted to change, and the impacts of their policies are brought into sharp focus. Other social and economic policies do not feature as part of this account terribly much, and there is only passing reference to wider social attitudes (although Rock (2019a, 2019b) pays much more attention to these aspects in his account). A detailed examination of the impacts of the legislation on citizens is often missing. Holding their magnifying glass still further away (Type B) are accounts from the likes of Young (1999), Barker (2009), Lacey (2008), and Garland (2001). For some, the rise of crime is part of their account, whilst others (Miller, 2001; Simon, 2007) explicitly state that they are less interested in *why* crime rose, focusing instead on the *consequences* of the rise. Those in Type B who build into their accounts the reasons for the rise in crime vary; for some, it is Late-Modernity and for others Neo-Liberalism. Public attitudes are referred to, but not examined in detail, and do not play a prominent part in the account given (except by Enns, 2016). Cavadino and Dignan (2007) hold their magnifying glass a long way back from the subject matter, incorporating numerous countries at once. The gains cannot be overstated; the broadness of their study is able to show how varieties of capitalism and systems of control interact. However, the downsides are that the details of each country are lost; the nuanced specifics of any one country, its economy, crime rate, welfare system, and how these change over time are lost from view, too distant to be made out from the larger, more multinational processes and outcomes. The work on the macro-economics of crime and punishment (Type C) also holds the magnifying glass at distance; the social and economic processes which unfold within a country (or countries) over decades become discernible, but the individual actors are obscured from view by a focus on economic processes and shifts in the levels of generosity of welfare systems. Individual citizens and the impacts on their lives of the policies discussed again do not feature prominently. General accounts of welfare systems emerge, but specific policies and their impacts are not frequently traced. These approaches are summarised in Figure 1.13.

In some respect, the sort of accounts which, for example, Young (1999), Lacey (2008), Barker (2009), and Garland (2001) embark upon share a common focal point with the sorts of accounts given by the likes of Tonry (2004) and Windlesham (1993, 1996, 2001); "how we have reached a situation in which the criminal justice system is in its present condition?" (Beckett, 1997). However, their decisions about "what matters" diverge dramatically. For the likes of Garland (2001), Wacquant (2009), and Young (, 1999), "big picture" social and political transformations (or variations in these, Lacey, 2008) are the causal processes which count. On the other hand, for the likes of Tonry (2004), it is the decisions of political actors and their immediate


#### **FIGURE 1.13** Strengths and Weakness of Each Approach

goals which drive the narrative (as is the case with Annison's (2015) account of the origins of the Imprisonment for Public Protection scheme passed in 2003, but ended in 2012). Barker (2009) focuses on three US states to show how local political cultures, institutions, and public engagement on matters of criminal justice shape the individual routes navigated by individual states. On the other hand, a comparison of the sorts of analyses undertaken by the likes of Garland (2001) and those working more centrally in the macroeconomic tradition (Type C) points to a very different focal point and vastly different methodological styles but shares some similarities of thinking (in that they are both macro-logical accounts). Whilst both the sorts of accounts put forward by the likes of Garland and Young (Type B) and those put forward by macro-economic analyses (Type C) emphasise changes in ethnic segregation, welfare, union membership, economic variables, poverty, inequality, and residential stability, their methodologies are poles apart. Let us now critique this work, outlining some of the things which it leaves unexplored.

#### **Critique**

Whilst the sorts of studies cited above all have substantial merit, they also have, taken as a whole, a number of divergences and deficiencies. These deficiencies are shared across the three approaches we have identified.

#### *The Relative Position of Social and Economic Policies*

Let us think about the relative position of *social and economic policies* (including those relating to welfare policies) vis-à-vis crime and criminal justice policies. For Miller, Beckett, and Simon (Type B), for example, welfare policies are *shaped by* what happened in the criminal justice system; the punitiveness of the criminal justice system "bleeds" into the welfare system, making that more punitive too. For others (Annison, Tonry, Windlesham (Type A), and Enns (B)), there is scant mention of the welfare system (or other social policies). For these analysts, criminal justice policy is presented as the outcome of political and criminal justice policymaking processes. Similarly, those studies which compare across countries and criminal justice systems (Garland, 2001; Cavadino and Dignan, 2007; Barker, 2009) or are presented as alternative theoretical models to some of the above (Lacey, 2008) tend to make little reference to *specific social and economic policies*. There is an acceptance that welfare regimes might affect crime rates, but no mention of *specific* policies or acts, when these were passed or adopted, or *if* they actually affected crime, crime rates, punitive sentiments (and so on), or if the effects were intended or collateral consequences; immediate or lagged. These studies are therefore unable to state precisely *how* a particular social policy shapes crime or experiences of it. This leaves Cavadino and Dignan relying on correlations, rather than causal explanations (Lacey, 2008: 46) in their discussion of welfare regimes and the criminal justice system. In some instances, countries are characterised by welfare regimes which they are *moving away* from (for example, many Scandinavian countries now have far less generous welfare systems than they once did).

#### *An Absence of Specific Political Administrations*

Studies working at the national/comparative level of explanation (Types B and C) tend to reflect little on the roles of *specific political administrations* (although many of the US authors refer back to conservative politicians' attempts to fight back against the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s). This runs the risk of ignoring different political parties' periods in office, leaving readers with the impression that changes are driven from "onhigh," or to quote both Loader & Sparks and Feeley on Garland "rather too top down" (Loader and Sparks, 2004: 17), and insufficiently "anchored in politics" (Feeley, 2003: 117). This focus on *very* macro-level analyses means that important details are sometimes overlooked and that subtle differences between different administrations and countries are downplayed (part of the critique of De Giorgi's work as offered by Lacey, 2008: 50). For some, macro-economic processes mean that individual politicians are relatively unimportant, but this ignores the possibility that different administrations are able to shape criminal justice processes and outcomes.

#### *Are Neo-Liberalism and Late-Modernity the Right Explanations?*

Many, but not all, authors we have termed Type B refer to the concepts of *neo-liberalism* or late-modernity as part of the explanations. However, as Macauley observes,

extrapolation from a governance philosophy so strongly rooted in market thinking to other areas of policy can make neo-liberalism work too hard as an explanatory framework. We need to understand the dynamics of adoption in different policy fields, which involve distinct sets of policy entrepreneurs in different arenas and at different levels of government. (2007: 39)

In other words, is neo-liberalism the right focus and explanatory variable to adopt? To say that neo-liberalism (or late-modernity) was a key causal factor in the increase in crime requires one to specify and test some quite precise hypotheses, yet most accounts which cite these causal factors content themselves with narrative descriptions of what happened without formal tests of relationships.

In a wide-ranging essay on punitiveness, Matthews asks why neo-liberal governments would care about tackling minor offenders "rather than just leave them to their own devices in deprived inner-city areas?" (2005: 187). Key texts outlining the New Right of the 1980s (Levitas, 1986; Gamble, 1988) understood "neo-liberalism" in a more nuanced manner. Neo-conservativism was as strong a part of 1980s New Right thinking as neo-liberalism. As O'Malley reminds us, some of the trends in penalty owe rather more to *neoconservativism* than they do neo-liberalism (1999: 187).

Those authors who rely on concepts such as *late-modernity* (Young, 1999; Garland, 2001, even if the latter equivocates on the term, p77) are unable to show conclusively that we are living in a time of *late*-modernity. The concept of "lateness" can only exist in a state in which the end of a process is known. A rugby team, for example, can score a try late in a game since the start and end point of the match can be known, but history does not operate with pre-defined end points. What's to say that we aren't still living in the early modern period?

#### *Ignoring Why Crime Rose*

Many authors in Types A and B do not seek to explain why crime rose in the first place, focusing instead on the outcomes of crime rises. Whilst it is laudable to focus on the outcomes of the crime rise, ignoring why it went up is problematic for two reasons. The first is that as the crime rise was such a key part of the story, it is worth trying to explain it. However, and more crucially, by ignoring why crime rose, analysts discount the possibility that the reasons it rose, the nature of the rise, or how it was understood by policymakers may have shaped responses to crime. In other words, a crime rise which is understood to be the consequence of economic hardship may be responded to differently from that which is understood to be the result of greed.

#### *Where Have All the People Gone?*

Inevitably, *very* macro-logical analysts can push into the background *individuals* (most strikingly in the case of those studies we have labelled Type C). This renders the roles of powerful individuals, such as political leaders or "opinion-formers," impotent. However, as Type A demonstrates, specific agents *are* able to exert considerable influence on the systems they are embedded within. This is, however, not simply summed up with a reference to concepts such as "agency," since this implies some sort of action or engagement in an activity. The influence of agents also embraces the construction of ideas, critiques, and ways of looking at the world – and as we shall come to argue, these ideas are, at times, crucially important. Similarly, macro-logical explanations leave the actions of "ordinary" people out of the explanations being built (except perhaps in terms of their being influenced by their political masters, Beckett, 1997).

Politicians are not elected randomly; they are elected (in part) because they are able to articulate a critique of the present and a vision of the future which chimes with popular aspirations. So, what, then, of the citizenry? Barker's (2009) account is the closest we get to finding "real people" playing a role in the changes this literature, collectively, seeks to explain. And whilst some analysts do build public opinion into their explanations, this is most commonly achieved via the use of public opinion surveys (Enns, 2016). However, these are rarely differentiated by birth cohorts – the attitudes and experiences of which can differ hugely from one another, as has been empirically demonstrated by political scientists. However, whilst victims' groups and elected representatives are well-covered by Barker, and the use of opinion poll data illuminates the feelings of the citizenry, none of these studies tells us very much about offenders or their motivations for offending.

Many of the studies we refer to above fail to draw on theories of *why* people commit crimes. Either, the issue of offending is not central to these studies, or variables such as unemployment or economic inequality are *assumed* to drive people into offending. However, we know that the offending population is mainly drawn from males aged in their mid-teenage years and their late 20s, so macro-level variables need to be unpacked in a rather more nuanced manner. If we delve into the life-course/developmental criminology literature (few of those cited above have had much engagement with that body of work), we encounter the finding that early experiences shape lifecourses to a considerable degree. There are, alongside the empirical findings, a host of theories of offending, which, to varying degrees, draw on individual-level processes, micro-level processes, meso-level processes, and macro-level processes. As it happens, numerous such theories draw connections between both objective and subjective social and economic experiences (unemployment, cultural norms and aspirations, an individual's bond to social institutions, and so on) and the motivation to commit crime, either for expressive or utilitarian reasons. Partly, this neglect of a consideration of *why* people commit crime is due to a general focus in this body of work on *punishment*, rather than crime, and when crime is considered, the focus is on explaining crime *rates*, rather than offending or criminal careers. However, crime rates are aggregates of offending behaviours, and punishment will affect individuals' engagement in crime.

#### *Who (or What) Is Becoming More Punitive?*

Many of the studies we review above also fail to distinguish between punitive social *attitudes* (as held by the public) and *system punitiveness* (that is, the actual operation of the criminal justice system). In this respect, Enns' argument is to be welcomed since his account rests heavily on a distinction between public attitudes and incarceration rates (2016). As Hamilton (2014) notes, empirical studies on punitiveness have tended to either have focused on collecting social attitudinal data, measured at the individual level using surveys to ask respondents their perceptions of various sentences, or, alternatively, have sought to catalogue the levels, lengths or amounts of imprisonment, fines, non-custodial sentences, and so on. As Wenzelburger (2018) may be reactive to political discourse, and may also shape what politicians are prepared to say and argue for), whilst the second (the degree of system punitiveness) reflects the *actualities* of the criminal justice system, rather than the perceptions of the public (many of whom may have had little or no contact with it). As Hamilton also notes, when studying system punitiveness, one ought to use a range of indicators to measure it, such as the use of mandatory sentences; increased police powers and resources; increases in post-prison release and community disposal controls; reductions in the control of police activities; increases in the possible length of prison terms; and limits to the decision-making of the judiciary and parole boards. Ideally one would want to use both measures of punitiveness, yet many rely on one or the other, usually in favour of public attitudes. argues, many studies in this arena rely on imprisonment as their measure of punitiveness. It is our belief that both operationalisations of punitiveness are needed. The first reflects popular opinion (which can be subject to shifts,

#### *Why Focus on the Build-up to a New Act?*

In addition, those studies concerned with the specifics of a crime Act (such as that by Tonry, 2004 (A)) are often concerned with the build-up to and the passing of the legislation itself, with very few concerned with the extent to which such legislation changed things "on the ground." Whilst such debates do provide an insight into politicians' and civil servants' thinking on what was desired, an additional consideration is the *outcomes* which were produced as a result of it. Who is drawn into the justice system, who is pushed away, which groups are treated differently, and so on? Rock (2019a), to be fair, does examine the consequences of a limited number of Acts which shaped the English and Welsh criminal justice system, but the focus is on the criminal justice system, rather than on members of the public.

#### *Whose Experiences Matter Most?*

In Garland's account (2001), the role and experiences of the middle class in the USA and UK were highlighted, without fully recognising that *working class people* were also affected by the changes embarked upon by their countries (perhaps even to a greater extent than those experienced by the middle class). On the other hand, Wacquant and De Giorgi both focus their attention on the working (or lower) classes. This may sound like a small point; however, this distinction points to a variation in whose experiences matter and why they matter. For Wacquant and De Giorgi, the working/lower classes bear the brunt of the drive to punish; for Garland, working class experience matters less. This is strange since it is (often) the working class who are amongst those who are most affected during periods of dramatic change, and who are most victimised, and most likely to become ensnared in the criminal justice system.

#### *To Summarise*

We argue that the accounts offered by these authors have yet to deliver a fully fledged account of the UK's experiences (and perhaps only a partial account of matters in the USA). Garland's account loses detail due to his desire to cover both the USA and the UK, the reliance on the concept of latemodernity (which obscures specific policy considerations), and the absence of individuals (either political leaders or the citizenry itself). Accounts by the likes of Beckett, Barker, Miller, Simon, and Wacquant, on the other hand, really only apply to the USA (or some parts of it, Miller, 2001; Barker, 2009) and either pay little attention to social and welfare policies, or see welfare changes and changes in the justice system as working along the same time frame and with the same drivers, or see social and welfare policies as being *shaped by* changes in the criminal justice system. Some of these factors and causal processes might be true for the USA (or parts of it), but we remain unconvinced that even the British literature (Tony, Annison, Windlesham, Faulkner, and Lacey) really says much about the role of *specific* economic, social, and welfare *policies*, or crime rates/the justice system (although, to be fair, Lacey's theoretical account does build these into her thinking, if not her account of the actual changes experienced). As such, there is currently scant attention paid to the role of welfare and other social policies and their impact on crime in Britain. In addition, very few of these studies employ data which relates to the citizenry. Many of these studies either rely on assessments of broad trends without detailed examination of causal relationships (e.g. Garland, 2001) or adopt a "narrative" style whereby an account of events is given but little attention is paid to formal tests of relationships between variables (e.g. Tonry, 2004). For example, Garland (2001: 85) notes that housing policies changed the nature of social housing estates in the UK, but does not discuss when it happened, why it happened, who was affected, or in what ways they were affected. Whilst these are individually defensible research strategies, the reliance on this type of research methodology robs these studies of the sorts of insights which analyses that are more grounded in empiricism can offer.

**FIGURE 1.14** Proposed Model of Political Changes between Welfare and Punishment Systems

With these observations in mind, we propose a further model which seeks to understand the roles of political ideas and ideologies in shaping economic and social policies, and which then empirically assesses the impact of changes in these on the crime itself, and then the consequences of rising crime on the criminal justice system (in keeping with the above, we represent this as Figure 1.14).

In this model, ideas about the sorts of society we ought to live in (and its economy, social values, and norms) shape both the political discourse and the sorts of goals which systems related to social and economic policies are steered towards achieving. If (which is at times a *big* "if," Marsh and Rhodes, 1992) politicians are able to persuade others of the utility of their ideas and then are able to steer such systems in different directions (towards more welfare generosity, for example, or a different set of economic goals), then we might reasonably expect changes in other outcomes (e.g. in terms of the distribution of resources), and which may increase the risks of individuals engaging in crime. This, if one accepts structural accounts of the causes of crime, ought to be associated with increases in offending by individuals who have been affected by the changes to economic and welfare systems. If the effects of these changes are sufficiently widespread, it will affect crime levels, who is victimised, and so on. In situations in which the impacts of the economic and welfare policy changes fall in a geographically clustered manner, this will also affect the location of "where" crime occurs. These changes, if they are of sufficient magnitude, will provoke calls (both popular and from political and system leadership) for change, which will then see the expenditure of the thinking and energies required to produce such change. So, crime rates can affect political discourse as well as *vice versa*. As such, ideas about the sort of society which is most desirable are key to understanding the sorts of long-term outcomes in the criminal justice system which we observe. This model will not work for every country, since different countries have different "starting points," and the different political structures each has developed enable some countries to change very quickly (so unicameral systems such as New Zealand are able to enact change faster than those countries with second chambers; see Lacey, 2008, more generally), whilst other countries (most notably the USA) prevent leaders from serving more than two terms office, potentially imposing a "breakpoint" in the executive programme. Nevertheless, it is a better starting point than some of the explanations which have been posited previously, and which rely on highly contentious concepts such as late-modernity.

#### **References**

Annison, H. (2015) *Dangerous Politics*. Oxford: OUP.


Weiss, D., Testa, A. and Santos, M. (2020) 'Institutional Anomie and Cross-National Differences in Incarceration', *Criminology*, *58*, 454–484.


Xenakis, S. and Cheliotis, L. K. (2020) *"*The Violence of Inequality: Race and Lobbying in the Politics of Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States".*Tracing the Relationship between Inequality, Crime and Punishment*. Oxford: OUP.


# 2 **LINKING CRIME, POLITICAL LEGACIES, AND THE LIFE-COURSE PERSPECTIVE**

#### **What Is This Book About?**

This book is about legacies. In this instance, it is about legacies produced by the ideas of a group of economists, which were translated into a political movement, which produced a critique of many modern, industrialised societies with complex economies and social welfare systems, which led to changes in the social and economic policies within those societies, and which altered many of the major social institutions and organisations in those countries. We focus on Britain, but there were parallel movements in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and, albeit later, other European nations. This book is also about real people's lives, and how these were changed so as to affect their engagement in crime over their life-courses. In this chapter, we focus on legacies, one particular political ideology (Thatcherism), explanations of macro-level change, and our own theoretical model.

#### **Thatcherism and the 1980s New Right: A View from the 21st Century**

There are, of course, many ways of approaching any "ism." In this respect, Thatcherism is no different from any other social or political movement—there are numerous definitions of it and ways of approaching it, and these shift over time as thinking, theorising, and evidence emerge. In order to understand Thatcherism's place in both British social and political history, one must understand it as part of a wider movement which became known at the time as the New Right.

New Right thinkers argued that state intervention (especially the "big" states which emerged leading up to and after the Second World War) did

#### DOI: 10.4324/9781003328339-3

This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

not work. Any alternative to the market was flawed since the market always "knew best." This critique claimed that government failure was more common than market failure and that citizens' rights were threatened by the state (Gamble, 1988). As the critique grew and developed, it started to incorporate other right-wing critiques of contemporary society, most obviously a social or moral conservativism. As such, the movement became a synthesis of two strands of right-wing philosophy, one which emphasised authority and control (drawing on conservative morality) and the other (drawing on laissezfaire economic theories) which emphasised liberty and individual choice (see Gamble, 1988, Ch. 2, and Hay, 1996, Ch. 7, on the deeper origins of these schools of thought). Common across many of the New Right critiques which emerged in countries like the UK and the USA were the following:


This, in turn, was associated with and underpinned by:

• a view of the role of *Government in Society* which was inherently mistrustful of government (both local and national, and later, supra-national), the welfare state, and which was antithetical towards comprehensive education sentiments, wealth redistribution, and taxation.1

This "Thatcherite instinct" (Riddell, 1991) saw her administrations focused on redrawing the public–private boundary and downscaling the state's role by privatising services which had been in state ownership (Gamble, 1988: 7, 11). This had the effect of removing some decisions from the political realm, promoting the concepts of liberalisation and competition, and reducing the state as an employer. This also made the state start to serve business interests, remodelled the state's operations to mimic those of the private sector, and to reduce the governments' role in providing some services (Leys, 2001: 3). As such, Thatcherism became a synthesis of what became to be known as neo-liberalism and neo-conservativism (Hayes, 1994). This "Thatcherite instinct" was strongest when both ideological positions pointed to the same conclusion (Hay, 1996). Nevertheless, sometimes these positions pointed to different objectives (the Sunday trading laws being the most obvious example). More recent commentators have tended to overlook neo-conservatism in their critiques of modern societies, ignoring the ways in which neo-conservativism shaped responses to crime.

#### **Thinking about When the Outcomes of Thatcherism Emerged**

Since the 1990s, there has been little interest in the Thatcher administrations or their effects (see Jackson and Saunders, 2013 and Farrall and Hay, 2014). What interest there has been has sought to understand her governments' role historically, exploring the impacts of some of their policies over longer time frames (Farrall and Hay, 2014; Hay and Farrall, 2014). Historical analyses (Green, 1999) have suggested that the ideas underpinning "Thatcherism" can be traced back to the 1950s. Nevertheless, it was not until the early 1970s that the critique of the post-war consensus' deficiencies developed a new impetus.

Some saw Thatcherism as an abrupt break from much that went before. This is arguably the "default" approach to this "ism," at least initially. This stance is commonly associated with the early critiques of Thatcherism (Hall and Jacques, 1983; Gourevitch, 1986; Hall, 1986; Krieger, 1986; Kavanagh, 1987; Jenkins, 1988). Over time, however, more continuities started to be identified. Commentators started to highlight the Treasury's post-war embracing of monetary conservatism, the waning commitment to Keynesianism during the 1970s, and the Labour government's adoption of monetarist principles in 1976 (Morgan, 1992; Kenway, 1998; Tomlinson, 1989). Another approach views the first two Thatcher administrations (1979–1987) as being more pragmatic than ideologically driven (Riddell, 1991; Marsh and Rhodes, 1992, 1995). More nuanced still is the approach that sees Thatcherism as radical, but cumulatively so, as key actors learnt how to "translate" Thatcherite goals into substantive policies (Kerr, 2001). The literature on Thatcherism, therefore, has no settled position when it comes to the temporality of Thatcherism and the impacts it is associated with.

Indeed, some see Thatcherism as being of limited impact. Given that social and political change is both incremental and iterative (and may or may not be cumulative), then Thatcherism is best understood as just one influence amongst many. Although the Thatcher governments were able to make profound policy changes (given that they were in power for 11 years, or 18 if one extends this to embrace John Major's period in office), they were no more or less able to produce radical change than any other administration. As such, it is incorrect to believe that Thatcherism *resulted in* political, social, and economic change since it was as much *a part of* those changes as it was a cause of them. Few authors articulate this position, although Kerr and Marsh (1999) come closest to doing so. They argue that analysts have *assumed* that more social and political change took place than actually *did*. Consequently, Thatcherism and the period from 1979 to 1990 (or 1997) was no different (in terms of the degree of radicalism) as any other period.

A different approach, which is perhaps best thought of as the "established narrative," sees society and politics as being "punctuated" with periods of change. These periods of punctuation interrupt relatively long periods of "stability." So, the story goes, the post-war consensus started to be challenged after 30–35 years, by an abrupt period of transformation (that is, by Thatcherism). Thatcherism is thus seen as a radical intervention which produced a change in the existing paradigm. Kerr (2001: 17, 211) presents this as the dominant view of recent British political history (to be found in Hall's 1992 work on British macroeconomic policy since the mid-1970s). This approach views Thatcher's 1979 election in the wider context of a crisis in the state and its ability to govern the economy and suits a discursive and/ or rhetorical approach to Thatcherism.

Akin to the above, albeit focused on a periodisation of the substantive impact of Thatcherism on the institutions and structures of the state and economy and its policies, Heffernan argues that Thatcherism was radical from the outset. Drawing on New Right critiques and policy agenda, both Thatcher and Major pursued a coherent, radical political agenda (2000: viii). For Heffernan, Thatcherism was "a project" which was driven by conviction, even if, at times, one which struggled to find implementation straightforward. Despite this, it was not a fully developed "programme" planned in advance (2000: 31–37), rather it deployed its instincts and progressed incrementally. For Heffernan, the origin of the radical break which Thatcherism represents is a result of the duration of the Conservatives' period in office (rather than any abrupt transformation starting in 1979, 2000: 39–46). Furthermore, radicalism was not to be found in every aspect of Thatcherite policymaking; indeed, caution was exercised between 1981 and 1983 in the expectation of impending electoral defeat. The result was that the legislative programme for 1983–1987 was far less radical than many Thatcherites would have liked, provoking them into viewing the second term of office as a missed opportunity (Heffernan, 2000: 43).

Kerr's view of the unfolding of Thatcherism is not very different from Heffernan's. Kerr (2001) sees the Major and Blair governments as Thatcherite inheritors (cf. Jenkins, 2007). This approach highlights the evolutionary, incremental, and cumulative nature of Thatcherism and recognises the many legacies Thatcherism bequeathed to her successors. For Heffernan, the Thatcherite settlement has replaced the post-war settlement (2000: 178).

#### **Thatcherism: Developing an Impact Perspective**

Marsh and Rhodes' splendid *Implementing Thatcherite Policies* (1992) was a significant advance on the earlier literature on Thatcherism. Unlike other collections of essays on Thatcherism, the Marsh and Rhodes' collection gave considerable attention to the ways in which Thatcherite policies were implemented (or not). As they noted (Marsh and Rhodes, 1992: 2–3), the existing literature was deficient since although the first term (1979–1983) was well covered, the second term (1983–1987) was less well covered, and the third term (1987–1990) had not had time to be assessed. They noted that issues of implementation had not been thoroughly or consistently explored in prior collections, and reflecting on this, they noted that:

There is an unambiguous tendency to overstate the Thatcher effect because the contributions [in other collections] concentrate upon *legislative change* rather than upon *changes in policy outcomes*.

(emphasis added, 1992: 3)

To this one could add that, at the time, the policy changes might not yet have had the chance to produce substantive outcomes either since many of the windows for the assessment of policy changes had been so short. In effect, the insights afforded by a consideration of the *longue durée* were (necessarily) absent. Furthermore, the existing literature on such matters had tended to "silo" policy domains. Few consider the "knock-on" effects of policy changes in one arena for another policy arena.

Against the above (and contextualised within what follows), our investigations into the legacies of Thatcherite social and economic policies have aimed to assess these policies in ways which bring out their long-term impacts and which transcend the period and the social and economic contexts in which they were initiated. Radical governments that remain in power for considerable periods of time can produce outcomes which "ripple" through society, causing lasting change which affects future generations and setting in motion cascading chains of events which were unanticipated at the outset. We have explored these processes, charting the ways in which the 1980s' radical right's policies relating to the economy, housing, and social security produced unintended consequences for subsequent generations' engagement in crime and changes in the way the criminal justice system operated. This project has required us to think about levels and speeds of explanation, how best to explain the change, what legacies "are," "look like" and are produced, and to engage with work on the life-course. Below we outline our thinking on these matters.

#### **Thinking about Levels of Explanation**

When trying to explain social and economic phenomena, analysts must make decisions about the level (or levels) of explanation at which they wish to work. In some cases, the individual level is sufficient. In, say, a study of the decision-making of burglars, this might be approached by asking burglars why they chose one house over another. Alternatively, if one was trying to explain why it is that some parts of a particular city are burgled more than others, one might wish to work at a meso level and to explore the recent economic fortunes of that part of the city. If one were instead thinking about why there were growing numbers of burglars in prison, one may wish to look at national-level sentencing policies, acts of parliament, and so on.

Of course, this trichotomy is in many respects a false one. The reasons why burglaries increase have been associated with levels of unemployment and economic need. Hence, the very individuals and their decisions about which house to steal from is partly a function of economic conditions. Similarly, the number of people selling heroin in an area is partly a function of how many people want to buy such drugs in that area, and the much wider availability of alternative forms of income (be that legal or illegal). Given that periods of imprisonment disrupt legitimate employment careers, the number of those who have little option but to deal in drugs is partly also a function of economic processes (driving them and others out of the local economy) and penal policies (which may operate to make some individuals less likely to be recruited by employers looking for those with reputable pasts and the requisite skills). So these different "levels" collapse down on each other when we start to think about both causes and the causes of causes. Nevertheless, they provide a useful way of structuring one's enquiries and are an aid to interpretation.

#### **What Is "a Legacy"?**

A legacy is a trace *in* the present *of* the past. However, it is usually treated as the trace of something *specific*—an event, a process, the interventions of an actor or actors, an "ism," for example. The analyst has to prove that the effect has to have been caused by the thing itself and would not have happened in the absence of that cause. The claim that such an event, action, or "ism" has a legacy is a *causal* claim.

Wittenburg (2015) argues that there is little consensus as to how legacies have been conceptualised. Reviewing the literature on post-communist states, he argues that for *B* to be described as a legacy of *A*, a number of components need to be shown to exist. The first is *B* itself. The second is *A* (the antecedent to *B*). The third component is the causal mechanism, which needs to explain how *A* caused *B*. It follows therefore that *B* is the legacy to be explained. *B* only qualifies as a legacy if it cannot be fully explained without reference to *A*. Wittenburg argues (2015: 369) that *B* only qualifies as a legacy of *A* if *A* had ceased to exist some time prior to *B* emerging. This reminds us that the claim to the existence of a legacy is a form of counterfactual. In the absence of *A* to which *B* is attributed, things would have turned out differently. The difference between the way things turned out and the way things would otherwise have turned out (*B*) is the legacy (of *A*). We return to this point below when discussing Figure 2.1.

**FIGURE 2.1** The Temporal Impact of Ideas and Policies on Crime over the Life-Course

In terms of the ways in which the concept of a legacy has been operationalised, Farrall et al (2020) found a range of processes and outcomes used, although no one author used all in their studies. The following are the key ones for us, in the context of this project:


With regard to the impact of both legislation and the policies which it motivates, these can be approached in various ways. The first of these relates to the *behaviours* of key social actors (including citizens and communities). Do those in positions of power change their behaviours? Are the behaviours of citizens affected? Further, the legacy may also be conceptualised in terms of the *distribution* of resources in society. Did the policies change the access to key resources for some in society? How did this alter the distribution of power and resources both immediately and subsequently? Assessments of the impact of legislation and policies are therefore required.


number of ways. One way is via the discursive creation of a new "type" of politician; a politician who is a "strong leader," who "knows their own mind," and has a vision of what has to be. By adopting that style of leadership, a politician may create a template for others to copy in their own pursuit of success. Additionally, a politician's policies may create the conditions for the emergence of new social groups. Examples might include "yuppies" and "dole-cheats" during the 1980s, or Blair's focus on "persistent young offenders" in the 1990s.

The above are some of the ways in which a legacy, be it of a political actor, movement, or set of ideas), may be approached for use in an empirical study. Additionally, one also needs to bear the following in mind:


reducing social security spending initially failed. However, this provoked changes to the social security system, making it less generous and bringing down the total welfare spend. Quite careful process tracing needs to be undertaken to make full assessments of a government's legacy, therefore.

• Radicalism might produce more easily detectable legacies: Since radicalism represents a greater degree of change from the previous set of arrangements, a legacy may be more readily detected when the impacts they produce are more radical or innovative. This is because of their tendency to make clearer structural breaks with the past, meaning that the causal chains of influence may be shorter (simply because the new policies are so different from what went before). This needs to be borne in mind since it raises important questions about how one detects "non-" or simply *less* radical legacies. Less radical policies may have their causal roots in processes which stretch years or decades back, making claims of such policies belonging to a particular politician's period in office harder to substantiate. Nevertheless, it may be that a non-radical politician *did* indeed have a legacy in terms of reinforcing and/or extending existing policies (to new social groups or to new problems or policy fields). A further way in which a non-radical political legacy may be produced is in relation to a threat from a radical set of policies which the non-radical politician successfully resists. In this sense the survival of the existing paradigm when threatened *is* a legacy; had their resistance failed, the policy agenda may have shifted direction.

#### **Life-Course Criminology and Political Change**

Whilst life-course criminology has focused on institutions (families, schools, employers, and communities) and governments, the policies which they pursue have not received much attention at all. The role of welfare regimes, social and economic policies, and the immediate and longer term impacts of these have been missing from our accounts of criminal careers. We will show that the policy choices made by politicians can shape offending careers "downstream." Since the focus of our work has been on the effects of one particular UK government on lives and life-courses, the framework we adopt relies heavily on historical political science, with ideas drawn from historical institutional thinking (Pierson, 2004) and constructivist institutionalism (Blyth, 2002; Hay, 2011), combining these bodies of work with existing theorising from the life-course perspective.

#### *Outlining the Life-Course Perspective*

The life-course perspective has had a dramatic impact upon criminology since the early 1990s. A very large part of contemporary criminal careers research's theoretical apparatus is derived from the work of life-course scholars (e.g. Giele and Elder, 1998; Elder and Pellerin, 1998; Dannefer, 2003; Ferraro and Shippee, 2009). A key aim of this approach has been to tease out the relationships between macro-level social and economic structures, changes in these, and the lives of individuals and communities. The life-course perspective is best understood as an attempt to understand "pathways through the age differentiated life span" with an appreciation that the wider world will "impinge on decision processes and the course of events that give shape to life stages, transitions and turning points" (Elder, 1985: 17). Two concepts are central to this perspective. The concept of the "trajectory" refers to a line of development over the life-course (e.g. an employment career). The concept of a "transition" refers to events (e.g. first job, promotion, and so on) which exist within a trajectory. As Elder et al note, rapid social change has the ability to affect the timing and sequence of events in transitions to adulthood (1993: 10), writing that "social-contextual factors have an important impact on the operation of non-social processes" (1993: 11).

Of course, individual people move from being children to leaving the parental home, forming partnerships, rearing their own children, and surviving into old age. As these are not strictly age-defined, the typicality of any form of such cycle has waxed and waned (as the age of marriage, age at first childbirth, and rates of stepfamilies have fluctuated). As individuals exert agency, the combination of people and wider social structures brings forth the possibility of what Elder and Giele (2009: 10) refer to as a "loose-coupling" between age-graded life-courses and individual choice. Norms exist, but individuals are able to depart from them or adapt them to suit their own circumstances. This highlights the extent to which variations in the timing and sequence of life-course events may produce substantive differences in outcomes (or be the result of other differences). Similarly, a lot of attention has been devoted to the idea of timings and to different types of "time." Alwin, for example, distinguishes between historical time (the era in which one lives) and biographical time (the life-course of the individual concerned, 1995: 225) and shows how they may interact. Meanwhile, Elder (1995: 114) introduces the concept of social timing (the duration, incidence, and sequence of age-related expectations and beliefs).

To fully understand people's lives, and to recognise that individuals do not exist in isolation, in that they are embedded in much wider social contexts and relationships, it is important that they are located in specific historical contexts (Elder and Giele, 2009: 9). This focus on wider social and economic structures in this body of work (e.g. Elder, 1995; Antonucci and Aikyama, 1995; Moen and Hernandez, 2009) highlights the ways in which individuals' lives are linked to one another. The events and long-term trajectories in the lives of parents may alter their children's life-courses. Individuals within a family form a "social convoy" (Antonucci and Aikyama, 1995) who move through time together. Similarly, fluctuations in an individual's resources become not just drivers of transitions or turning points in their lives, but also in the lives of their dependents (Moen and Hernandez, 2009: 259). A parent's loss of work will affect their children's lives, and perhaps life-courses too. Of course, the concept of a social convoy can be extended away from family members; school classmates, acquaintances, loosely engaged strangers, and so on can also be considered potential members of such convoys. If an individual's social network is affected by, for example, the widespread loss of work, this social convoy may develop lasting and shared feelings of anomie.

#### *Critiquing Life-Course Criminology*

One limitation of criminal careers research is that cohort studies are often based in one location, recruiting their respondents from one place (a whole city, town, county, or parts of these). The problem with such designs is that they do not allow for social and economic changes which affect different parts of the same country in different ways. Although the locations in which the data were collected are often not mono-cultural, they are spatially invariant at the macro level. This means that the impacts of social and economic changes which do *not* fall evenly within a country are not easily available for analysis. Given the different geographical fortunes of Britain during the 1980s, we wanted to explore the impact of Thatcherite economic policies on the life-courses and offending careers of British citizens in such a way that macro-level variables may be tested as the causal antecedents of offending.

A further limitation is that almost all studies of criminal careers are unimodal, in that they rely on one cohort of individuals. Such designs are able to detect changes at the individual level (which can be aggregated up to the subgroup level) over time as individuals age, but are not able to identify changes between different cohorts of individuals. In other words, such uni-modal designs tend to reinforce individual-level (albeit it age-graded) changes, rather than wider issues relating to social and economic change, and included in that, changes in social and economic policies.

In addition to this, it remains the case that much of the quantitative criminal careers research has tended to tackle the causal processes of offending in a largely individualised manner. This ranges from an emphasis on individuallevel processes (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990) to individual-institutional interactions (Merton, 1938; Hirschi, 1969) although more ecological models do exist (Shaw and McKay, 1942). Sampson observed that society and the idea of social change was one of the key elements which was missing from current research on criminal careers (2015: 278–279). Similar observations about lifecourse research have been made by others outwith criminology. Mayer, for example, noted that the "unravelling of the impacts of institutional contexts and social processes … on life-courses has hardly begun" (2009: 426), adding

we know next to nothing about how the internal dynamics of life-courses and the interaction of developmental and social components of the life-course vary and how they are shaped by the macro contexts of institutions and social policies.

Thus, whilst life-course criminology has meticulously focused on *some* institutions (families, schools, employers, and communities), others have not received very much attention at all. We wanted to "insert" some of these institutional arrangements, such as the discourses and policies which surround and flow from political parties and governance structures, and the ideas about "the family," education, and the economy which they promote into criminal careers research. Our reasons for wishing to do so are that this lacuna in criminological research means that we reproduce constructions and discourses relating to offenders which are inherently pathologising, and which fail to consider the ways in which macro-level political and economic processes and policies may shape individual life-courses and their engagement in crime. The wider political, economic, and social processes which are implicated in the onset of offender careers and which sustain involvement in crime are currently excluded from criminological theorising.

Work conducted by Carlen and colleagues (Carlen, 1992; Carlen et al, 1992; Gleeson, 1994) explored the role of policymaking and political discourses in truancy. They showed that there were *structural* causes of truancy, a corrective to the common focus on *individual-level* failings. Gleeson noted that

The danger is that behaviouralist explanations, which purport to explain truancy in psychological terms, do little more than pathologise such stereotypes, fixing them in popular myth.

(1994: 16)

Indeed, the overall message from this body of work was that psychological and behaviouralist explanations ignore "the political, economic and educational consequences of government policy which *condition* such behaviour" (Gleeson, 1994: 16). Their work highlighted that previous research on truancy had downplayed the effects of recession, unemployment rates, and social security cuts on the labour market, communities, schools, parents, and pupils. Herein, we seek to illuminate the wider background and social-structural causes which motivate and encourage offending. As such, our contribution to criminal careers research, built on the insights developed by others, is to re-emphasise the structural processes *along with* the individual-level factors.

#### **Drawing upon Historical and Constructivist Institutionalisms**

Historical institutionalism is concerned with illuminating how institutions and their settings and working practices mediate how processes unfold over time (Thelen and Steinmo, 1992: 2). For Hall, an institution is "…the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individuals in various units of the polity and economy" (1986: 19). Ikenberry focuses on the state, government institutions, and social norms (1988: 222–223). Sanders argues that "the place to look for answers to big questions … is in institutions, not personalities and over the longer landscapes of history, not the here and now" (2006: 53). In short, causal processes and influences can be "slow-moving" (Pierson, 2004: 13). As Pierson argues, "many of the implications of political decisions … only play out in the long term" (2004: 41). Historical institutionalism is key for us due to its ability to assist in explaining how a sequence of events occurring at an earlier point can shape long-term outcomes. Path dependence, for example, refers to a dynamic process which involves a positive feedback and generates a series of further outcomes depending on the sequence in which these events and processes occur (Pierson, 2004: 20). Whilst historical institutionalists' work has operated at the national level, it is easy to see how it could be extended to the individual level; individuals' pathways can be interrupted and shaped by events far beyond their control and can tend to become harder to move away from as time progresses, through processes of labelling (Goffman, 1959), or the adoption of position-practices (Giddens, 1984) which are hard to "unlearn" or to use in adaptive ways.

Another body of "institutionalist" thinking we drew upon was inspired by Hall's ideationally sensitive approach (1992). "Constructivist" institutionalism argues that historical institutionalism had downplayed the role of ideas in shaping political outcomes (Ross, 2011; Hay, 2011). In short, ideas also influence institutional processes, forcing us to recognise the concept of *ideational* path-dependence (alongside *institutional* path-dependence). Blyth (2002: 15) argues that "ideas give substance to interests and determine the form and content of new institutions." In this way, and akin to theories of the middle range in sociology (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Mouzelis, 2008), actors are viewed as being active (Hay, 2011: 71) in that they express ideas about how something ought to be. This begs these questions:


Herein we provide answers to all of the above.

#### **Understanding Individual Life-Courses, Political Change, and Crime**

Our theoretical approach, as outlined above, drew upon the life-course perspective, an understanding of the ideological and policy aims of the Thatcher governments, and (inspired by historical and constructivist institutionalisms) sought to explore how social and economic policies affected the lives and lifecourses of Britons growing up in the 1980s. Our aim was to apply some of the awareness of policy outcomes at the national level to individual life-courses, keeping in mind the fact that different individuals' life-courses can be affected differently due to their age at the point the policy is enacted, the timing of the changes brought about, variations in the geographical area the individual lives in, and the decisions taken by others (in this case, often their parents).

Recall from our discussion above relating to the nature of a legacy, that we argued that for *B* to be the legacy of *A*, the outcomes associated with *B* would have been different had *A* not existed. We argue that one way of assessing if an outcome (*B*) exists is to compare the life-courses of individual citizens born at different times. In other words, to undertake a multi-cohort study of livecourses. If an earlier cohort's life experiences in the period *prior* to *A* are (1) different from those of a *subsequent* cohort, and (2) if the changes observed are in keeping with theoretical expectations relating to *A*, then these changes can be taken as *prima facie* evidence of the existence of a legacy of *A*. Hence, in our study, we employ data from two cohorts of people living in Britain, whose lives were separated by only a few years (and supported by other trend data derived from repeated cross-sectional data sets and official data).

This framework is shown in Figure 2.1. For simplicity, we focus on just two birth cohorts and show how political ideas (developed and expressed when the individuals in Cohort 1 were very young) may have produced legislation and policies which came into force in their 20s and 30s (Box 1). This is, as it happens, a key way of assessing the extent to which the legacy of an earlier input may exist. Due to timing, these policies did not affect the number of people in Cohort 1 who offended. The same legislation and policies, however, did affect the offending of Cohort 2 (Box 2, who were born 15 years later). As Box 3 states, if the ideas are shown to have shaped policies, and these policies can be used to explain the important differences in the criminal careers of Cohort 1 and Cohort 2, then one can conclude that ideologically induced policy changes shaped their respective offending trajectories (intercohort effects). Due to the variations within any birth cohort relating to gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and geographical location, it might be that intra-cohort effects can also be detected.

#### **Our Model of Crime, Politics, and Socio-Economic Change**

The above is our model for examining individual-level variations in lifecourses. However, it needs to be understood with our model of the relationship between crime rates, politics, and socio-economic change at the macro

**FIGURE 2.2** Feedback between Initial Changes at Time *t* = 1 and Subsequent Policy Options

level (where we ignore the impacts on individuals). The model is illustrated in Figure 2.2. It suggests that long-term social and economic change (namely deindustrialisation) promotes rises in crime and affects the priorities of political parties and the wider public, each of whom become aware of rising crime rates. With the election of the Thatcher government in 1979, there were changes in the distribution of wealth and social and economic structures in Britain (Thompson, 2014). Given that levels of crime are, in part, the consequence of wider social, economic, and political structures, the model suggests that, consistent with the literature, changes in social and economic structure contribute to changes in levels, forms, and experiences of crime and victimisation (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1994). This in turn leads to the politicisation of crime and creates pressure for government action and new policies. In response, such socio-economic forces can lead, over extended periods of time, to calls for new ways of tackling and dealing with crime and its perceived causes. In this respect, changes in social and economic policies (even those *not* directly related to crime) may result in underlying changes in behaviour which create further pressure for government attention and action. There is a complex feedback process where the consequences of public policies in one domain can have subsequent effects on society and policy in another (see Figure 2.2).

Our model, based on theories of agenda-setting and policy change, provides a means for explaining the rise in crime *and* the rise of the criminal justice agenda after the 1980s. We argue that there was a complex interaction between society, the economy, policy, and politics along the following lines: taking office in 1979, the Conservatives responded to growing pressures for economic and social reform which had emerged during the 1970s. This meant the adoption of neo-liberal macroeconomic policies (Tomlinson 1990; Crafts, 1991; Fieldhouse, 1995). Some aspects of their policies, however, served to prolong the economic hardship and hasten deindustrialisation. Subsequently, their social policies cascaded through other branches of state activity (Hay and Farrall, 2011), most notably (from our perspective) on housing and social security. This programme of intervention resulted in increases in unemployment and inequality. Accordingly, these policies impacted crime rates, which contributed to production of a further policy problem (crime, which was becoming evident from public surveys).

However, there was initially limited government action on crime (there being other priorities to focus on). Eventually, however, increased political attention was given to crime as evidenced by the Queen's Speech (Farrall and Jennings, 2012). Crime became politicised as political parties developed their policies to tackle it, with inner-city riots and prison disorder fuelling concerns. As such, the economic policies emerging from the economic crises of the 1970s (at time *t* = 1) had effects on society and the economy (at *t* = 2) which in turn affected crime rates (at *t* = 3) and which meant that crime later became a focus of further political and government attention (at *t* = 4).

These processes, starting with economic restructuring, occurred over the period of three decades, starting prior to the election of the Conservative government in 1979 and continuing into New Labour's period in office (1997– 2010). Thatcherite legacies in law and order were sustained in the long term more through their *continuing influence* over New Labour's policies, especially their "tough" stance on criminal justice.

#### **Note**

1 On Thatcherite and New Right attitudes and values, see Farrall et al (2022); Crewe (1988); Crewe and Searing (1988); Gamble (1988); Hay (1996); Hayes (1994); Levitas (1986); and Russell et al. (1992).

#### **References**


# 3 **THATCHERISM AND THE RESHAPING OF POLICY CONSENSUS IN BRITAIN (1979–1997)**

#### **Introduction**

One of the puzzles of Thatcherism revolves around its relationship to matters of crime and criminal justice. How can we explain the "late onset" (in the early 1990s) of the radical right in this policy field (Newburn, 2007)? After all, the 1979 General Election saw the politicisation of "law and order" by the Tories (Downes and Morgan, 2007: 201). Indeed, Margaret Thatcher herself, as the following quotes testify, was not one to shy away from making sweeping judgments about crime and its causes. Riddell reports that she blamed social workers for creating "a fog of excuses in which the muggers and burglars operate" (1989: 171). He also notes her references to "Safety on the streets" (1985: 193). Others have noted her desire to "never … economise on law and order" (Savage, 1990: 91), and it must be remembered that she voted to bring back capital punishment. And yet, as others have noted, it is hard to characterise the Thatcherite period as being especially tough on law and order (Loader, 2006: 577). Indeed, whilst the Thatcher governments were rhetorically punitive from (and before) 1979, little of this was wholly reflected in substantive policy commitments. Why was this? Why were the topics of crime and criminal justice (such an important touchstone for governments in the period after the late 1990s) simply left to "wait their turn"?

This chapter provides an answer to that question. In so doing, it also provides insights into the wider thrust of government policy from 1979 to 1997 and shows how New Right radicalism "issue-hopped," moving from one policy concern to another, sometimes returning to an issue if needed. This also provides an overview of the key areas of substantive policy which we will touch upon in subsequent chapters when discussing policies relating to

#### DOI: 10.4324/9781003328339-4

This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

the economy, housing, social security, schools, and, lastly, naturally, crime and criminal justice. In a nutshell, our argument is that Thatcherite radicalism "cascaded" from topic to topic and needed to attend to the spillover effects of earlier policies in one domain on subsequent domains.

#### **The Temporal Ordering of Thatcherite Policymaking**

To what extent can one extract a "Thatcherite project" from within the various policy arenas mentioned above? It is certainly easy to identify what we referred to as a "Thatcherite instinct" (Chapter 1). But how, and in what order, was this implemented? Initially, policies were aimed at freeing citizens from the over-burdensome state. This means that wage restraints were removed, economic policy rethought, and public housing made available for purchase, for example. There were further attempts to reduce public spending (such as the moves to no longer financially support manufacturing, the efforts to reduce the generosity of or limit the availability of social security, and the ban on the building of new public housing). These were the policy arenas most closely implicated in New Right critiques of the UK's problems, and those most closely associated with the construction of the crisis of the late 1970s, and on which Thatcher's electoral appeal was based (Hay, 1996). Other, not unrelated, early policies included promoting entrepreneurialism through tax cuts to higher earners, and the deregulation of utilities. From the late 1980s, the idea of "choice" emerged onto the agenda (especially as it applied to education, but also in relation to healthcare).

One can, from an overview of this body of legislation, identify two levels of periodisation. The first is the one which political scientists such as Kerr (2001) and sociologists such as Hall (1992) and Jessop et al (1988) operate at the level of the project as a whole. These attempts to periodise Thatcherism into phases are all-encompassing. Another, and we feel, more useful periodisation can be distilled from the level of specific policy domains (Farrall and Hay, 2010; Hay and Farrall, 2011). The first of these, operating at the macro level, often tells a narrative of accumulating contradictions within the post-war consensus, leading to a crisis with it, which in turn produces a critique and a subsequent paradigm shift (in this case Thatcherism). Following this, there are periods of consolidation and attempts to address unintended consequences. However, the beauty of these periodisations (their simplicity) is also their greatest weakness. We argue (following Hay and Farrall, 2011) that it is far more useful to approach the issue of periodisation at the level of individual policy domains, for this helps to explain the phasing of radicalism and brings to the fore the reasons why some domains (such as criminal justice) were left until later.

This makes intuitive sense too, since parties are elected into office on the basis of a handful of topics which demand action. Think of Blair's slogans "education, education, education" and "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" or Johnson's "let's get Brexit done" mantra. As such, certain policies are *primus inter pares* when it comes to legislative agenda and implementation. This was true also for Thatcher, for having constructed a critique of the UK based on economic (mis)management and "the nanny state," on assuming power in 1979 needed to act quickly on the economy, industrial relations, social security and, albeit it is for slightly different reasons, housing.

Before we turn to the analyses of each policy domain, it is important to contextualise how Thatcher's period in office operated with a series of basic observations. It is impossible to overlook the infighting within the Tory party, especially during her first term of office. Thatcher, it is claimed, was elected leader solely because some in the party wanted to give Heath a "bloody nose." As such, her support base was very weak, initially. The first term of her leadership saw her fighting to establish her ideas. As well as this, she had to fight off rearguard actions from the paternal/Heathite wing of the party. Her weak position (there were constant plans to depose her, see Gilmour, 1992) meant that she needed to act with caution. In addition, one needs to recognise that the "old order" will persist, at least initially, and at least in some areas. Indeed, we can observe this for Thatcher's early time in office: the welfare state expanded and education policies largely remained as they had been for some time. Let us turn now to a consideration of what are, for us, the key policy arenas for both Thatcherism and our understanding of why criminal justice was left so late.

#### *Economic Policy*

The context for the election of Thatcher in May 1979 was the economic crisis, which culminated in the winter of 1978–1979 (Hay, 2009). The electorate's perception that the Conservatives offered a credible alternative to the (perceived) failings of the economic orthodoxy was crucial to Thatcher's victory. *The Right Approach to the Economy* (Conservative Party, 1977) outlined the Conservative's economic policies (Pratten, 1987: 72), distancing them from the Keynesian economic orthodoxy and promoting a new macroeconomic paradigm (monetarism). However, the policy implications of this new paradigm were unclear, and the 1979 party Manifesto, whilst citing monetarism as the solution to stagflation, barely mentioned privatisation (Brittan, 1989: 6).

Throughout much of the 1970s, the UK faced considerable economic difficulties. The inflation rate, which started at around 7% in 1972, reached 24% in 1975 (Hay, 2009: 551), and in 1979 inflation stood at 10% (Jackson, 1992: 25), rising (1980–1981) to a peak of around 20% (Brittan, 1989: 20), the consequence of monetarist policy failing to have an immediate impact and of abandoning Labour's policies of wage restraint (Thompson, 1996: 169). From 1979 to 1980, macroeconomic policy monetarist focused on control of the money supply (Thompson, 1996: 167), but 1979–1982 also saw increases in government spending, due to steeply rising unemployment (Dunn and Smith, 1990: 30).

Unemployment rates fared a little better (despite a drop in 1973–1974 to 3%) and stabilised around 5% for the period from 1976 to 1979 (Thompson, 2014: 45). The breakdown of the relationship between unemployment and inflation led British governments to retreat from Keynesian fiscal policies and focus upon monetarist policies and the welfare retrenchment associated with these (Tomlinson, 1990). In addition, the UK borrowed \$3.9 billion from the IMF in 1976, resulting in cuts in education budgets (Gleeson, 1994). Declining real wages from 1975 to 1978 and widespread strikes culminated in the so-called "Winter of Discontent" in 1978–1979 (Hay, 2009: 549). The dramatic rise in unemployment fuelled rises in crime (Farrall and Jennings, 2012; Jennings et al, 2012). Then, between early 1983 and late 1986, monetarism was slowly abandoned (Jackson, 1992: 17). After the 1983 General Election, the idea of privatisation became the key policy (Dunn and Smith, 1990: 37–38), and the Government took no effort to support the manufacturing sector (Thompson, 1996: 171). In 1985 there was an expansion of credit availability, with North Sea Oil and revenues from privatisation being used to pay for tax cuts in 1986, 1987, and 1988 (Thompson, 1996: 171). These were estimated to be worth £8 billion (Jackson, 1992: 28). Budgets in the late 1980s reduced personal taxation, benefiting the better off (Mullard, 1992: 262), boosting disposable income, and nurturing the "feel good" factor.

Towards the end of 1989, Lawson resigned as Chancellor. The economy was experiencing rampant increases in inflation (Jay, 1994: 172), and true to its neo-monetarist commitments, the government's policy was to control inflation through monetary policy (Mullard, 1992: 271). There then followed a recession (in the second half of 1990, lasting into the first half of 1991, Jay, 1994: 169), by which time Thatcher had left office. The UK was ejected from the ERM in September 1992, leaving the government without a clear macroeconomic policy, leading it back to orthodox monetarist thinking and policies (Thompson, 1996: 178). In effect, 1992–1993 saw a return to 1983– 1985 policies. Major fired Lamont as Chancellor in May 1993 and replaced him with Clarke, who tightened fiscal policy and cut public spending (in keeping with monetarist thinking).

The implications of these policies for social inequality and crime were pronounced. Throughout the post-war period, the distribution of wealth in the UK had been more equal (Atkinson, 2000: 364–365). From 1979 this was to change; in the first half of the 1980s, widening inequality was mainly due to rising unemployment. However, during the late 1980s, it was a more direct consequence of government policy (Atkinson, 2000: 365). Jennings et al (2012) show that between 1950 and 2006 both the unemployment rate and income inequality were increasingly associated with the rate of property crime. In sum, the Thatcher governments were immediately radical in economic policy (and indeed, needed to be so, since they had come to power claiming to offer a distinctive solution to a crisis). The consequences of those policies were an increase in unemployment, social inequality, and social polarisation that were reflected in subsequent rises in crime.

#### *Housing Policy*

The 1979 election brought about a dramatic change in housing policy. This saw the sales of council houses promoted along with a concerted attempt to extend home ownership (Kemp, 1992: 65). This has been seen by some as an attempt to extend the party's electoral base into the respectable working classes (Hay, 1992). The right to buy one's council house was extended by the 1980 Housing Act and resulted in a rise in home ownership from 55% in 1979 to 64% in 1987 (Monk and Kleinman, 1989: 126–127). Following a burst of sales (1980–1981), the number of council house sales began to fall (Kemp, 1992: 68), prompting further discounts in 1984 and 1986. Thatcher's third term focused on the privatisation of rented housing (Kemp, 1992: 65–66). The 1988 Housing Act transferred council houses to housing associations. It was around this time that changes to other aspects of the welfare state started to impact housing. The 1988 Social Security Act has been cited as increasing homelessness amongst 16- to 18-year-olds (Atkinson and Durden, 1994: 196), increasing demand for accommodation just when the housing system was less able to cope with extra demands. By 1990, the discounts being offered to council tenants to buy their homes reached 53%, and accelerated the polarisation of council tenants and the council housing stock (Kemp, 1992: 76), resulting in the "ghettoisation" of some inner city estates. These became places with high turnover rates, transient populations, elevated unemployment rates, and widening social inequality (Murie, 1997: 28).

Like economic policy, housing policy was immediately radicalised, albeit for different reasons. Whilst economic policy was radicalised in order to tackle a structural problem, housing policy was altered to the mobilisation of a cross-class electoral base which, having becoming homeowners, it was hoped would be more likely to vote Conservative. The radicalism in this policy domain was part of a strategy to consolidate Thatcherism's electoral base. This produced significant and spillover effects since coupled with the 1985 Housing Act's requirement that local councils house homeless people and the impacts of the 1988 Social Security Act, the right to buy saw disadvantaged members of society corralled together in estates in which low-level antisocial behaviour and crime became commonplace. This too would become an important driver of the radicalisation of criminal justice policy.

#### *Social Security Policy*

The rise in the number of people claiming benefits during the 1970s (which had been expected to fall) saw concerns that the social security system would collapse (Hill, 1994: 242). Heath's government tried to target rent support to low income families (Hill, 1994: 243), whilst the subsequent Labour government undertook a DHSS Internal Review (1976), leading to the reform of supplementary benefits in the 1980 Social Security Act (Hill, 1994: 246). There was, in fact, considerable continuity in policy in this area as the early Thatcher government lacked a clear vision of what to do about social security (McGlone, 1990: 160). They remained convinced that benefits had become too generous (Pierson, 1996: 215). So, whilst there was a clear Thatcherite instinct, there was no clear sense of how to embark upon a radicalised reform agenda.

In line with their commitment to reduce benefits, the Tories altered the "up-rating rule" (which ensured that benefits kept pace with the cost of living), linking benefits to rises in prices, not earnings (Walker, 1990: 34), which slowly reduced the value of welfare payments (Howard, 1997: 93), contributing further to widening inequalities. The DHSS produced new regulations (in 1983) which placed limits on payments relating to board and lodging (McGlone, 1990: 162), resulting in a freeze on all board and lodging payments, followed by restrictions on benefits for unemployed people under 25 years. Such individuals would need to move every 2–8 weeks to be eligible for payments. This drove up a number of young homeless people (McGlone, 1990: 162), who became trapped in criminogenic circumstances (Carlen, 1996). Further developments saw Housing Benefit cut and earnings related short-term benefits abolished (Hill, 1999), which created a poverty trap (Hill, 1994: 248). In April 1984 Fowler announced a comprehensive review of social security spending, which was published in 1985, and which argued for reform of the benefit system, resulting in the 1986 Social Security Act.

During the third term, a more radical stage of changes emerged, which saw a conscious effort to break with past policies (Pierson, 1996: 203–206). The 1986 Act has been seen (Hill, 1994: 247) as backlash against the generosity of the 1980 (No 1) Act. Claimants aged 16–17 lost the right to income support under the Youth Training Scheme in 1986 and those aged 18–24 were reduced (Hill, 1994: 248). From 1987 to 1991, Child Benefit was frozen, whilst the 1986 Social Security Act cut Housing Benefit eligibility, reducing claimants by 10% between February and May 1988 (McGlone, 1990: 168). Changes to the rules also meant that fewer people were eligible for unemployment benefits (Howard, 1997: 87).

Following the departure of Thatcher from office, Thatcherite ministers took hold of key departments. This included Peter Lilley as Minister for Social Security and Michael Portillo at the Treasury. The pace of change in social security policy quickened considerably (Howard, 1997: 84), with Portillo announcing a review of social policy and public spending in 1993. Lilley supported this review, adding that he wanted to rethink the role of social security (Glennerster, 1994: 319). In March 1994, the Adam Smith Institute published *The End of the Welfare State*, signalling a growing interest in this area by right-wing think tanks. Unemployment Benefit was renamed Job Seeker's Allowance in 1995, emphasising a shift in thinking on responsibilities (Hill, 1999: 170), with those under 25 receiving a lower rate (Howard, 1997: 87). Job Seeker's Allowance was means tested after six months, with entitlement reduced after that point (Hill, 1999: 171).

The changes in the social security system (described as attempts to alleviate poverty and financial hardship) stemmed from the desire to lower expenditure following the increase in unemployment in the early 1980s. This created a series of traps which made escape from lifestyles in which offending and victimisation were common, and increased economic inequalities, leading to steep rises in acquisitive crime during the 1980s (Farrall and Jennings, 2012).

#### *Education*

Before the mid-1970s, there was no indication that education would become heavily politicised. Thatcher was herself not keen on addressing education at this time (Scott, 1994: 333). As such, the 1980 Education Act, along with other Education Acts (up to 1988), is seen as incrementalist (McVicar, 1990: 133). In 1986, however, New Right approaches came to dominate the government's approach to education (Tomlinson, 1989: 183), with indications of this shift coming during the 1987 election when it was announced that schools would be allowed to "opt out" of LEA control (Whitty and Menter, 1989: 47). The 1988 Education Act was to radically change secondary education, but allowing schools to opt out of LEA control, transferring the management of schools from LEAs to school governors, allowing parents a choice of schools for their children, and introducing the National Curriculum (Dorey, 1999: 146). Whilst previously education had been a low priority for Thatcherites, the 1988 Act made a radical break with the earlier philosophy (Tomlinson, 1989: 185–186). Staff-student ratios rose throughout the 1980s and 1990s, arguably leading to greater disruption in classes, more exclusions, and greater levels of staff absenteeism.

The 1992 and 1993 Education Acts further limited the role of LEAs (Scott, 1994: 341; Dorey, 1999: 149). In 1992 the first league tables of school exam results were published (Timmins, 2001: 519). One unfortunate side effect of these was to encourage schools to exclude unruly children (to improve overall performance). Indeed, school exclusions rose throughout the 1990s, reaching a peak of 12,668 in 1996–1997 (DFeS, 2001). However, out of school, excluded children served to cause problems for local residents and the police (Timmins, 2001: 566). The radical reforms of the schooling system made the management of schools harder by raising staff-student ratios. This had a series of spillover effects for communities and policing in terms of the number of young people excluded from schools. As with changes in the economy, housing provision, and social security provision, the side effects were to have significant ramifications for both crime and the criminal justice system.

#### *Crime and the Criminal Justice System*

The New Right showed little interest in either crime or the criminal justice system prior to the mid-1970s. At this point, the Tories would occasionally refer to "getting tough" (in their 1964 election manifesto), or give increased prominence to crime (in their 1970 manifestos, Downes and Morgan, 1997: 89–97). However, this was not translated into plans to reform the criminal justice system. However, as penal pessimism gripped the UK and the USA (in the mid-1970s), the Tories started to make "law and order" and crime more central to their electoral strategy (Loader, 2006: 574).

Although the 1979 election saw "law and order" become an election issue for the Tories, following the election there were reductions in consultations with criminal justice experts, and the Advisory Council on the Penal System was left unused. In fact, there was an absence of criminal justice legislation in the first two post-1979 sessions of Parliament (Windlesham, 1993: 153). Whitelaw referred to the idea of a "short, sharp, shock" for young offenders, but was not keen on it, and shelved the idea after 1983 (Windlesham, 1993: 159). Take the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (one of the most well-known Acts of the 1980s) as an example of legislation during the period; it gave new rights to those suspected of having committed an offence (Windlesham, 2001: 135), and the conditions of detention and interrogation were more strictly and rigidly controlled and documented. Whilst the Greater London Council Police Committee saw the Act as "enshrining in the law the disturbing and growing trend of policing by coercion," it also recognised the introduction of custody records as "an innovation to be welcomed" (Maguire, 1988: 20).

In sum, in the criminal justice arena, and in contrast to the other policy areas we have considered, we see little evidence of significant policy ambition prior to the mid-1990s (Farrall et al, 2016). Whilst the Criminal Justice Act (1988) allowed the Attorney-General to appeal against "overlylenient" sentences (an indication of what would emerge later), the overall prison population actually fell (Windlesham, 1993: 241). This was due to earlier restrictions placed on the sentencing of young people in the 1982 and 1988 Criminal Justice Acts and hardly in keeping with the Thatcherite desire to ensure safety on the streets. This suggests that criminal justice under Thatcherism was characterised by continuity rather than radicalism. The Tories may well have sounded "tougher" on crime than Labour, but the content of legislation escaped radicalisation. Indeed, there is little evidence of a "hard right," "Thatcherite" approach with regard to criminal justice during the 1980s, despite the rises in crime and the discourses around "right" and "wrong."

It was only after 1992 that crime became much more radicalised. By this time, crime had been rising for several years, and data from the British Crime Survey reported that few criminal acts resulted in court convictions. Having been in office for 13 years, this was particularly troublesome for the Tories. As Balen (1994: 233) notes, having increased expenditure on the criminal justice system, now had little to show for their efforts. This was a point senior Tories had spotted (see Baker, 1993: 450–451 and Thatcher, 1993: 626). Then, in early 1993, criticisms of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act started to be voiced by members of the judiciary. In response, the Criminal Justice Bill (1993) was amended to abolish the 1991 Act's unit fines and to remove its sentencing guidelines (Faulkner, 2001: 125). Howard (a Thatcherite) became Home Secretary in May 1993. In his first speech as Home Secretary at the 1993 Party conference, he claimed that "prison worked" and outlined several new "tough" measures, many of which became enacted in the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. This Act eroded the right to silence, introduced secure training for persistent juvenile offenders and the criminalisation of squatters and demonstrators, changed the laws of evidence (to make conviction easier), increased penalties and periods of custody for young offenders, and restricted the use of bail (Faulkner, 2001: 126). From the mid-1990s onwards, there was a dramatic rise in incarceration rates (Windlesham, 2001: 8–25). The tone was set for the future of the criminal justice agenda; Labour and the Conservatives increasingly sought to "out-tough" each other (Windlesham, 2001: 24). Finally, in 1997 the Crime (Sentences) Act was passed, introducing various mandatory sentences and reversed earlier efforts to reduce imprisonment (Faulkner, 2001: 126).

#### *Analysis*

It is credible to see, in the above, the emergence of a Thatcherite project in both philosophy and policy implementation unfolding across a series of policy fields. Economic policy was, of course, key to the very identity of the first Thatcher administration. Industrial policy (which we have not outlined in detail) was essential for the successful challenge to the power of Trade Unions needed for the survival of the wider project. Similarly, housing policy was profoundly implicated in the Thatcherite claim to distinctiveness in 1979—since it was crucial to the strategy for the mobilisation of a cross-class electoral base.

Social security and education were more complex beasts, and it took the Tories some time to work out what they wanted to achieve—and, longer still, *how* they wanted to achieve it. In this respect, they were, we suggest, representative more generally of public sector reform. Both were left largely untouched until the mid-1980s as the Tories started to gear up for a "radical" third term. Thus, it was not until 1986 that right-wing think tanks started to turn their attention in a concerted and coordinated way to education, culminating in the 1988 Education Act. But in this respect, the reform of education exhibits a very similar temporality and sequencing to that of other core public services—notably the NHS and the system of local government finance. The Thatcher governments responded first and quite radically in those policy fields most implicated in the crisis whose narration had brought them to power. It was only later that their attentions would turn to working through and then eventually a translation into a policy of the implications of the Thatcherite instinct for public sector reform.

Crime was left alone for even longer. It is not until the early to mid-1990s that we begin to see the development of a more obviously "Thatcherite" angle on criminal justice, with an emphasis on "just desserts," the removal of sentencing guidelines in 1991, and a politically stated desire for "tougher" sentences on the basis that "prison works" (under Howard). Partly this was due to the Home Secretaries being of a distinctly "one nation" approach, but partly this was also due to "the Party of Law and Order" feeling that their own and the police's value were sufficiently in line for the police to be left alone to get on with the job by and large unhindered.

However, this is only part of the story; crime is the result of numerous processes (individual motivation, structural disadvantage, and opportunity), and some of these processes were precisely those which had been altered by changes in legislation in some of the other policy areas we have referred to. In effect, legislation on criminal justice was necessitated by the cumulative consequences of Thatcherite radicalism in other issue domains. For example, there is a strong relationship between unemployment and crime (Farrall and Jennings, 2012). Similarly, the 1980s housing policies have been associated with increases in some forms of crime (Murie, 1997), whilst the school league tables introduced in 1992 had the unfortunate side effect of encouraging schools to exclude unruly children. Thus one of the reasons why crime came so late as a concern for the Tories was that the need for reform was itself the consequence of the "spill over" from policy radicalism elsewhere. Putting this together, we get a rather different aggregate periodisation of Thatcherism from that offered in the existing literature. This we summarise, schematically, in Figure 3.1.

This Hay and Farrall (2011) describe as a "cascade" theory of policy radicalism. It charts the development of Thatcherism through different policy domains. First to be targeted were those policy arenas central to the construction of the crisis demanding immediate action (the economy, industrial relations, and housing). There is then, building on Heffernan's observations, a

**FIGURE 3.1** Cascading Thatcherite Policy Radicalism

period of relatively de-radicalised policymaking (although this was not without its significant events, such as the miners' strike of 1984–1985). Once reform in the first areas to be targeted was underway, attention turned to other policy domains. These were not implicated closely with the crisis narrative, yet the Thatcherite instinct required their reform (social security, health, and education). It took a considerable amount of time and effort to translate the Thatcherite instinct into a set of proposals for complex institutional reform in such fields. There was no blueprint for public sector reform, and it would take two terms for one to be developed. From 1987 onwards a radical reform agenda for the entire public sector was rolled out. Key public services were taken on one at a time with highly significant pieces of legislation (the Education Reform Act, the NHS Reform Act, and the Local Government Finance Act). Finally, it increasingly became necessary to deal with issues arising as spillover effects in policy domains, such as criminal justice, which were targeted last. In this respect, the late radicalisation of criminal justice policy is due to the perceived need to respond to the spillover effects arising from the consequences of earlier radicalism in other issue domains (here, principally, economic, social security, and education policy).

Thatcherism, then, appears to pass through at least five phases: (i) the mobilisation of perceptions of a crisis (and to which it would present itself as the solution); (ii) the immediate and targeted policy response to the crisis (requiring radicalism in economic policy and industrial relations) and the consolidation of its electoral base through housing policy; (iii) a comparative lull in policy activism (brought on by fears of electoral failure) during which ideas for the translation of the Thatcherite instinct into detailed proposals for public sector reform were developed; (iv) a second wave of policy radicalism targeting key public services; and (v) consolidation and responses to unanticipated consequences and spillover effects from earlier phases of policy radicalism (criminal justice policy).

#### **Conclusion**

At the beginning of this chapter, we posed a question asked by Tim Newburn (2007), namely why it took so long for criminal justice policy to be radicalised during the Thatcher era. Our answer was that whilst matters relating to crime and criminal justice were frequently invoked by both Thatcher and key individuals in her governments (such as Norman Tebbit, who once remarked that unemployed people ought not to riot, but ought instead to "get in their bikes" and look for work, as his father had done), the main business of the political executive was initially on economic matters and laying the groundwork for the establishment of a Thatcherite social base (via housing sales). There was then a lull in the policy radicalism, albeit during a phase of dramatic change, namely the miners' strike, prior to a period of further radicalism in public services which had taken some time to plan and devise implantation strategies for. The fact that the opposition (Labour) took all of the 1980s and some of the 1990s to work out what they could say about crime further reduced the impetus to do terribly much about crime. Things started to change, however, after Thatcher had left office and some of the consequences of earlier policy radicalism started to produce spillover effects. Unemployment, growing economic inequality, the spatial concentration of crime in council housing estates, and increasing levels of truancy amongst school children, all arguably a consequence of earlier policies, started to push crime up the public's list of concerns and then the policy agenda. These topics we discuss in more detail in Chapter 3, when we discuss changes in the welfare system (such as social security and housing), and Chapter 4 when we discuss economic restructuring, school truancy, and the onset of offending. Chapter 7 (following a chapter on social attitudinal change) then deals in much more detail than we could herein with the changes in the criminal justice system from 1982 until 1997.

#### **References**

Atkinson, A. B. (2000) 'Distribution of Income and Wealth', in Halsey, A. E. and Webb, J. (eds). *Twentieth-Century British Social Trends*. London: Macmillan.


Windlesham, L. (1993) *Responses to Crime* (Vol. 2). Oxford: OUP.

Windlesham, L. (2001) *Responses to Crime* (Vol. 4). Oxford: OUP.

# **PART II INTRODUCTION**

Part II of this book deals with the empirical analyses which we have conducted. Chapter 4, for example, focuses on the changes unleashed on the social security and housing systems and demonstrates the immediate and long-term effects of these on the lives and life-courses of individuals living in Britain. This chapter shows the ways in which the radical changes in social welfare and housing policies interacted with one another and, crucially, cascaded so as to chronically reproduce feedback loops. Staying at the individual level, the subsequent chapter explores how economic restructuring affected truancy from school and engagement in crime for cohorts of children growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter 6 uses repeated crosssection survey data to explore the ways in which wider social attitudes relating to crime and the punishment of wrongdoers were affected since the 1980s, whilst Chapter 7 provides a discussion of how criminal justice policies became more punitive during the 1990s as a result of Thatcherite rhetoric from the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter 8 turns to consider the geographic impacts of the economic transformations of the Thatcher era via a consideration of the precise location of prisons in Britain and the sorts of institutions which had stood where they were built and which they (quite literally) replaced.

# 4

## **SOCIAL WELFARE, HOUSING POLICIES, AND CHANGES IN THE SOCIAL LOCATIONS OF CRIME**

#### **Growing up in Periods of Radical Social Welfare Change**

The welfare model established following the Beveridge Report in the 1940s and developed amid considerable cross-party consensus1 proposed a welfare state that sought to banish "want" and provide social insurance over the life-course. Social housing and social security benefits formed a key part of this safety net, along with provision for health and education. It was intended that legislation should reflect universalist principles: it was made clear in debates on the 1946 Housing Act, for example, that social housing should be available to the whole community, not simply the working classes. However, housebuilding struggled to keep up with demand and further legislation was required to enable local authorities to build more properties for the general population (the Housing Act 1949). Between 1945 and 1980, local authorities and housing associations built 4.4 million social homes at an average of more than 126,000 a year (Shelter, 2019). Meanwhile, social security was a means of protection from loss of earnings which might occur through sickness, injury, old age, or unemployment, which had hitherto been provided by the poor laws or trade union insurance schemes. Similarly, by the 1970s reliance on welfare benefits had widened due to in-work poverty and rises in the number of single parents. One solution to reduce demand was to offer means-tested benefits (those which are calculated based on an individual or families' circumstances) in addition to insurance-based benefits. By 1976 the National Consumer Council counted 45 different means-tested schemes operating in Britain (Page and Silburn, 1999). Nevertheless, by 1979 the all-party "consensus" on welfare provision had all but dissolved and when the incoming Conservative party entered government, they began to dismantle the provision of social security and social housing as part of a new economic structure of the country. Mabbett (2013) explained that:

The Thatcher government had a plan for rolling back the state based on a clear philosophy: that everything that could be privatised would be privatised, leaving only a residual role for the state in securing the living standards of the population […] The norm should be that the market is the principal provider of welfare.

(2013: 43)

Legislative developments from 1979 reframed the notion that poverty was a problem that society should solve; instead, public expenditure on welfare was presented as a liability for the economy, inhibiting growth and market freedom (Hill and Walker, 2014). A flurry of reforms and legislation thus took place which changed the operation of social security and the provision of social housing. During the 11 years Thatcher was in office (1979–1990), there were 15 Acts of Parliament relating to the reform of social security. Meanwhile the 1980 Housing Act gave sitting council tenants a "right to buy" their homes at a meaningfully discounted rate. Since the housing stock was not replaced, the social rented sector was greatly reduced. Over one and a half million council houses had been sold by the start of the 1990s (Malpass and Murie, 1990: 96), with sales being higher in the South and East and lowest in the North and Inner London (Murie, 1989: 220).

From the outset, "right to buy" legislation (strengthened and extended via the 1980 Housing Act) proved popular with the skilled working classes (Stewart and Burridge, 1989), who widely sought to purchase their homes, particularly in those areas where homeownership rates were already high. McNabb and Wass (1999) noted that single people were the least likely to buy their homes, especially if they had children or lived in small flats. Similarly, Cole and Furbey (1994) report higher levels of purchases amongst prosperous areas, the middle-aged, and the skilled working class. As Murie notes, "estates with which contain[ed] the best quality, most spacious, traditionally built houses with gardens tend to be those which were most popular and in highest demand" (1997: 28). Against this policies' initial popularity, over time it became clear that a consequence of "the right to buy" was the residualisation of council homes, such that only the very poorest occupied the remaining rental properties. By the 1990s, in view of falling supply, those who did qualify for council housing typically did so on the basis of "extreme housing need or homelessness" (JRF, 2009: 40). As Murie (1989) concluded there was a growing polarisation between people based on their tenure status and those living in rented social housing were increasingly drawn from those "in need."

Turning to social security, the festoon of legislation in this area after 1979 sought to (a) greatly reduce the levels of support available and (b) remove the number of qualifying recipients. To begin with, the first 1980 Social Security Act removed the discretionary system that operated Supplementary Benefits and installed a much more restrictive and complex set of regulations on who could claim what. Meanwhile, the Social Security (No. 2) Act (1980) extended new uprating rules to unemployment and sickness benefits, tightened access to Sickness Benefits, and cut benefits for strikers and their families. Importantly for families with children born in the 1970s and 1980s, the second Act abolished earnings-related supplements, reducing family incomes further (Atkinson, 1989). Thane (2018) also noted that the 1986 Social Security Act conferred the UK one of the most complex and targeted social security systems in the world. The effect was that significant numbers of eligible recipients failed to apply for the support they were entitled to, causing further financial stress.

Another technique to shrink the welfare system was a cut to social housing subsidies; the means-tested Housing Benefit was introduced in 1982, while new DHSS regulations in 1983 limited access to "Board and Lodgings" payments to those under 25. Affected individuals would now need to move every two to eight weeks to remain eligible, which eventually increased the number of young homeless people (McGlone, 1990). The cumulative impact of these policies was far-reaching. In 1979 around 32% of dwellings in Britain were council houses, totalling some 6.5 million properties, and were occupied by a range of social classes. However, the "Right to Buy" scheme removed the more attractive homes from the social housing sector. With minimal investment in existing homes, their condition deteriorated, and by 1997 nearly one half of council homes failed to meet basic government standards (JRF, 2009). Indeed, the combined impact of increased housing costs and social security retrenchment was noted by Murie (2014) who highlighted the risks of a "poverty trap" whereby those with low incomes faced very high effective marginal tax rates from both direct taxation and benefit withdrawal if their earnings rose.

In the milieu of radical policy change and a reformatting of the welfare state, many citizens found themselves in an increasingly fraught economic climate. Conversely, despite the Conservative government's strategy to reduce public expenditure on social security, more people were becoming reliant on the state, due to the high levels of unemployment which reached a peak of 9.5% in 1984 (Albertson and Stepney, 2019). Nonetheless, as many lost access to resources in this new economic system, there were also undoubted winners in other sections of society, particularly if you lived in or near London (the South East, or the "Home Counties"), you might have benefitted from the great economic success of the Capital. But a wellcited assessment from Goodman and Webb (1995) notes that the 1980s foreshadowed a sharp rise in income inequality, such that the real incomes of the poorest tenth fell from £73 per week in 1979 to just over £61 per week in 1991. Young families with children were the most affected and made up more than half of the poorest decile by 1991 compared with around a third in the 1960s. These circumstances, the authors concluded, "represented a return to living standards of a quarter of a century ago" for the poorest sections of society (1995: 66).

#### **Approaching the Welfare-Crime Relationship**

Confronting the reform of the welfare state and the dramatic shifts in the economy from the 1980s requires clarity about our assumptions. We do not suppose that those in economically precarious positions are prone to involvement in the justice system because they are morally weak (to characterise opinions on the radical right). Rather, we recognise that poverty may render some behaviours necessary to "survive" (Carlen, 1996). Furthermore, becoming economically stressed might lead to an increased risk of being approached by law enforcement agencies in some circumstances, such as homelessness (McGlone, 1990). Certainly, contact with the CJS does not automatically imply unlawful behaviour, but directs attention to relative social status and vulnerability. Hence the social security-crime nexus is driven by both macroand micro-level processes. Importantly, research has demonstrated that the relationship between crime and welfare provision is not constant but varies as conditions interact (Jennings et al, 2012). The 1980s and 1990s in the UK proved a particularly challenging time, as welfare retrenchment intersected with steep rises in unemployment, economic restructuring, and rising crime.

Similarly, scholars working in this field have acknowledged the intricate relationships between welfare provision, poverty, and national crime rates. Time-series methodologies have identified how reductions in welfare expenditure during the 1980s were associated with a subsequent acceleration in property crime in England and Wales (Jennings et al, 2012). Tiratelli et al (2020) showed that as the number of Universal Credit claimants increased during the roll-out of this UK-wide policy after 2012, so recorded crime rose. In the USA, scholars have observed relationships between welfare provision and crime; an inverse relationship between welfare payments and violent crime was reported in the early 1980s by DeFronzo, 1983. More recently, Morash et al (2017) reported that a combination of welfare reductions and poor housing provision was significantly related to increased property crime among women on supervision in Michigan. Aggregate-level analysis has further demonstrated that metropolitan areas with higher expenditure on welfare assistance had weaker associations between crime rates and the size of the population living in poverty (DeFronzo and Hannon, 1998; see also Messner, 1989; Kawachi et al, 1999; Carmichael and Ward, 2000).

These macro-level studies have identified that (i) certain welfare institutions and (ii) far-reaching changes to the level of financial support they provide can affect aggregate-level criminal behaviour (see also Savage et al, 2008; Fishback et al, 2010; Foley, 2011). However, the causal mechanisms by which these processes might operate are less clear. Potential theories include the notion that "social support" (Cullen, 1994) delivered at the micro level or macro level can lessen offending behaviour and hence overall crime rates. Certainly, those countries with generous welfare states, higher levels of unionisation, and social trust tend to have lower rates of imprisonment (Savage et al, 2008). Extending this theory, it is hypothesised that social support mechanisms might be a key factor in rehabilitating offenders (Worrall, 2009). Other scholars, drawing on strain and anomie theories, have pointed towards the "shock" impact of substantial reductions in the level of public assistance and the reality of structural economic distress brought about by neo-liberalism (Wacquant, 2010; Farrall et al, 2017). Some criminologists—as well as social work researchers (Jordan, 2001)—have been critical of the lack of scholarly attention on the retrenchment of the welfare state, as policymakers instead focus on the "responsibilisation" of individual offenders (Carlen, 1996; Gray, 2005). Finally, one theory is that welfare spending (such as financial benefits, free training programs, housing schemes, childcare, etc.) *encourages* dependency and has an ensuing positive relationship with crime. Such arguments gained traction with New Right governments in the UK and USA from the 1980s and may have appeared appealing to politicians but remain unproven by empirical evidence (Welshman, 2006). Bagguley and Mann (1992) eloquently noted that the model of "learnt" dependency has obscured the complex processes that shape welfare-crime relationships (see also Andrews and Jacobs, 1990).

Given that much of the above research has operated at the macro level, we have sought to examine if and how the welfare-crime relationship plays out at the individual level. We draw on data from two birth cohorts who were at different developmental stages during a period of socio-economic disturbance in the 1980s. Our first piece of analysis examines the relationships between crime and reliance on welfare provision and social housing over the life-course for two birth cohorts who were either growing up or entering adulthood in the early 1980s. We test if the changes to welfare generosity that took place in the UK in the 1980s affected individual offending and if this was age-graded. In the second stage of this chapter, we explore the different housing trajectories of those who have experienced periods of homelessness, again, drawing on two birth cohorts who lived through this period at different developmental stages. This chapter is essentially an investigation of the outcomes of radical system deregulation, with a keen focus on the long-term implications for the individuals and families affected.

#### **Methodology**

#### *Data*

This work relies on longitudinal data at the individual level, namely, the National Child Development Study (NCDS) (born 1958) and the British Cohort Study (BCS70) (born 1970) (see Appendix). The NCDS were born in one week of 1958, when the welfare state was expanding, and were 21 when Thatcher came into power. The NCDS had an initial sample size of 17,415. Data were collected from the sample members in 1958 (birth), 1965 (aged 7), 1969 (11), 1974 (16), 1981 (23), 1991 (33), 2000 (42), and seven further times since 2000. Meanwhile, the BCS70 had a slightly smaller sample size of 16,135, all of whom were born in one week of April 1970. Data was collected on sample members in 1970 (birth), 1975 (aged 5), 1980 (10), 1986 (16), 1996 (26), and 2000 (30). The samples have low attrition rates, with around two-thirds of cohort members being interviewed at sweeps since 2000, and the sample remaining representative of the original births (Gerova, 2006).

#### *Focus: "Contact with the Criminal Justice System"*

In stage one of our analysis, the dependent variable is the frequency of formal contacts with the criminal justice system in the year 2000 since the previous sweep of the respective survey sweep. The measure is a "count" of separate incidences of being (1) "arrested and taken to a police station," (2) "formally cautioned at a police station," and (3) "found guilty by a criminal court." For each of these questions, participants were asked to give the "number of times" this event had happened. Due to the significance of such an event, we believe the participant's recall of this question would be subject to only minor recall bias. In this sense, we are modelling time-limited events(s). All those who reported "no contact" on any of the three measures were assigned a zero.

#### *Incorporating Individual and Socio-Economic Characteristics*

The NCDS and BCS70 data sets are rich with life-course history variables, which enabled us to control for characteristics that are typically related to formal contact2 with the criminal justice system in the UK, such as gender, ethnicity, tenure, marital status, the experience of being in care in childhood, social class, educational qualifications, and employment history. Recent use of Class A drugs was also included in the model; we limited our focus to substances at the "higher end" of the spectrum (heroin, methadone, crackcocaine, and cocaine), since these are subject to the greatest legislative control and pose the most risks of long-term dependency (Hser, 2007). Both cohorts were asked if they had used these substance(s) within the previous 12 months, longer ago than 12 months, or never. These questions were asked within the same sweep (which took place in the year 2000) as those about recent contact with the criminal justice system, as was the highest educational qualification, to allow for adult education achievements (age 42 for the NCDS and age 30 for the BCS70).

To assess these cohorts' uptake of welfare benefits, we analysed their families (as children) or their own (as adults) reliance on a range of means-tested benefits at various ages. We excluded universal benefits since few of these were relevant to the cohort at the stage we were examining (such as pensions) or were received by all (Family Allowance/Child Benefit).

#### *Analyses*

The NCDS and the BCS70 contain comparable data and were designed and operationalised similarly (for example, in the year 2000 they received identical questionnaires). However, the ages at which the respondents were surveyed differed, and there were 12 years between the births of these two cohorts. Considering these time-varying differences, we analysed them in two separate but analogous models (see Tables 4.1 and 4.2). As our data were over-dispersed, we opted to use a negative binomial distribution model, which permits the conditional variance to surpass the conditional mean through the estimation of a dispersion parameter (Gardner et al, 1995). Fit statistics also confirmed that the models selected provided the best fit to the data.

#### **The Social Security-Crime Nexus**

#### *Results: The NCDS (1958) Cohort*

Table 4.1 presents the results for the NCDS cohort. As would be expected, being male (vs. female) and increased recent use of Class A drugs were strong predictors for contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood (*p* = 0.000). Noting the role of individual characteristics, being separated/ divorced (compared to being single, never married) was also associated with increased criminal justice contacts (*p* = 0.000), while having a higher educational qualification (compared to having GCSEs/O-levels3 ) was associated with decreased contact (*p* = 0.005). Homelessness, childhood offending (stealing), and being in care in childhood were non-significant for the NCDS. Turning to our markers of reliance on the welfare system, we found that from the early 1990s, living in rented social housing was associated with higher levels of contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood. Specifically, in 1991 (age 33, after which many council homes had been sold off and social housing was more limited, but also more expensive, Murie, 2014) being accommodated by the local authority was a significant predictor of adulthood contact with the criminal justice system when compared to homeowners (*p* = 0.000). Those who reported "other" tenures, which might have included living with friends/family or accommodation via employment or "rent-free,"


**TABLE 4.1** Negative Binominal Regression Model of NCDS Cohort: Predicting Formal Contact with the Criminal Justice System in Adulthood

(*Continued*)



NCDS cohort *n* = 5353. \* *p* < 0.05, \*\**p* < 0.01, \*\*\**p* < 0.001.


**TABLE 4.2** Negative Binominal Regression Model of BCS70 Cohort: Predicting Formal Contact with the Criminal Justice System in Adulthood

(*Continued*)



BCS70 cohort *n* = 3717. \* *p* < 0.05, \*\**p* < 0.01, \*\*\**p* < 0.001.

were also more likely than homeowners to have contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood (*p* = 0.009). Social housing remained a predictor of criminal justice contact at age 42 (*p* = 0.010), although not at age 16 (1974) or 23 (1981). Moving to employment status, our modelling found that for the NCDS cohort, being unemployed in 1991 (at age 33, which coincided with the 1990s economic recession) had long-term consequences for contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood (*p* = 0.001) compared to full-time employment. Being unemployed at different periods in 1981 or 2000 was non-significant. Finally, examining the cohort's reliance on meanstested benefits over time, we find again that historical variables play a role in the model. Precisely, being on means-tested welfare supplements in 1981 (age 23), just as the social security system was undergoing comprehensive retrenchment, was significantly related to adulthood contact with the criminal justice system (*p* = 0.000). This variable was also significant in 2000 (age 42) (*p* = 0.011), which indicates that while contemporaneous variables have an important function in modelling contact with the criminal justice system, so do historical ones, particularly those that occurred at significant junctures, such as periods of radical economic change.

#### *Results: The BCS70 Cohort*

The results of the modelling for the BCS70 cohort are presented in Table 4.2. Again, being male and increased recent use of Class A drugs were strongly associated with involvement in the criminal justice system (*p* = 0.000). Being married (compared to unmarried) (*p* = 0.006) and having gained A-levels and/or higher education qualifications (*p* = 0.000) were associated with fewer criminal justice contacts. Unlike the NCDS, the BCS70 model suggested that engagement with the youth justice system (at age 16) and personal experience of homelessness were predictive of increased criminal justice contact in adulthood (*p* = 0.000). However, the BCS70 also had much greater experience of offending, crime, and justice in adulthood, and the peak of their age/crime curve would have occurred in the context of escalating crime rates in the 1980. This cohort was also more likely to have experienced homelessness than the NCDS.

Turning to socio-economic variables, we find that, like the NCDS, the BCS70 cohort who were in social rented accommodation in the 1990s were significantly more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system (at age 26 (1996), *p* = 0.022; age 30 (2000), *p* = 0.000) when compared to homeowners. Private renting was also a significant positive predictor in 2000 (*p* = 0.002) although not to the same extent as social renting. Again, in keeping with the NCDS, contemporaneous *un*employment, compared to full-time employment (in 2000), was not a predictor of criminal justice engagement, but it was in 1996 at age 26 (*p* = 0.029), as was being in education/other statuses (*p* = 0.004). Lastly, the BCS70 model tested three time-points when the cohort members were in receipt of means-tested benefits from childhood to adulthood. Recent receipt of these welfare payments was non-significant; however, the more the cohort members' families were reliant on these conditional benefits in 1980 (at age 10), the more they experienced criminal justice system contact in adulthood (*p* = 0.047). This echoes the results from the NCDS, where being on means-tested benefits in the early 1980s, just as the welfare system was being severely cut back, was associated with CJScontacts. This pattern would indicate that the relationship between contact with the CJS and being on means-tested benefits was dependent on the historical period and not the age of the individual.

#### *Results: Summary*

To make sense of these results, it is helpful to summarise three key trends. We found significant predictors of adulthood CJS-contacts that:


Taking the first point: examining the two cohorts there were three constants which need to be acknowledged. We found that males were more likely to have been in contact with the criminal justice system in 2000 than were females, as were those who were using Class A drugs in the year 2000 and those who were single/divorced. Not only are these variables significant across the BCS70 and the NCDS, but they are consistent within existing international studies of offending behaviour. Our second observation from this analysis is that some variables appear to *only* play a significant function in adult CJS-contacts with one of our two cohorts. For example, we know that the BCS70 were more likely to be homeless than the NCDS, and our multivariate analysis also indicates that homelessness in the BCS70 group was associated with more frequent contacts with the criminal justice system.

The third observation our dual-cohort analyses point to is the relationships that emerge for both cohorts, irrespective of their age, but seemingly in response to the cross section of socio-economic conditions at explicit locations in time. Namely, being reliant on means-tested social security during the early 1980s and being unemployed and/or in social rented housing in the early/mid-1990s was significantly associated with adulthood engagement in the criminal justice system for both cohorts. This appears to suggest a set of period effects that influenced each cohort, irrespective of their age. Specifically, we find that those who were reliant on means-tested benefits in the early 1980s, as the Thatcher government began the transition to a welfare system based around means-tested minimal provision, were more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system in adulthood, irrespective of which cohort they were in. Mabbett (2013: 44) argues that the Thatcher government commenced "a great number of salami-slicing reforms" of welfare that had a significant effect on the coverage and level of benefits. Similarly, Thane and Davidson (2016: 23) note that "the real value of benefits deteriorated" after the second 1980 Social Security Act. However, social security does not exist in a vacuum, and the context in which welfare was cut at this juncture coincided with sustained efforts by the government to stigmatise welfare claimants as "scroungers" and "cheats" (Crewe and Searing, 1988); growing inequality (Murie, 1997; Goodman and Webb, 1995); high unemployment (Albertson and Stepney, 2019); and decreasing and deteriorating social housing provision (JRF, 2009; Murie, 2014). Employing cohort data from individuals who grew up during this period illustrates how these structural events impacted their lives. In sum, we know that there were winners and losers during the New Right era (Goodman and Webb, 1995), and for some, the particular set of conditions may have marked a crisis point.

Importantly, the analysis demonstrates that there were also time-points when claiming benefits, unemployment, and social housing were *not* associated with increased criminal justice contact. This lends weight to the period effects argument—that rapid social change contributed (in part) to the conditions in which these cohorts had increased contact with the CJS (Durkheim, 1897). It also emphasises that the welfare-crime relationship is not fixed, but an intricate and dynamic phenomenon that oscillates in tandem with other social and economic forces.

#### **Introduction to Thatcherite Housing Policy**

As we proceed with a more detailed analysis of housing policy, it is worth noting the pertinent legislative developments that occurred before and after Thatcher came to power. Like the general elections of 1945 and 1964, the general elections of 1979 and 1983 saw housing play a crucial role in the outcome of the elections (Monk and Kleinman, 1989). Table 4.3 lists the key Acts of Parliament that affected housing provision in the UK (and England and Wales) between 1977 and 1989.

Notably, the Labour government's 1977 Homeless Persons Act was designed to extend housing provision to those individuals and families hitherto unable to secure their own accommodation (Atkinson and Durden, 1990). The Act extended the definition of homelessness, increasing the number of those deemed homeless and placing new responsibilities on local authorities (Atkinson and Durden, 1990). Ginsburg (1997) reports that the number of people


**TABLE 4.3** Summarising the Key Legislative Changes in Housing (1977–1989)

presenting as homeless increased every year from 1979 to 1991; in 1979, 57,200 were accepted as homeless in England, rising to 151,720 in 1991, before falling to 125,500 in 1995 (1997: 141). As such, throughout the 1980s there was a deepening polarisation between those in council housing and those living in homes they owned (the private rented sector had been in decline for many years, Murie, 1989). However, in addition to the 1977 Act, there has been a series of attempts to reduce public expenditure on housing since 1976 (Murie, 1989). Thus, when the Conservative government was elected in 1979, it inherited a system in which housing expenditure was already being cut and local authority housebuilding was in decline (Murie, 1989). Housing was a priority in the Conservative election manifesto, being given more space than social security, health, welfare, or education. The jewel in the crown, however, had been the introduction of the right to buy one's council house for existing tenants. This was introduced by the 1980 Housing Act.

The "right to buy" was popular with the skilled working class, who, as Stewart and Burridge note (1989), might otherwise have moved to different locations and become owner-occupiers anyway. During the passing of the Act, several amendments were introduced by the House of Lords, resulting in concessions—one of which was that accommodation designed or adapted for the elderly ought to be excluded from the right to buy provisions. Whilst understandable in terms of trying to prevent the exposure of elderly people to the processes of marketisation, the amendment had the effect of "trapping" elderly people in some accommodation in some estates and may have contributed, albeit in a small way, to the processes of residualisation.

Meanwhile, the 1982 Social Security and Housing Benefit Act restructured the benefits provision that covered rents and rebates and transferred the administrative burden of this from central to local government (Hay, 1992). Whilst the Act protected many from harsh rent increases (Cole and Furbey, 1994), it required local authorities to implement the very cuts they had fought against. At a strategic level, this distanced the Thatcher government from the effects of the 1982 Act. In the first four years of its operation, the 1982 Act essentially removed around 1 million households from eligibility (Cole and Furbey, 1994).

The 1985 Housing Act, amongst other things, consolidated the provisions of the 1977 Homeless Persons Act and required local authorities to secure permanent accommodation for people without satisfactory accommodation and/or in immediate danger of losing their housing (Atkinson and Durden, 1994). However, a year later the 1986 Social Security Act removed £450 million from housing benefit expenditure (Cole and Furbey, 1994). The subsequent 1986 Housing and Planning Act permitted publicly owned housing to be transferred *en masse* to private owners, which could be read as the central government accepting that there were few sitting tenants left who wanted to buy their council homes (Hay, 1992). The 1986 Buildings Societies Act was a response to the fact that many building societies were reluctant to release money for council house sales (Murie, 1985) and that building societies were being hampered by the existing legislation (Boddy, 1989). The 1986 Housing and Planning Act also extended the discounts available, and as a rejoinder, the 1996 Housing Act withdrew the right of homeless families to tenancy in the social rented sector, thereby pushing more of them towards the private rented sector (Ginsburg, 1997).

#### *Residualisation and Polarisation*

One of the outcomes of the multiple changes initiated by the Thatcher governments was the residualisation of council housing (Murie, 1997). Residualisation refers to the long-term trend for council housing to


Prior to the 1980s, both owner-occupation and council housing had been rising (at the expense of the private rented sector). In addition, the requirement for councils to house some of the most-needy households (a requirement of the 1977 Homeless Persons Act) meant that this process has been further enhanced. Kemp (1992) reports that in 1978 the number of households being accepted for housing on the basis of homelessness was just over 53,000, whilst by 1986 this had doubled to almost 103,000 and increased to over 126,000 by 1989. The causes of this dramatic growth are complex; social and demographic changes would have accounted for some of it. Unemployment would also have forced some to relocate. Nevertheless, Kemp (1992) is not alone in attributing the rise in homelessness to government policies at the time, albeit unintended ones, such as changes to the rules governing social security eligibility. Williams (1992) goes as far as to suggest that by the early 1990s, the main route into council housing was via homelessness.

Spatially, the better housing stock in the better areas had become privatised. At the same time, Stewart and Burridge (1989) claim that mixed-tenure estates emerged in suburban areas, whilst inner city areas underwent a process of ghettoisation. Cole and Furbey (1994) conclude that between 1979 and the early 1990s, housing tenure was divided by household income as the affluent owner-occupation sector catered for the prosperous or aspiring skilled working class and middle class (the "haves") and a council-provided sector catered for the poor, the unemployed, the elderly, and ethnic minority households (the "have nots").

This move towards residualisation is confirmed by our analyses of the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England (CSEW) and Wales and the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) between 1982 and 1998 (see Appendix). Table 4.4 reports on various markers; we see, for example, that the CSEW homeowners are likely to experience low levels of unemployment over time (between 2% and 4%), whilst for the social renters this is between 6% and 11%. These reflect general trends in the unemployment rate, but the increases in the rates are higher for those in the social rented sector and slower to fall. Both CSEW and BSAS suggest that over time the percentage of owners in the lowest income bracket declines, whilst the same figure for social renters either plateaus around 40–50% (CSEW) or increases (BSAS).

The CSEW also asked its fieldwork team to assess the external condition of housing in the area adjacent to the homes in which they completed interviews. Between 1984 and 1994, around 2% of houses were assigned to be in a "bad state," whilst for social renters it remained around the 9% level (despite the work of Housing Associations towards the end of this period). Amongst social renters, the BSAS data set suggests that more of the people living in this tenure were made up of ethnic minorities (rising from 4% to 6% in the early 1980s to around 9% by the late 1990s).


**TABLE 4.4** Measures of Residualisation: Demographic Data 1982–1998 (CSEW and BSAS)

All figures are % and weighted for individuals.

a 1983 for BSAS, b 1989 for BSAS, c 1993, and d 1995 for BSAS.


**TABLE 4.5** Number of Domestic Property Crimes by Owners/Mortgaged and Social Renters (CSEW)

But what relationship did the housing tenure have to victimisation over this period? Table 4.5 shows the average number of domestic thefts for both owners and social renters, as well as the mean difference. The data shows that in 1982 social renters already had about twice the levels of burglary victimisation as owners did. Whilst the general trend for the social renters was upwards until 1996 (with a slight dip in 1984), the owners experienced a far "shallower" increase (which plateaued from 1984 until 1992) and then a decline from a peak of 0.1724 in 1994. By the end of the data run in 2000, their average number of victimisations of this sort had declined to below 1982 levels. For social renters the situation in 2000 had worsened considerably; in 1982 the average number of burglaries was .0891, a figure which had risen to .1685 by 2000 (in effect, a doubling).

In sum, the restructuring of the social rented sector took hold during the 1980s. In two large national data sets (the CSEW and the BSAS), we can observe subsequent disparities between owners and social renters in terms of their exposure to domestic property victimisation. This indicates that aspects of the social policies pursued at this time produced a social and geographic concentration of crime amongst some social groups in some towns and cities. In this sense, not only might one argue that governments help to shape the levels of crime a society will experience (by, e.g., their handling of the economy), but also it would appear that they can shape *which* social groups experience increases (or decreases) in their relative rates of victimisation. Similar findings have been reported in other countries which underwent New Right-led restructuring; Currie (1990: 308) notes that cuts to the US housing budget in the 1980s "meant that public housing did often become housing of last resort…" with a "concentration of social pathology – drug-dealing, violence, gang warfare, and family disruption." Similarly, Levitt (1999: 87) reports that in the mid-1970s, poorer households in the United States were burgled less than richer ones, but by the mid-1990s, this situation had reversed. In these ways, the changes to housing laws enacted in the 1980s were not (as Blandy and Hunter, 2012 note) a "neutral" instrument, but one which could be used to reinforce various forms of inequalities—some of which related to exposure to victimisation.

#### **Parental Housing Trajectories: Homelessness and Contact with the Criminal Justice System**

In this part of our analysis, we explore the restructuring of the housing market that occurred in the early 1980s on the same birth cohorts employed in the first part of the chapter (the NCDS and the BCS70). Notably, the NCDS were likely to be amongst those for whom homeownership was seen as a natural progression (Smith and Ferri, 2003), reaching adulthood in the late 1970s when buying a house was becoming more common. However, at that point (the very late 1970s), the availability of social housing was about to contract (a direct result of the 1980 Housing Act and the reduction in council housebuilding), whilst the demand for it would increase (as a result of the 1977 Homeless Persons Act). On the other hand, the BCS70 cohort entered early adulthood in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but their parents may have been able to buy their own homes or council properties in the early part of the decade.

#### *Identifying Council-Bought Properties in the BCS70 and NCDS*

The cohort studies had sufficient data for us to identify the tenure status of cohort members' parents up until they were age 16. We were able to isolate those whose parents had (a) purchased their council property, (b) rented from the council, or (c) other mortgage/ownership (Table 4.6). This facilitated a deeper exploration of the relationship between parental tenure trajectories and cohort members' subsequent experiences of homelessness (by the age of 30 for the BCS70 and age 42 for the NCDS).

#### **Tenure Trajectories and Homelessness**

In terms of homelessness, very few of the BCS70 cohort living in homes that were mortgaged or owned outright by their parents experienced homelessness up to age 30 (like the NCDS, this was around 5%) (see Table 4.7). However,


**TABLE 4.6** Parental Tenure Trajectory in Two Cohorts


**TABLE 4.7**Homelessness (Categorised by Earlier Housing Tenure)

for those children whose parents lived in council accommodation and did *not* buy their homes, the figure is at 9%. This suggests that homelessness for the later cohort of 1970 births was explained—at least in part—by their parents' ability to buy their own homes by the mid-1980s. Because of the extensive residualisation of social housing at this juncture, it is important to remember that those who did *not* buy their council homes would have tended to have come from the poorer sections of society or to be living in the least desirable accommodation. As such, we interpret these figures as suggesting that homelessness is, in part at least, associated with macro-level policy changes. In short, when a key plank of the welfare state was challenged by this aspect of Thatcherite social policies, homelessness rose for the incoming generation.

#### **Homelessness and Crime**

Unsurprisingly those cohort members who experienced periods of homelessness were also more likely to encounter the criminal justice system. However, comparing this relationship between the two cohorts, a far greater proportion of the homeless BCS70 sample had contact with the CJS than the NCDS homeless sample (see Table 4.8). Notably, the results suggest that contact with the criminal justice system had increased for *all* members of the BCS70 (when compared to the NCDS). Indeed, even those who had *never* been homeless reported higher rates of criminal justice interactions than the equivalent group in the NCDS. Notably, criminal justice at this time was becoming more punitive; in 1994 Michael Howard (at that point the Home Secretary) issued a statutory notice to the police, guiding them to tackle offending more directly.4 Following this, in 1998, Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw issued a further statutory notice with a similar wording. The motivations for issuing these orders were both Howard and Straw's desire to "get tough" on crime, itself a result of rising crime rates. These conditions had the effect of


**TABLE 4.8** Contact with the Criminal Justice System by Cohort and Homelessness

All figures are %. Chi-Sq tests based on cross tabulation tables. \* *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.05, \*\**<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.01, \*\*\**<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.001. encouraging the police to arrest "the usual suspects" (i.e. those disproportionately drawn from the young, males, ethnic minorities, and who spent more time on the streets or who were living on the streets). This started in late 1994 when the criminal justice system in England and Wales was becoming more punitive and the BCS70 cohort members were in their mid-20s and as such likely to be amongst the targets for policing activities. Meanwhile, the NCDS were in their mid- to late-30s and less likely to be targeted by the police (being less likely to be out, socialising in town and city centres).

Turning to cohort members' experience of violent crime (see Table 4.9), we can examine the relationship between parental tenure trajectory and violent victimisation. Both cohorts were fielded questions in 2000 about their experiences of assault (at age 42 for the NCDS, which covered the period of their lives from 33 to 42 (1991–2000) and at age 30 for the BCS70, between the ages of 16 and 30 (1986–2000)). For the NCDS, there is no statistically significant relationship between parental tenure trajectory and violent victimisation (Table 4.9), implying that parental tenure trajectory and victimisation were not related to one another. Repeating these analyses on the BCS70 data set, we found a statistically significant relationship between parental tenure trajectory and violent victimisation. When we looked at the relationship between homelessness and violent victimisation, we identified a further positive relationship for the BCS70 cohort. To summarise, 10% of the NCDS cohort who reported homelessness also reported violent victimisation (*n* = 371). By contrast, a larger 15% (*n* = 658) of the BCS70 cohort who had been homeless also suffered a violent assault (*p* = <.000).

As one might predict, irrespective of cohort there are strong (and strengthening) relationships between homelessness, contact with the CJS, and violent victimisation. What differs, however, is the relationship between


**TABLE 4.9** Tenure Trajectories and Assault

**FIGURE 4.1** Parental Tenure Trajectory, Homelessness, and Crime

parental tenure and experiences of homelessness (see Figure 4.1). For the NCDS, whose parents were by that time enjoying relatively good housing, either in the private sector or in council houses, and who were starting to look for their own homes in the early 1980s, there was *no* relationship between parental tenure trajectory and homelessness. There was also no statistically significant relationship between parental housing tenure trajectory and contact with the CJS or violent victimisation for the NCDS. However, the pattern was different for the BCS70 cohort. The relationship between their parents' tenure trajectory and their own experiences of homelessness was statistically significant (Table 4.7 and Figure 4.1). This was also the case when we looked at the relationship between parental tenure trajectory and assault for this cohort (Table 4.9). Taken together, this suggests that the parental-tenure-trajectory-homelessness relationship changed in the 12 years between these two cohorts embarking on their early housing careers. The BCS70 cohort were nine years old when Thatcher was elected in 1979 and around 14 years old at the peak of council house sales (in 1983). As such, they were starting to look for their own homes just as council property became harder to access (in the early 1990s).

These results echo the findings of comparable work on "concentrated disadvantage" (Sampson, 2012). Sampson found that neighbourhoods characterised by increasingly deprived social and economic conditions are limited in their ability to control or supervise behaviour. This work prompts us to consider neighbourhoods or discrete spaces (such as a housing estate) from a developmental or life-course perspective since neighbourhoods change over time in ways that can be considered "trajectories," and that they also experience transitions and turning points (Sampson and Laub, 1993). From this vantage point, the circumstances of a locale are intricately linked to its "past" much like an individual's current state is conditional on his or her prior biography. As such, we might reflect on the neighbourhoods occupied by the two cohorts studied in a more dynamic context. These temporal dynamics are theoretically important and show how housing policies compounded and escalated the negative effects of homelessness over time. By linking macro and micro processes, we can assess the intersection of policy and people.

#### **Housing Policy: A Criminological Consequence of Housing Privatisation**

Analysis of the changes in housing policy started by the 1980 Housing Act demonstrates that changes in government policy had dramatic effects on people's experiences of crime. It stands as a counter to one of Garland's central tenets that "structural patterns … do not become visible in localised case studies focused upon a single policy area …" (2001: viii).

In Figure 4.2 we have charted a "criminological consequence of housing privatization." The top shows a straightforward set of processes, whereby, for example, fewer council homes are built, domestic space becomes "privatised," and there is a growing turnover of residents. Alongside these processes, there ran a series of other changes and structural regularities, such as the unequal desirability of housing stock. These processes lead to easily predicted and arguably inevitable outcomes: difficulties in finding secure independent living arrangements amongst young people, the marginalisation of ethnic minority groups who often lived on unattractive estates, and the reduction of spending on their remaining stock by local authorities were all the "knock-on" effects of the initial legislation.

The effects of these changes become more complex. Growing economic inequalities probably account, at least in part, for the rise of burglaries and concern about crime and led to the rise of gated communities. We also start to see the production of chronically reproducing feedback loops. For example, the delayed transition to adulthood resulted in an increasing number of young people moving into or being "held" in aversive, crime-prone situations and lifestyles, such as "sofa surfing," working and claiming benefits, or working in the "cash" economy (see Carlen, 1996). In turn, this led to the increasing concentration of poverty along geographical boundaries (Dorling and Ballas, 2008). The marginalisation of some social groups, coupled with increasing segregation along both socio-economic and ethnic dimensions, only helped to fuel racism on the part of the white working class (helped along by essentially racist policies, Lupton and Russell, 1990). The concentration of poverty—partly also the result of declining levels of social capital and a lessening of informal social control—also helped to

**FIGURE 4.2** The Criminological Consequence of Housing Privatisation

further trap individuals into crime-prone lifestyles (and so the feedback loop is completed).

#### **Politics, Policies and Biographies: Making Sense of Social Welfare and Later Life Outcomes**

This chapter began with an outline of the radical reformation of social welfare provision in housing and social security that started in the early 1980s. As scholars predicted at the time, these legislative shifts would alter the lives of citizens in far-reaching ways. Indeed, as radical social change took place, the relationship between the state and the individual was transformed (Davidson, 2020). Using data from two UK birth cohorts (the NCDS 1958 and the BCS 1970) who were growing up during this era, we were able to demonstrate how long it took for key distributional changes to become detectable, and how long such changes might shape the lives of the citizens affected. In addressing these questions, we have considered not only what happened for individuals and families with dependent children but also what happened to council estates because of the sale (and subsequent abandonment of) of local authority council housing.

The first stage of the analyses demonstrated that, after controlling for structural and individual covariates, socio-economic variables such as being reliant on means-tested benefits, being unemployed or accommodated in the social rented sector at critical points during the New Right campaign, were significantly associated with later contact with the criminal justice system for participants for both 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts. We interpret these findings in the context of major socio-economic upheavals that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. At this point, social problems and increasing economic inequality were met with discourses of "less eligibility" and discipline (Carlen, 1996). But while the poor were told—by Thatcher herself5 —that the real problem was their over-reliance on the state's generosity, our results suggest that the ideological hegemony of the New Right and the rise of free-market individualism had a detrimental *period effect* across cohorts (Ryder, 1965) that resulted in the increased risks of economically vulnerable people being caught in the criminal justice system.

The second stage of the research examined housing residulisation and parental housing trajectories. These results indicated that young people leaving home for the first time from lower class families were exposed to the most detrimental effects of Thatcherite housing policies. Specifically, those young people whose parents were unable to buy their council property via the "right to buy" were later more likely to experience homelessness. Homelessness, in turn, appears to be related to increased contact with the criminal justice system, as well as increased levels of victimisation, higher rates of unemployment, and satisfaction with their homes and neighbourhoods (see Farrall et al, 2019). In this way, the "right to buy" legislation appears to have contributed to an increase in homelessness and the intensification of the worst effects of homelessness on some of the poorest young people growing up in the 1980s in the UK. Moreover, the consequences—as complex as they were—continued to be felt into adulthood. Although these outcomes have always been associated with homelessness (and possibly may always be so), this does not detract from the fact that the BCS70 cohort saw stronger relationships between these variables than was the case for the NCDS. While the "right to buy" was not the only explanatory factor that needs to be cited in this scenario, as Carlen reminds us, the synchronised changes in the social security system (especially the 1986 Social Security Act) meant that Urgent Needs Payments (which would have allowed people with no money to book into cheap accommodation) were replaced with repayable loans (Carlen, 1996). Alongside this, access to Income Support was removed for those aged 16 and 17, whilst board and lodgings regulations imposed limits on the length of time those under 25 who were unemployed could remain in bed and breakfast hostels, encouraging them to move home frequently. This amalgamation of policy change leads again to the identification of *period effects*, such that the policy environment in which "Thatcher's children" grew up multiplied the layers of vulnerability they were exposed to, including income inequality, homelessness, violence, and increased contact with criminal justice agencies. Moreover, the ratcheting up of vulnerabilities inherited by this generation could be traced long into adulthood in a large-scale and significant manner.

This chapter has highlighted Pierson's claim that "a conservative government's main impact on the welfare state might be felt a decade or more after it had left office" (2004: 88). Reviewing the impact of key welfare changes, Pierson argued that "among the losers were those not yet in council housing or in marginal residences who might have hoped eventually to move into better dwellings" (1994: 79). Whilst the losses suffered by the losers were abstract (that is, a loss of *opportunity*, rather than a loss of something more tangible), the consequences of these losses were not abstract; we have found that the BCS70 experienced increased homelessness, greater involvement with the criminal justice system, poorer health outcomes, and greater reliance on welfare. To this Carlen adds involvement in prostitution, drug use, offending, and begging (1996: 126–136); all aspects of what she terms "survivalism."

However, the various avenues of our analysis point towards a more significant long-term outcome: given that there is a strong relationship between arrest and subsequent offending (Farrington, 1977), it follows that increased contacts with the criminal justice system and increased frontline policing could have contributed to the initiation and/or lengthening of criminal careers for those affected. That the obvious and easiest targets included young, poor, and homeless people meant that those whose social-economic positions became precarious in the early 1980s were ultimately amongst those who became affected by punitive police practices in the 1990s. In this respect, macro-level social policy changes influenced criminal careers and their trajectories.

These results indicate that the socio-economic conditions in which individuals grow up can have a protracted and complex influence on their lives. If the outcomes of socio-economic conditions for individuals are slow-moving and incremental, it also implies these processes might be difficult to observe. As researchers, we have a central role to play in how the past is understood and interpreted. Often, those interested in explaining crime have focused on individual-level variables, such as age, sex, or drug addiction, and while these factors are important, they leave unaddressed those processes that are influenced by political, economic, or cultural factors. We advocate for a greater investment in understanding how macro-level determinants interact with individual life-courses. Such an approach enables us to think in ways that transform our understandings of how personal difficulties become political and public concerns and how biography and history are interwoven (Mills, 1959).

#### **Notes**

	- a to maintain and, if possible, increase the number of detections for violent crimes;
	- b to increase the number of detections for burglaries of people's homes;
	- c to target and prevent crimes which are a particular local problem, including drug-related criminality, in partnership with the public and local agencies;
	- d to provide high visibility policing to reassure the public; and
	- e to respond promptly to emergency calls from the public." This came into force in November 1994.

#### **References**


Atkinson, A. B. (1989) *Poverty and Social Security*. London: Harvester Press.


## 5 **ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING, TRUANCY FROM SCHOOL, AND ENGAGEMENT IN CRIME OVER THE LIFE-COURSE**

#### **Introduction**

Criminal careers research is a large part of modern criminology (and indeed some aspects of sociology and psychology). From an initial interest in why people start to offend (Merton, 1938; Sutherland, 1939; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960), this field has developed interests in why people continue offending (Savage, 2009) and why they cease offending (Sampson and Laub, 1993; Farrall et al, 2014). In many Western countries, people appear to start offending in their teenage years, with this "peaking" in the late teens and early to mid-20s. There is often a slow "decay" in engagement in crime from the late-20s onwards. Those who start to offend earliest tend to offend for longer periods. This field, however, is dominated by individual-level explanations of offending, or explanations which do not extend much past families, schools, or small communities. In this chapter, we explore the extent to which macrolevel economic policies, interacting with social policies, can be used to throw further light on why people start and continue offending. We start with a comparison of one cohort of people born in 1958 (and who were 29 when Margaret Thatcher was first elected Prime Minister) and a second who were born in 1970, and who had just had their ninth birthday when she was elected, and their respective rates of truancy. Many studies rely on individuallevel factors and processes to account for truancy. Herein we explore the role played by economic restructuring in triggering alienation from school, truancy, and offending, thereby challenging the general accounts which tend to pathologise those young people who truant. Following this, and in order to highlight intra-cohort differences, we focus on just the 1970 cohort and variations within this cohort. One of our aims, then, is to challenge the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003328339-7

This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

mainstream account from neo-liberal criminology which focuses on the individual and suppresses any consideration of wider structural processes and the role of governments in shaping which communities and their members are affected by crime.

#### **Exploring Variations in Economic Restructuring and Truancy**

The term "the school-to-prison-pipeline" has become a useful way to describe the fact that those who truant from school often become enmeshed in the youth and criminal justice systems. Those who do poorly at school, or who truant, are excluded, expelled, or "drop-out" completely, tend to be those who later end up being supervised by the juvenile justice service, or serving time in the adult prison systems (Rocque et al, 2017). In this chapter, and building on insights from strain theory, we seek to build a structural equation model1 of truancy from school, but one which also explores the ways in which economic restructuring underpins alienation from school, truancy, and offending. In so doing we suggest that the processes associated with truancy are not solely to be found at the individual level but are structurally caused.

In the first half of this chapter, we outline what is known about truancy and subsequent offending and critique this literature for focusing on individuallevel factors. Drawing on strain theory (Merton, 1938), we treat truanting as a result of anomic feelings towards schools and the labour market. We recap the wider social and economic changes of the 1980s in the UK. Data from the two birth cohorts we rely upon are contrasted, before we present a theoretically informed model of truancy that incorporates socio-economic and political forces and anomic reactions towards schools and the labour market. We end by reflecting upon what our study contributes to the understanding of truancy and the "school to prison pipeline."

#### **What Do We Know about Truancy and Later Offending?**

Research into the relationship between truancy and subsequent offending has a long tradition in criminology. Studies in the USA by Shaw and McKay (1942), Glueck and Glueck (1950), and Reiss (1951) all reported associations between truancy and offending at a later age. It is believed that truancy may lead indirectly to offending in adulthood, with Garry (1996) arguing that truancy is a "gate-way" into later delinquency, for example. Research suggests that truants are more likely to use drugs and be involved in violence (Rocque et al, 2017: 596) and to engage in early sexual activities and gang membership (Dryfoos, 1990). It is accepted that feedback loops may be operating such that truancy may lead to drug use and delinquency, which help to encourage and reinforce truancy. Current thinking is that truancy will lead to offending via a series of "stepping-stones"; events and processes which leave the individuals involved more likely to commit offences as an adult (Rocque et al, 2017).

Various characteristics have been found to be associated with truancy itself. Truants are more likely to be male (Garry, 1996), more likely to dislike school (Attwood and Croll, 2006), to have fewer qualifications (Farrington, 1980; Vaughn et al, 2013), and to have lower IQ and "daring" attitudes (Farrington, 1996). Those from lower income families (Attwood and Croll, 2006), whose parents are less attentive, have conflictual relationships, or are disinterested in education are more likely to truant than others (Farrington, 1980), as are those who had a sibling with behavioural problems or who were separated from a parent (Farrington, 1996). School factors also play a part: large school sizes, failure to motivate pupils, and poor attendance policies being associated with truancy (Strand and Lovrich, 2014). Reid suggests that poor school leadership, inadequately managed school-to-school transitions, weak or absent pastoral support, inconsistent or non-existent attendance monitoring, and children's exclusion from school decision-making procedures all contributed to truancy (2008: 337–338).

Farrington (1980) found that truancy was associated with subsequent negative life outcomes (low status work, smoking and offending (at 18), and offending at age 32) (Farrington, 1996). Rocque et al found that truancy at ages 12–14 was strongly associated with problem drinking at 18 and 32; selfreported offending at 32; poor accommodation at 48; employment problems at ages 32 and 48; and criminal convictions at age 50. Truants were found to earn less and to have more psychological problems as adults (Robins and Ratcliff, 1980) and to have unstable employment careers, more likely to be divorced, and to have more periods of illness Kandel et al (1984) than nontruants. Truants were also found to have higher debts than non-truants at ages 18 and 32 (Farrington, 1996). Maggs et al (2008) found that truancy at 16 predicted problematic drinking at 42 and the quantity of alcoholic units consumed at ages 16, 33, and 42. To summarise, almost all of the long-term studies of truancy suggest that it is associated with a range of long-term negative outcomes, such as depression, substance misuse, offending, and poor quality relationships with employers, spouses, and offspring.

#### **Thatcherism and the Social Changes of the 1980s**

Let us take a step back, briefly, and remind ourselves of the wider social and economic contexts in which children born in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s grew up in. The legislation enacted during the 1980s, not just relating to education, but also to housing, social security, industrial relations, and the economy, had dramatic effects on the UK, both at the time and in the decades since (see Chapter 2). Between 1971 and 1985, some four million jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. *Social Trends* (Office for National Statistics 2007: 47) reports that:

Over the last 25 years the UK economy has experienced structural change. The largest increase in employee jobs has been in the banking, finance and insurance industry, where the number of employee jobs has doubled between June 1981 and June 2006 from 2.7 million to 5.4 million. There were also large increases in employee jobs in public administration, education and health (up by 40 per cent) and in the distribution, hotels and restaurants industry (up by 34 per cent). In contrast, the extraction and production industries, made up of agriculture and fishing, energy and water, manufacturing, and construction showed a combined fall of 43 per cent from 8.2 million jobs in 1981 to 4.7 million jobs in 2006. Manufacturing alone accounted for 81 per cent of this decline, with the number of employee jobs in this sector nearly halving from 5.9 million in 1981 to 3 million in 2006.

This radical restructuring extended into the education sector. Carlen et al argue that the mid-C19th discourses of juveniles being corrupted by poverty and poor parenting were replaced by discourses about pathological, feckless families that "produced" delinquent children during the late 1980s (1992: 254). Spending on books in school declined in the early 1980s, and there was a reduction in the number of preschool places for 3–4-yearolds (Timmins, 2001: 380). An expenditure White Paper (in March 1980) projected a 6.9% fall in expenditure on education between 1978–1979 and 1982–1983 (Riddell, 1985: 151), and staff-student ratios went up, contributing to greater disruption in classes, more exclusions, and greater levels of staff absenteeism (Gleeson, 1994: 16; Jones, 2003: 134–135). Timmins (2001: 424) argues that between 1984 and 1987, the government created a demoralised pool of teachers whose loyalty to the job was damaged for years to come. After the *Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act* (1987), the teachers' trade unions were unable to mount effective resistance to the 1988 *Education Reform Act*, which started the marketisation of schools.

Education and schooling policies interact with other economic and social policies. These include the 1980 Housing Act (see Chapter 2) and the impact of the economic recession, which eventually saw poorer households concentrated in the social rented sector and particular areas of the UK's urban spaces (Farrall et al, 2016). Because schools drew from local catchment areas, this resulted in schools increasingly bifurcating into schools which served relatively affluent areas and those which served those with higher than average rates of deprivation (Gleeson, 1994: 17). Unemployment, which was also concentrated in particular communities, rose from 4.1% in 1979 to 4.8% in 1980 to 8.0% in 1981 (Thomas, 2001: 52). It then rose to 9.5% in 1982 and plateaued around 11% (1983–1987). One of the things which the Thatcher government did in 1979 was to increase interest rates, which weakened the UK's manufacturing sector and produced a fall in manufacturing output between 1979 and 1981 (Thompson, 2014: 38– 39). In fact, the government recognised that their economic policies were so damaging that they abandoned monetarism by March 1981. However widespread economic disruption and the unemployment associated with it persisted for many years.

#### **Truancy from School: Trends over Time**

What was happening to truancy rates in the UK at this time? Carlen et al (1992: 64) report an Association of Chief Education Welfare Officers study which suggested that truancy rates were 4–7% in 1973. In 1974, Scottish truancy rates were reported to be 14% in Edinburgh and 17% in Glasgow (Carlen et al, 1992: 64). Carlen et al (1992: 64) report a slightly lower truancy rate of 10% in 1975 for schools in England and Wales (Carlen et al, 1992: 139). These data suggest truancy rates in the 1970s (around 10% of children missing some proportion of their schooling would appear to be a reasonable estimation, although there were fluctuations). The Youth Cohort studies (which only covered England and Wales) surveyed students for the last three years of compulsory education and suggested that of the 1987 leavers, 48% had truanted at some point during their final year of schooling. Figure 5.1 suggests that around half of the children at school truanted to some extent in the late 1980s to mid-1990s, but that this dropped to about a third by the turn of the century.

**FIGURE 5.1** Percentage Ever Truanted during the Final Year of Education 1987– 2005, Youth Cohort Study

#### **Analyses of the 1958 and 1970 Cohorts' Experiences of Truancy**

#### *How Many of the 1958 and 1970 Cohorts Truanted from School When They Were Growing Up?*

Both cohorts were asked in 2000 (when the 1958 cohort was 42 and the 1970 cohort 30) about their recollections of truanting at school (see Table 5.1). This suggested that 46% of the 1958 cohort had truanted "some of the time" when they had been at school,2 and of the 1970 cohort, 51% had truanted "some of the time" whilst they had been at school (Table 5.1).3 The percentages of those truanting "all of the time" had also gone up from 3% to 4%.

Truancy had, therefore, become more prevalent in the intervening 12 or so years. Both a Mann-Whitney U test and a chi-square test based on a crosstabulation table found that the 1970 cohort was significantly more likely to have truanted than the 1958 cohort (both *p* < 0.000).

#### **Explaining Truancy and Economic Change in the Life-Courses of Those Born between 1958 and 1970**

Our theorising draws heavily upon Durkheim's concept of anomie (1897). Durkheim used the term "anomie" to refer to the weakening of the social norms of society and the sense of "dislocation" which this brought about for individuals. American sociologist Merton (1938) adapted Durkheim's thinking to explain engagement in crime. Merton theorised anomie as discontent, which, over time, acts to generate deviancy (including crime) as a consequence of a society which promoted the goal of economic success, but which systematically blocked success to many members of society (Rock, 2007: 45). Merton argued that the pressure towards anomie was socially structured, being greatest amongst the lower social strata (since their chances for advancement were weaker). We follow Merton's "underlying premise that the motivations for crime do not result simply from the flaws, failures or free choice of individuals" (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2000: 10), but are related to the cultural and structural processes in which individuals are located and which they need to adapt their behaviours and responses. In short,


**TABLE 5.1** Rates of Truancy at School (NCDS and BCS70, Self-Report)

structural-level processes impede legal opportunities for social and economic advancement and motivate the use of illegal activities to achieve these goals or to simply express frustration. As a result, some resort to illegal activities to achieve success. Individuals may express their frustration at finding their routes to advancement "blocked" through criminal behaviour (Agnew, 1985). Governments, therefore, "produce" variations in crime rates through their policies which impact the processes which drive crime. As such, national and regional crime rates are the outcome of the social forces that shape and mediate individual actions and their context. In this way, abrupt and sustained changes in processes which drive crime, in turn, motivate processes (such as truancy) which are associated with offending at the individual level. Accordingly, we argue that the UK's economic experiences during the 1980s meant that the lower social strata were most affected by the social and economic changes unleashed by Thatcherite policies.

Our thinking is further supported by research by psychotherapists on individual loss. The concept of the assumptive world refers to those beliefs that ground, secure, and stabilise people and, accordingly, give them a sense of purpose and meaning to their lives. They also provide feelings of belonging and connection to others and, crucially, we argue, shape individual's and communities' expectations of the future assumed place in it. In short, the assumptive world is "the assumptions, or beliefs that ground, secure, and orient people, that give a sense of reality, meaning and purpose to life" (Beder, 2004: 258). In this way, the assumptions we hold about the world lead us to believing that our lives have a "knowable" structure. The world is assumed to be understandable, predictable, manageable, and largely benign, and we assume ourselves to be "worthy" and cared for by immediate family members and our political leaders.

Applying this thinking, derived from sociological structuralism and psychotherapy, we argue that accelerated and widespread economic restructuring produced a sense of anomie in school pupils and served to motivate truancy. It did this in many lower class communities as it involved widespread, longterm parental unemployment and the loss of career pathways. Careers which would, had they continued to exist, have helped individuals to navigate the transition from school to work (which itself would have provided the basis for independent living, marriage, and family formation). Drawing on sociogenic theories of desistance (Sampson and Laub, 1993), we argue that employment and marriage reduce engagement in crime. In this way, we seek to explain how and why economic restructuring provokes truancy, but avoid the tendency to only be able to explain *increases* in rates of offending (which plagued many classical theories of offending, Matza, 1964).

Because we are keen to explore the role of social and economic change in truancy, we use both the 1958 and 1970 cohorts to assess how the experiences of these two cohorts differed from one another. The 1958 cohort completed their education during the 1970s (so their schooling was unaffected by the social and economic policies introduced during the 1980s). The 1970 cohort was at school throughout most of the 1980s (at least until 1986). Our hypothesis is that some of the children in the 1970 cohort, as they started to become increasingly aware of the economic fortunes of their communities and started to imagine their lives after school, may have become despondent about both schooling and their abilities to secure a useful role in society and the labour market. This model is presented in diagrammatic form in Figure 5.2, which suggests that area-level economic restructuring and the widespread loss of jobs amongst those working in heavy industry and mining will signal to children in the areas affected that the assumptive world which they "thought was there, has gone forever" (i.e. add the, after "there"). This is likely to occur even if they are *not* the children of miners, steel-workers, railway employees, and those in allied trades and may lead some of these children to become alienated from school by their mid-teens. This will encourage them to truant from school. Truancy will be associated with contact with the criminal justice system into adulthood. However, whilst area-level economic restructuring will reduce the chances of being in employment in one's mid-20s, for those who are fortunate enough to secure work, this employment will be associated with marriage/cohabitation and will reduce the chances of being in contact with the criminal justice system in later life.

#### *Exploring and Testing This Model Empirically*

Area-level economic restructuring was measured using the UK's censuses, which run every 10 years. We summed the proportion of the economically active population employed in coal mining in each county with the proportion of economically active males who were unemployed in that same area at the subsequent census (10 years later). For the 1958 cohort, this meant summing the 1961 and 1971 censuses, and for the 1970 cohort, those from 1971 and 1981. For the 1958 cohort, the census data used was when the

**FIGURE 5.2** Theoretical Model of Economic Restructuring and Truanting

cohort members were in their formative years, aged 3 and 13, and for the 1970 cohort, the data used was again during their formative years, when they were aged 1 and 11. Counties were based on the 1974–1996 grouping, and censuses for 1961 and 1971 were geocoded from smaller areas to these same counties.4 Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show our area-level economic restructuring measure for the years 1961–1971 and 1971–81, respectively.5 In our models, *Economic Restructuring (1961–1971)* is our measure of area "economic restructuring for the area" (i.e. delete the first "area"). in which the 1958 cohort member was living in 1974. Similarly, *Economic Restructuring (1971–1981)* is the same measure for the area in which the 1970 cohort member was living in 1986. We chose data for those working in coal mining as this was a good barometer of industrial strength in the UK, whilst unemployment rates in the same area ten years later was a good measure of loss of such work. As such, the proportion of people working in coal mining is used as a proxy for employment in other heavy industries, since coal mining was frequently co-located with steel production and processing, shipbuilding, and the maintenance of locomotives and railway distribution in centres. In 1960 there were just over 600,000 people working in almost 700 mines, whilst in 1970 these figures had reduced to 290,000 people working in 293 mines.6

These two variables therefore measure change in local employment patterns, the rapid loss of male employment in mining and related industries for 1961–1971 and 1971–1981. Whilst the economy also saw the greater inclusion of females in the labour market, for many households this was (in part) a response to the loss of traditional male employment. Many such communities lived and worked closely together such that local housing estates were dominated by families who derived their household incomes from the same or interdependent employers. This meant that when coal production declined in one community, the livelihoods of whole estates were impacted. Figure 5.3 provides a map of Britain which shows the levels of areal economic restructuring using this measure for 1961–1971 data. The North-East shoulder of England stands out as an area which experienced economic restructuring, as does Central Belt Scotland, Central England, and the South Wales Valleys. Figure 5.4 uses data for 1971 and 1981 and highlights (a) that there was more economic restructuring generally (although the same four areas stand out as having experienced higher levels of restructuring) and (b) that these areas are also slightly "larger" in terms of their geographical coverage.

*School Alienation*: Both cohorts were asked a series of questions about their feelings towards school when aged 16 (in 1974 and 1986, respectively). They were asked how much the following statements were true for them: *I feel school is largely a waste of time*; *I am quiet in the classroom and get on with my work*; *I think homework is a bore*; *I find it difficult to keep my mind on my work*; *I never take work seriously*; *I don't like school*; *I think there is no point in planning for the future—you should take things as they come*, and, finally, *I am always willing to help the teacher*). When factor

**FIGURE 5.3** Areal Economic Restructuring Index Score of Mining (1961) and Unemployment (1971)

**FIGURE 5.4** Areal Economic Restructuring Index Score of Mining (1971) and Unemployment (1981)

analysed, these items produced one factor, which we use as our measure of school alienation at age 16. Higher scores on these measures mean that the respondent was *more* alienated. *Truancy* was asked about in 2000, when the 1958 cohort were 42 and the 1970 cohort were aged 30. Respondents were asked: *Thinking back to when you were at school, did you ever play truant, that is, stay away from school when you should have been there?* (The codes offered were those shown in Table 5.1. See Endnotes 2 and 3 on their validity.) Our measure of *Offending* was derived from two questions combined so as to produce a continuous measure (again the cohorts received identically worded questions). The first question was, *Have you ever been arrested by a police officer and taken to a police station since [previous interview]* with a follow-up (*How many times has this happened?*) if they answered positively. This ranged from 0 to 9. Employment in early adulthood (*Employed*) was recorded at age 23/1981 for the 1958 cohort and at age 26/1996 for the 1970. Marriage/cohabitation (*Living w/partner*) was asked about at age 23/1981 for the 1958 cohort and at age 26/1996 for the 1970 cohort.

#### *Results*

The model for the 1958 cohort (Figure 5.57 ) finds that living in an area which was experiencing economic restructuring between 1961 and 1971 was associated with higher levels of school alienation (*p* < 0.000). However, this was not statistically significantly associated with truancy at school or offending

**FIGURE 5.5** Economic Restructuring, School Alienation, Truancy, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1958 Cohort)

whilst aged 16–42. Economic Restructuring was associated with unemployment at 23 (those living in areas which had experienced economic restructuring between 1961 and 1971 were less likely to be employed in 1981). School alienation was strongly related to truancy (*p* < 0.000), which in turn was strongly related to offending (*p* < 0.000). Being in work at age 23 (1981) was strongly related to cohabitation at age 23 (*p* < 0.000). Being in work at age 23 was statistically significantly related to offending (those in work were less likely to have been arrested, *p* < 0.000). Overall, the model explained 3% of the variance in *Offending*. The fit of the model with the data was reasonable, but below the standard measures of acceptability.8 The data analyses suggest that the data fits the model moderately well, but that the economic restructuring thesis is *not* well supported (the model only explained 3% of *Offending*). In summary, economic restructuring between 1961 and 1971 did not appear to be related to either truancy in 1974 or offending between 1974 and 2000.

Turning now to the later cohort (Figure 5.6), we find stronger relationships between the variables than was the case for the 1958 cohort. All but one of the paths (that between *Cohabiting* and *Offending*) were statistically significant. The CFI was acceptable (.906), and the RMSEA was .041. Overall, the data "fits" the model well and explains 11% of *Offending*. In short, *Economic Restructuring* between 1971 and 1981 *does* appear to be related to (a) *Truancy* in 1986 and (b) *Offending*. The paths between *School Alienation* and *Truancy* and between *Truancy* and *Offending* are larger for the 1970 cohort than they were for the 1958 cohort, suggesting

**FIGURE 5.6** Economic Restructuring, School Alienation, Truancy, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)

that these relationships became stronger over time. Although being employed was negatively associated with offending for both cohorts, this was again stronger for the second cohort. Employment in the mid-20s reduced engagement in crime. However, those individuals who were living in areas which had experienced greater levels of *Economic Restructuring* when they were teenagers were less likely to be working in their mid-20s. This speaks to the continued impact of economic restructuring. For the 1970 cohort, being in employment in their mid-20s was much more strongly associated with lower levels of engagement in crime than it was for the 1958 cohort, suggesting that the role of employment as a route out of crime is contingent on the historical period.

#### **Discussion**

Using two birth cohorts, we have demonstrated that radical economic restructuring in the early 1980s (resulting in high levels of unemployment) affected those who were growing up at the time. The 1970 cohort were more likely than the 1958 cohort to disengage from school and start to offend, lasing into their adulthood. We found that the socio-economic conditions in which the children were raised could affect their engagement in crime as adults. From our perspective, the value of this analysis is showing that political and economic conditions are fundamental to understanding why and how people offend.

Above, we provided a critique of recent approaches to truancy and offending, arguing that current thinking has tended to ignore the structural drivers of truancy (and *changes* in these structural conditions). This has focused on theorising and policy initiatives at the individual level. This has the effect of pathologising the individuals and their families concerned and has highlighted attributes of school staff at the expense of a wider understanding of the drivers of truancy. We still find a truancy-offending relationship, but we point to the role of structural-level variables (i.e. economic restructuring) as a more powerful predictor of truancy. The economic change-truancy causal relationship is both strong *and* variant. This returns us to Mayer's observations (2009, discussed in Chapter 1). Almost all of the previous assessments of the "school-to-prison-pipeline" have relied upon *one* cohort. By combining two strategically related samples, we have explored how wider social and economic structures shape individual life-courses, and how relationships between key variables can emerge or strengthen over time. This has important ramifications for those studying and theorising both life-courses and criminal careers since many existing studies do not permit an examination of the role of changing structures and, in so doing, may be overlooking important components needed to explain key individual-level processes and outcomes.

#### **Offending over the Life-Course**

Having explored inter-cohort processes using the 1958 and 1970s cohorts' different experiences of economic restructuring and truancy, we want now to focus on the 1970s cohort and explore the causes of their offending in more detail. Both Hagan (1997) and Benson (2002) attempted to theorise how social and economic changes may alter social environments in ways which might affect offending over the life-course. Benson notes that very few criminologists have explored the ways in which the State (via taxation, economic, or welfare policies) can shape criminal careers (2002: 167–68). In exploring the concentration of poverty amongst the US's Black population, Benson cites Wilson (1990) to show how decisions made by politicians, State officials, and private individuals have helped to produce higher levels of family disruption and residential instability amongst Black-Americans than is the norm in the USA (2002: 182). These processes unfolded over decades and were augmented by a long period of economic slowdown after 1974, which saw many manufacturing jobs lost (2002: 183). These jobs (offering as they did a chance for relatively highly paid employment without the need for high levels of education) had ensured informal social control amongst lower class males. As these jobs started to be shed, inner-city areas started to decay, and crime began to rise (2002: 184). Similarly, Hagan (1997) developed a theory of crime and capitalisation based on a review of the changes in the US economy since the 1950s. He notes how economic restructuring, increases in economic inequality, residential segregation, and the concentration of poverty left some US inner cities with impoverished opportunities for building law-abiding lifestyles. Some communities have instead started to rely on drug sales, prostitution, and other illegal services as a means for securing an income. Such activities become entrenched as, over time, crime becomes embedded in communities' daily routines. Our aim in this section of this chapter is to incorporate an understanding of the role of political processes into the statistical modelling of individual criminal careers. Our research, therefore, adds to the literature on the penal-welfare nexus, in that we explore the ways in which changes in the social and economic policies pursued by the Thatcher-led governments led to increases in crime at the individual level.

Below, we present a series of related path diagrams, exploring the role of economic restructuring on offending careers (this time focusing less on school processes, but not completely discounting them, and more on familial relationships) to explain offending careers from 10 to 30. We then bisect these analyses by the levels of economic restructuring, so as to explore its role in different places in the UK. Thus we use longitudinal, individual-level data which has been analysed in such a way as to enable us to explore the geographical effects of economic policies. As well as speaking to debates in criminology, this chapter makes contributions to political geography and a wider understandings of macro-level economic policies on the lives of citizens.

In Chapter 3, we reviewed the economic fortunes of the UK during the 1970s and 1980s, noting rampant inflation, unemployment, and shifts in economic policies. The communities most heavily impacted were those most reliant upon heavy industry and manufacturing, since these were the ones affected by increased inflation (which harmed manufacturing output in the early 1980s) and then the miners' strike of 1984–1985, which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs in mining and allied trades in many communities, but especially those in the Midlands and the North of England, South Wales, and central Scotland (as the UK's industrial geography is an uneven one, Beatty and Fothergill, 2017), with the industrial base spatially clustered. All of these places had once been associated with mining and/or steel production and manufacturing. Accordingly, the national unemployment rate rose dramatically, reaching almost 12% by the mid-1980s (local unemployment rates would have been far higher in some communities, of course).

#### *Exploring and Testing This Model Empirically*

Because much offending occurs in early adolescence but is likely for some individuals to be maintained into adulthood, our model measures offending twice (once at 16) and once in adulthood (up to age 30). Figure 5.7 outlines our initial model. *Economic Restructuring* (which was measured as outlined above when discussing school truancy) we locate to the left-hand side of the model (implying temporal and causal precedence), and from it we specify paths to five of the variables in the original model (*Disciplined at School*, *School Alienation, Offending (10 to 16)*, *"At Risk" Register (at 10)*, and *Quality of Their Relationship with the Partner (at 30)*). We specify a regression path from being *Disciplined at School* (teacher reported in 1980) to feelings of *School Alienation* (child reported in 1986). The first of these variables captures the more serious forms of school punishment (being suspended or excluded, caned, given another form of corporeal punishment, or having a report on the child's behaviour sent home). The questions asked how often staff used those forms of punishment in general (rather than for the child in question). These were coded: "never," "rarely," "occasionally," and "often." Whilst this measure does not capture the child's *direct* experiences, it does provide us with an insight into the school's *approach* to discipline (an important contextual variable associated with school outcomes, Perry and Morris, 2014 and Rausch and Skiba, 2004). A child who directly observes or hears about severe forms of punishment will be affected by this general punishment milieu. Higher scores equate to more serious forms of punishment. *School Alienation* was as outlined above when discussing the

**FIGURE 5.7** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending

measure used in the truancy model. From *School Alienation* we specify three further paths: to *Employed (at 26)*, to *Offending (10 to 16)*, and to *Offending (16 to 30)*. 9 The first of these is a binary of whether or not the cohort member was working (full time or part-time, including those studying/ training, temporarily sick/off work, or looking after the home) or were unemployed (including the long-term sick). The first offending measure is the number of times they had been cautioned at a police station between ages 10 and 16. In order to measure the same sort of experiences between 16 and 30, we used data reported at age 30 relating to experiences of being arrested and taken to a police station going back to 16. We specify a path from *Employed (at 26)* to *Offending (16 to 30)* and one from *Offending (10 to 16)* to *Offending (16 to 30)*. The lower half of the path diagram models familial processes. We specify a path from being on the *"At Risk" Register (at 10)* (measured by school nurses or health visitors and based on school health records) to the child's report of the *Quality of Relationship with their Parents (at 16)* which is a sum of their answers to questions about their parents "treating me like a child," "not understand[ing] me/my motives," and "being too strict, bossy and having too many rules" (children could agree or disagree with each statement). This we also regress on to *Offending (10 to 16)*, and a further self-report of the *Quality of their Relationship with the Partner (at 30)* (a single item), and from this, finally to *Offending (16 to 30)*. 10

#### *Results*

Of the five paths from *Economic Restructuring*, three were statistically significant: those leading to *Disciplined at School*, *School Alienation*, and *Offending (10 to 16)*. The model (Figure 5.8) fitted the data well (NFI = .942, CFI = .958, and the RMSEA was .012) and explained about 27% of the observed variance. Of the statistically significant paths specified, the model indicates that greater levels of *Economic Restructuring* were associated with schools that reported using more severe forms of discipline (*Disciplined at School (at 10)*). This suggests that as economic restructuring took place, schools used more severe discipline measures more frequently. This could be because the children themselves were less well-behaved (and hence the teachers responded more punitively), or it could be that economic restructuring (independent of its effect on children's behaviours) increased the use of severe school discipline measures. Similarly, local *Economic Restructuring* was associated with higher scores on the *School Alienation (at 16)* measure (suggesting that economic restructuring was associated with increases in feelings of school alienation), and with *Offending (16 to 30)*, such that people living in areas which experienced greater economic restructuring were more likely to offend when aged 10 to 16. The measure of the types of discipline meted

**FIGURE 5.8** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)

out at school (*Disciplined at School (at 10)*) is associated with alienation at school (*School Alienation (at 16)*). Being on the *"At Risk" Register (at 10)* is also associated with *Offending (10 to 16)*.

Our analyses suggest that economic restructuring underpinned some of the (seemingly) individual-level processes associated with criminal careers. These included weakened social bonds with schools. Economic restructuring appears to encourage disengagement from schools. This model suggests that greater levels of economic restructuring were associated with greater use of punitive measures in those schools in areas with greater levels of restructuring. This was also true for alienation from school (i.e. those children living in areas with greater levels of restructuring felt more alienated). *Economic Restructuring* was also directly related to *Offending (10 to 16)*; those living in areas with greater economic restructuring appeared more likely to have been in trouble with the police more often when aged 10 to 16 than those living in areas with lower levels.

The model shown in Figure 5.8 cannot assess the extent to which the relationships between these variables were mediated by the *extent* of economic restructuring; we reran the model, controlling for the level of *Economic Restructuring* (see Figures 5.9–5.12).

We found that for those who experienced the lowest levels of *Economic Restructuring* (Figure 5.9), the *Economic Restructuring* variable was *not* related to other variables. This suggests that in those areas with the *lowest* levels of *Economic Restructuring*, it was *individual-level factors* that explained offending over the life-course, rather than economic restructuring (the SMC, the amount of variance explained, was 15%). We also found that whilst the relationship between *Economic Restructuring* and *School Alienation* was positive in the main model (Figure 5.8), suggesting that as economic restructuring increased, so too did feelings of alienation, it is, however, a *negative* relationship for those living in areas with the second lowest rate of *Economic Restructuring* (Figure 5.10). This suggests that in places that experienced relatively low levels of *Economic Restructuring* (but not *no* economic restructuring) children may have been encouraged into engaging with school (supporting earlier Scottish data on this matter, Raffe, 1986). This provides evidence that the effects of *Economic Restructuring* are mediated by the degree of change areas experienced. In areas with relatively low levels of *Economic Restructuring*, it actually *reduced* school alienation. We think that what happened is that, seeing some evidence of economic change, but not being overwhelmed by it, children realised that education provided a way out of local area economic misfortunes and engaged rather more with school than they may otherwise have done. The SMC for this model was .20, meaning that 20% of the variance had been explained. The model for the areas that experienced high levels of *Economic Restructuring* (but not the highest levels, Figure 5.11) suggests that *Economic Restructuring* affects offending

**FIGURE 5.9** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)—Lowest Level of Economic Restructuring

**FIGURE 5.10** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)—Second Lowest Level of Economic Restructuring

**FIGURE 5.11** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)—Second Highest Level of Economic Restructuring

**FIGURE 5.12** Economic Restructuring, Life-Course Transitions, and Offending (1970 Cohort)—Highest Level of Economic Restructuring

between ages 10 and 16 indirectly via *School Alienation* and being on the *"At Risk" Register (at 10)*. So where *Economic Restructuring* was higher, it may have demoralised young people and placed them at greater risk of harm. This model had an SMC of .18. In those areas that experienced the greatest levels of *Economic Restructuring* (Figure 5.12), economic restructuring was directly related to offending at ages 10–16, suggesting that children in the areas most heavily affected by *Economic Restructuring* were drawn directly into offending. Here the relationships with schooling and being "at risk" were not found. The SMC was, however, .47, meaning that 47% of the variance had been explained. All of this suggests that the impact of *Economic Restructuring* is mediated by the *degree* of *Economic Restructuring*; the relationship is not simply linear. In short, although when one looks at the national level model (Figure 5.8) economic restructuring plays a big part in explaining offending careers, this varied by the degree of restructuring in a local area, suggesting that there were geographically based intra-cohort effects at operation.

#### **Discussion**

This chapter has explored the ways in which the economic restructuring of the early 1980s affected the life-courses of the children born in the late 1950s and very early 1970s. We found that economic restructuring affected these life-courses quite dramatically; unlike the 1958 cohort, those born in 1970 were more likely to have truanted from school during their teenage years, which appeared (a) to be a result of the levels of economic restructuring in the area in which they were living at that time and (b) to "kick-start" their offending careers (in keeping with what we know about truancy and engagement in crime (Rocque et al, 2017). Turning to focus on just the 1970 cohort, in the second part of the chapter we saw that economic restructuring was a key factor in explaining the onset of offending careers, often working "through" other societal institutions such as families, schools, and, as they aged, employment. The additional models which bisected the analyses by the level of economic restructuring suggested that economic restructuring was an especially strong explanator in areas with *greater* levels of economic restructuring. Substantively this suggests that the social and economic changes initiated during the early 1980s (and which were only exacerbated by subsequent economic developments later in the 1980s) altered citizens' engagement in crime, especially for those living in areas which experienced the greatest levels of economic restructuring.

To this extent, this work suggests that the macro-level economic changes of the early-1980s (although, not those, it would appear associated with the 1970s, given the experiences of the 1958 cohort) were part of the causal antecedents of offending over the life-course. This is innovative since few have ever attempted to locate offending careers within wider macro-level structures or linked these to macro-economic policy and political decisionmaking (see recent developments in allied fields, namely, Payne and Piquero, 2020; Shen et al, 2020).11

Our theoretical position has been that the relationship between increases in unemployment in the early 1980s, especially in communities which previously relied on mining and heavy industry for their incomes, were the worst affected when monetarist policies were adopted in the early 1980s. The economic radicalism of the initial phase of Thatcherite policies created immediate economic problems (not simply unemployment, but also longterm and geographically concentrated levels of unemployment). Over time, and augmented by retrenchment in other social policies (see Chapter 3), the neighbourhoods in which those who had relied on heavy industry for their incomes became associated with crime and disorder. As we shall discuss in Chapter 6, the dramatic increases in crime witnessed in the UK during the 1980s (which, to some extent, the 1970 cohort would have contributed to) led to the development of a more punitive criminal justice system in the 1990s.

#### **Notes**


*School Alienation (at 16)* and *Quality of Relationship with their Parents (at 16)* would improve the models fit. Given that such additions are common in longitudinal model (Byrne 2016), we chose to include it.

11 However, these studies relied on officially recorded data (relating to arrests, convictions, or imprisonment), rather than self-report data. Such data is defensible if one is examining sentencing; however, it is unable to illuminate the respondents' subjective experiences (such as their feelings about their schooling or the state of their marriage and so on) and may be subject to biases in routine criminal justice system operating and recording practices.

#### **References**

Agnew, R. (1985) 'A Revised Strain Theory of Delinquency', *Social Forces*, *64*, 151–167.


Wilson, J. W. (1990) *The Truly Disadvantaged*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

# 6 **WHAT DOES RADICAL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE DO TO POPULAR OPINIONS ON CRIME?**

#### **Introduction**

While the rhetoric of Thatcher's governments was often authoritarian (Norrie and Adelman, 1988) and arguably inflammatory1 and although her party justice *policy* after 1979 was directed towards the reduced reliance on imprisonment and an increased focus on community-based penalties. Indeed, during the early 1980s, the "wets" (the liberal-minded conservative party members) occupied the Home Office and promoted restrained and "pragmatic" (Newburn, 2007: 457) policy solutions. Evidencing this approach, Morgan and Newburn (2007) note the dramatic decline in the use of custody for children and young people at this time. As detailed in Chapter 7, the 1991 Criminal Justice Act privileged a "just deserts" approach as a core sentencing objective rather than deterrence. Hay and Farrall (2014) rationalised that Thatcher was not preoccupied with crime when she entered office in 1979. Instead, her focus was firmly on the immense task of restructuring the UK economy. Notably, although crime rose dramatically during her tenure, it did not peak until the early to mid-1990s. In short, when Thatcher came to power, her government was not under pressure to "prove" their crimereducing competencies, and the Labour opposition led by Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock remained wedded to a penal-welfarist philosophy (Newburn, 2007) and challenged on matters pertaining to inequality and unemployment, rather than crime. conferences rallied on a neo-conservative agenda of "law and order," criminal

Still, penal politics in England and Wales took a decidedly "punitive turn" after crime rates—both recorded and self-reported—accelerated dramatically and peaked in the early to mid-1990s (a pattern replicated in other liberal democracies). Official data on property crime in England and Wales reveals a steady rate of growth for domestic burglaries from 1960 (150,622 recorded crimes) up to the mid-1980s, after which there was a sudden spike that lasted up until 1993 (1,369,584 recorded crimes) and a decrease thereafter (Office for National Statistics, 2012). Labour would thus need to reinvent itself against the charge of being "soft on crime," as the two main parties engaged in a fervent contest to be recognised as taking the hardest line on offending behaviour. Such a trend has arguably endured up to the present era; the prison population has risen by 70% in the last 30 years and is currently projected to rise by approximately 19,000 by 2026 (Prison Reform Trust, 2022, see also Annison, 2018; Barratt et al, 2023).

This chapter commences by asking what happened to public attitudes as the political landscape pivoted towards a neo-liberal economy beset by high rates of crime and imprisonment, and a ratcheting up of political dogma regarding crime (Farrall et al, 2009). We briefly review the large body of work on emotional responses to crime (fear of crime and punitiveness) before turning to an age, period, and cohort analysis (Grasso, 2014) to understand if public attitudes are influenced by the political environment and culture the respondents grew up in (Ryder, 1965). Our analyses will examine public attitudes gathered from multiple waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey (1983–2019) and the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England and Wales (1982–2012) to test if the long-term process of political socialisation (Tilley, 2002) played a role in shaping public responses to crime and justice towards two key issues, those of (i) public sentiments regarding sentencing and young people's behaviour and (ii) public perceptions of antisocial behaviour.

#### **Attitudinal Responses to Crime and Disorder: Approaching Emotions through a Lens of Political Socialisation**

In response to rising crime in many liberal democracies, criminal justice systems adapted in several significant ways after the 1980s; rates of imprisonment (Prison Reform Trust, 2022) and community sentences went up (Bottoms et al, 2004); sentences lengthened (Millie et al, 2003); the public became increasingly worried about crime (Farrall et al, 2009); and politicians fervidly canvassed for harsher sentences (Garland, 2001; Barratt et al, 2023). A consensus emerged on both sides of the political divide that crime should be met with a "tough" response, or risk losing public support (votes)—a call New Labour's leader Tony Blair took seriously (Driver and Martell, 2002). Following this "punitive turn," criminologists also spent considerable time exploring the relationships between popular punitiveness and increasing rates of crime and imprisonment. Time series analyses conducted in the USA (Enns, 2016) and UK (Jennings et al, 2016) provided empirical evidence that punitive public opinions were a driver (in part) of an increased reliance on incarceration. These studies demonstrated that the public undoubtedly recognised rising (and falling) crime and responded in a "thermostatic" (Jennings et al, 2016) manner with greater support for punitive justice policies, which themselves translated into increased patterns of imprisonment. The significance of these findings is that not only did they establish the *direction* of a complex relationship, but they also signified the potency of *public* opinions on crime.2

Indeed, criminologists across the globe have produced an enormous body of work in this field of research, often in relation to *fear of crime* (Hale, 1996), but also *perceptions of disorder*, and the various effects of *punitive public opinion*. For example, research discovered that fear of crime negatively impacted citizens' quality of life; crime fears were associated with restrictions on movement; the adoption of costly precautions and the encouragement of "flight" from deprived areas. Crime fears could also "soak up" and reproduce ethnic tensions, harm community relations, and erode the capacity of communities to exercise social control (Skogan and Maxfield, 1981; Warr, 1990; Ferraro, 1995; Hale, 1996; Sampson and Raudenbush, 2004; Farrall et al, 2009).

In a similar vein, debates around disorder or "antisocial behaviour" (as it is commonly referenced within the UK) have also preoccupied criminologists (Goffman, 1971; Wilson and Kelling, 1982; Warr, 1990; Harcourt, 2001; Innes, 2014). This work has identified characteristics such as the local environment, population turnover, and heterogeneity as influencing perceptions of crime and disorder (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Sampson et al, 1997; Rose and Clear, 1998). Scholars stress that both subjective and objective markers of the disorder can indicate to citizens the erosion of neighbourhood morality and stability, as well as the failure of the police and authorities to provide security and moral authority. Studies have located important relationships between disorder and psychological well-being (Weden et al, 2008), public confidence in policing (Innes, 2014; Jackson and Bradford, 2009), and fear of crime (Ferraro, 1995).

As this body of work became more sophisticated, it was possible for researchers to establish the long-term antecedents of these emotional responses to crime. Farrall et al (2009) addressed how responses to survey questions about the fear of crime incorporated both (i) recent and tangible experiences of worry and also (ii) engrained social anxieties. Similarly, Hanslmaier and Baier (2016: 295) suggested that punitive public attitudes could be explained by "the subjective experience of social conditions," which derive from a broad range of macro and micro experiences. Garland (2001) and more recently Barratt et al (2023) also identified how public calls for more intense punishments articulated concerns about social change and political sentimentalities, such as nostalgia.

The research above exposes the "long reach" that both crime and antisocial behaviour have beyond the individual event, towards communicating something more profound about social relations. An exemplar of this can be found in the seminal *Policing the Crisis*; Hall et al (1978) examined a "moral panic" over a dangerous new crime wave called "mugging," which the media said was disproportionately committed by young Black males. However, the researchers found no empirical evidence to support this street crime pandemic theory. Instead, they argued it offered politicians and journalists a receptacle to redirect public economic insecurities (such as those caused by the oil crisis, 1973) onto an already disaffected Black youth. Similarly, Garland (2001) documented how riots in the early 1980s in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds were linked in the media to problems of race, class, and education, which was particularly damaging to young inner-city males who became known "as a newly dangerous, alien class" (Garland, 2001: 154).

Such was the clout of the public's emotional response to crime that when New Labour came to power in 1997—replacing John Major—their manifesto insisted that "antisocial behaviour" was a serious social problem and made it a major policy priority (Burney, 2005). Despite the evidence that crime was falling, and had been since the mid-1990s, the elected New Labour introduced a portfolio of new criminal and civil interventions (i.e. the Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO); dispersal powers and parenting orders, see Crawford, 2009). Highlighting the replication of these trends in other liberal democracies, Beckett and Western (2000) argued that New Labour took inspiration from Bill Clinton's "third-way" domestic policies. Tony Blair, they said, wanted to emulate Clinton's "tough" stance on crime and maintain ground on matters of internal security. What is pertinent here is that as high crime rates had become normalised across the UK, USA, and (some, although not all) other western countries, it exposed the limitations of criminal justice agencies, such that governments either needed to adapt them or distract attention away from them (Garland, 1996).

As detailed above, there is considerable academic attention on the public's attitudes towards crime, from a variety of disciplines outside of criminology, such as geography (Pain, 1997), psychology (Amerio and Roccato, 2005), sociology (Sampson and Raudenbush, 2004), public health (Lorenc et al, 2013), housing policy (Rohe and Burby, 1988), and feminist work (Stanko, 1992). However, very few studies have explored this phenomenon from the perspective of *political generations* (Tilley, 2002). A political generation is fashioned when a cohort spend their formative years (typically between the age of 15 and 25) experiencing a particular set of political events or conditions and become permanently affected by them. For example, we might think of a "postwar generation" or a generation of "Thatcher's children." Members of these cohorts share similar socialisation experiences; their attitudes and behaviours would have been comparably shaped which bestows upon them a collective identity they carry into adulthood (Ryder, 1965). Accordingly, if the political generation one belongs to bears an influence on one's long-term values, it is conceivable that growing up during a period of high crime and high incarceration levels and a right-authoritarian government discourse might continue to influence one's attitudes towards crime in later adulthood.

A generational perspective is also useful for understanding the very nature of social change, since shifts in public attitudes often occur as older generations are replaced by a new generation with different beliefs (Franklin et al, 2004). However, this sort of analysis is hard to operationalise because it is a slow and complex process. Indeed, Dennis (1968) warned that political socialisation may be an important field of research, but it is also beset by a series of methodological problems (he identified no less than ten), including the slow process of political maturation; existing generational differences in the population and subgroup variations that need to be unravelled. So, it is perhaps understandable that work on political socialisation and public attitudes towards crime has not become more popular. One exception in the criminology arena is Gray et al (2019) who utilised an "age, period and cohort" (APC) approach to examine the worry about four specific types of crime in England and Wales. They found that the political generation in which a respondent spent their "formative years" was a significant predictor of their crime fears. Amongst the findings, they discovered that those individuals who grew up during Thatcher's period in office, when property crime rose dramatically, also expressed the greatest level of worry about domestic burglary (the poster child for property crime during the 1980s as the notion of "the house" and "the home" changed and was commodified, see Chapter 4). Likewise, the generation who grew up during the "moral panic" concerning mugging (in the 1970s) expressed the highest levels of worry about "mugging/robbery"—an offence which featured in intense public debates throughout the years of their political socialisation (Hall et al, 1978). In short, the crime fear narratives survey respondents were exposed to in childhood continued to show up in their attitudinal responses *after* they grew up and entered adulthood.

We continue this chapter with a brief overview of the methodology used to identify political generations and untangle this temporal process from others, before conducting two pieces of analysis in relation to right-authoritarian attitudes and perceptions of anti-social behaviour in England and Wales.

#### **Introducing Age Period and Cohort Analyses**

To identify the presence of a political generation (or cohort), it is essential to disentangle it from other time-dependent factors, such as age and period. Age, period, and cohort are three types of time-based processes that have well-grounded and separate theoretical bases. For example:

• Age effects: They are associated with biological and social processes of aging specific to individuals.


The analytical model we employ was developed by the political scientist Grasso (2014) and has been tested in further publications (Grasso et al, 2019; Gray et al, 2019). In an age-period-cohort (or APC) model, one seeks to separate out and measure age, period, and cohort effects, while handling what is known as the "identification problem" (Neundorf and Niemi, 2014). This arises because if two of the three effects are known (i.e. a respondent's age and period of interview), the third effect (cohort) is automatically known. Researchers employing an APC method must therefore apply several actions that "disrupt" this equation, which is usually handled by grouping the raw data along theoretical boundaries (see Grasso, 2014).

The strategy is suited to "slow-moving" macro-level relationships and allows us to test if one generation expresses attitudes that are observably different from generations coming of age before or after them. We employed it herein because we hypothesise that the pronounced shift to New Right politics in Britain (and also the USA, Stiglitz, 2002) which developed during the Reagan (1981–1988) and Thatcher and Major Governments (1979–1997), with its concomitant rise in crime and incarceration rates, may influence an individual's values towards crime and disorder. The approach towards generational analysis was first articulated by Mannheim (1928) and successive APC research has established the idea that generations socialised in different political periods can differ significantly in their attitudes and actions (Tilley, 2002; Grasso, 2014; Neundorf and Niemi, 2014; Tilley and Evans, 2014; Grasso et al, 2019; Gray et al, 2019).

In the following analysis, we ask the following questions:


We draw on data from the British Social Attitudes survey between 1986 and 2019 and the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England and Wales 1982–2012. These studies are both repeated cross-sectional surveys where respondents were asked the same attitudinal questions at different points in time (see Appendix for more details on these surveys). The longitudinal dataset of these surveys was built specifically for the purposes of long-term analysis (Jennings et al, 2015, and extended by Barratt et al, 2023) and includes rich individual-level data on social attitudes and political values relevant to Thatcherism, as well as all the necessary control variables over a sufficiently long time span to separate age, period, and cohort effects.

#### **Devising Political Generations**

An APC analysis requires respondents to be assigned to a political generation based on the period in which they spent most of their formative years (age 15– 25). Given the data at hand, we have devised the political generations based on key shifts in political direction from 1930 to 2010 in the UK (see Table 6.1). We begin with the "pre"- and "post consensus" generation, given the end of World War II marked a pivotal moment in the political and socio-economic conditions in the UK, which was followed by an extended political "consensus" (Paterson, 2008). From the mid-1960s, this "consensus" fractured, and hence our third generation "the Wilson/Callaghan generation." This era witnessed an emergence of alternative political parties, such as the Liberals and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, as traditional Labour voters became frustrated following a rise in Trade Union militancy (López, 2014). This period also comprised a slow but steady disillusionment with Keynesian economics and welfarist philosophies, which ultimately led to our next political generation, the Thatcher and Major generation. These Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997 promised to "roll back" the state and introduced a neo-liberal market economy, while reducing benefits for the poor, the young, and the vulnerable members of society (see Paterson, 2008 and Chapter 4). Eighteen


**TABLE 6.1** Political Generation Details

† This period includes the Conservative Heath Government of 1970–1974.

\* This period begins in 1965 given the general election took place, untypically in the autumn of 1964.

\*\* This period includes Blair and Brown in government.

years of "New Right" governance was then succeeded by "New Labour" who won a substantial majority in 1997. Following the lead of Clinton in the USA and Antony Giddens' (1998) "third way," New Labour redirected British politics towards an amalgamation of capitalism and socialism. While elements of neo-liberal philosophy remained in Labour's manifesto, the new government also legislated to reduce inequality and child poverty, introduced the minimum wage, and devolved power to new regional governments in Scotland and Wales (Paterson, 2008). The Blair and Brown administrations, thus, become our final generation. The generational groups in Table 6.1 therefore reflect not only the governing party but also the wider political ideology and culture of the time.

#### **Political Socialisation and Attitudes towards Sentencing and Young People's Conduct: Modelling Data from the British Social Attitudes Survey 1983–2019**

Our first empirical analysis relies on data from the British Social Attitudes Survey. The data was pooled from multiple sweeps between 1983 and 2019 and allowed us to allocate respondents to a political generation, based on their year of birth. Naturally, this data also includes a comprehensive range of personal and social characteristics which was incorporated into the modelling. We selected four indicators (detailed below) that have been fielded in the survey over a long period on right-authoritarian values towards (i) sentencing and (ii) young people's conduct. As the dependent variables are analysed in logistic regression, the response codes were recoded from a scale into a binary option, where a value of one indicates agreement with a high-punitive position and a value of zero indicates disagreement. See the following question wording and recodes:

*Sentencing:*


#### *Young people's conduct:*


In addition to the political generations, we include age and period to identify the APC models. Age is coded as a four-level factor (see Table 6.2), while


**TABLE 6.2** Descriptive Statistics Dependent and Independent Variables—British Social Attitudes Data on Sentencing and Young People's Conduct, 1983–2019

"year of survey" is included as a continuous variable to represent the period. Other variables we control for include gender as well as ethnicity, social class, age at which the participant left education, marital status, and employment status. These items are included in the model given their varied relationships with liberalism (age, social class, employment status); intergenerational replacement (education); and social ageing and structural position (ethnicity, employment, social class, marital status).

The complete APC model was analysed via binary logistic regression and the results can be viewed in Table 6.3. First, let us examine the control variables; women were more likely to express support for "stiffer" criminal sentences, while men demonstrated greater support for young people being taught "traditional values" and to "obey authority." Being of Asian origin, compared to being White, was related to a statistically significant rise in support for harsher sentencing and stern rules for young people. On the other hand, compared to those who were white, being Black was predictive of *less* support for the death penalty, but *stricter* expectations of young people on both measures (obeying authority and traditional values). Married respondents were more punitive across all items than never married individuals. In terms of social class, compared to the professional and managerial occupations, all the other classes were more likely to display support for harsher criminal sentencing and strict rules for young people. The age at which a survey respondent completed their education was also clearly influential; those who left school at 15 or younger were significantly more likely than any other category to report harsher sentiments on all four indicators.

Now, turning to the APC results—also in Table 6.3—there were some modest age effects, with the older age groups appearing *more likely* to support strict rules for young people. The effects for the "year of survey" (period) demonstrate that between 1983 and 2019, there were varying directions in which public attitudes shifted. Support for "stiffer" criminal sentences and concern about the loss of "traditional values" among young people *in*creased over time; however, support for the death penalty *de*creased over the same period, as did the call for young people to "obey authority." Notably, the coefficients for political generations in the APC models were more consistent. The results show that across all four indicators New Labour's generation expressed significantly harsher/stricter values than the two generations who preceded them (Thatcher/Major and Wilson/Callaghan's Children) in relation to the sentencing of offenders and young people's behaviour. The New Labour generation were also significantly more likely to advocate for "stiffer" sentences and the death penalty for criminals than the pre- and post-consensus generations, although these much older generations had stricter views in relation to young people; for example, the pre-consensus generation were around 2.3 times as likely to agree that young people should be taught to obey authority. These results provide clear evidence of cohort effects (Ryder, 1965) and indicate that those who grew up during the New Labour era had become *more* punitive and authoritarian in their attitudes towards sentencing than *any* other political generation that came before them. In this respect, public attitudes on sentencing are not only a matter of socio-demographics but also the process of political socialisation (Tilley, 2002). This may also shed light on why there have been inconsistent results on the relationship between age and punitive values towards punishments (Rossi and Berk, 1997).


**TABLE 6.3** APC Model for British Social Attitudes Data on Sentencing and Young People's Conduct, 1983–2019

\* *p* < 0.05, \*\**p* < 0.01, \*\*\**p* < 0.001.

#### **Political Socialisation and Attitudes towards Anti-Social Behaviour: Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales 1982–2012**

In this second exercise, we turn our attention to perceptions of "anti-social behaviour" in England and Wales over three decades. We acknowledge the political and cultural relevance of the specific term "antisocial behaviour" within the UK (Burney, 2005). As previously noted, in the mid-1990s under the direction of shadow Home Secretaries Tony Blair and later Jack Straw, New Labour sought to buttress its reputation on crime and punishment. After the watershed murder of 2-year-old James Bulger,3 Tony Blair warned that "We cannot exist in a moral vacuum. If we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos which engulfs us all" (quoted in Rentoul, 2001: 200). Here, he made links between crime, social breakdown, and individual irresponsibility. By 1995 New Labour promised to deal with key examples of "antisocial behaviour" via new Community Safety Orders, Child Protection Orders, and a new youth justice system (see the 1997 Labour Party Manifesto, quoted in Dale, 2007). Sim (2000) noted that a moral panic about the "anti-social behaviour" was manufactured by New Labour in a "spiral of amplification" (2000: 172) to justify an expansionist and increasingly punitive agenda. Likewise, Burney (2005) noted how the concept of anti-social behaviour became a staple of public and political discourse in the UK. Specifically, antisocial behaviours might include low-level criminal offences, but also civil problems, such as audible disturbances, and the behaviour of one's neighbours or groups of teenagers. Consequently, the Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003 gave the police powers to disperse groups of two or more individuals where their presence or behaviour had resulted, or was likely to result, in a member of the public being alarmed or distressed (Crawford, 2009).

To be clear, our hypothesis is that public attitudes will not *only* be affected via statistical trends in crime but *also* the manner in which crime was politically framed (Ferraro, 1995; Hay, 1996; Loader and Sparks, 2016). As such, those who spent their formative years under New Labour might be influenced by the political discourse on antisocial behaviour that became a prominent criminal justice policy. To support our choice of variables, we investigated the nature of UK parliamentary debates from 1910 to 2005 using Hansard. This data collates the Official Report of debates in Parliament and describes the number of occasions a key word or phrase was mentioned. We tracked the number of occasions Parliament discussed five key offences pertaining to types of street crime or antisocial behaviour (see Figure 6.1).4 The findings imply that from 1920 until the mid-1990s there was little discussion of the term "antisocial behaviour," after which it featured heavily in political debates and seemingly replaced mention of "vandalism." Indeed,

**FIGURE 6.1** Number of Debates in Which Key Words Were Discussed in Parliament (Hansard) per Decade 1920–2005

debates about "vandalism" began to grow from the 1950s before reducing in the 1980s. With regard to "mugging," the data indicates a slightly different pattern—one that began to rise through the 1960s and 1970s, before peaking in the 1980s. This is to be expected, given the aforementioned "moral panic" on mugging in the 1970s (Hall et al, 1978), the remnants of which lasted into the 1980s. Finally, government deliberations on "car theft" were less common than all other crime types; references to it did not rise until the 1980s (which also saw a moral panic about "joy-ridding" stolen cars), after which it declined.

In this section, we briefly discuss the variables examined and the dataset from which they were fielded. The data we use come from a merged dataset of the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) between 1982 and 2012 (Jennings et al, 2015). The CSEW is a repeated cross-sectional survey in which respondents are only ever interviewed once, but in which attitudinal and other questions are repeated over time. The collation of this material resulted in a dataset of over 440,000 individual respondents and includes necessary control variables (age, gender, victimisation) over a sufficiently long period to run an APC analysis (see Table 6.2 for the sample size across the political generations). To provide a measure of official crime rates at the time of the interview, we have also included one variable from the annual number of crimes for England and Wales (Home Office 2012, 2014).

Since 1982, the CSEW has asked respondents a series of questions on the sorts of actions that became known as "anti-social." The question wording and recoded answers are as follows (a value of one indicates a big problem, and a value of zero indicates not a big problem):


Table 6.4 documents the dependent and independent variables taken from the CSEW and draws on similar controls as used in the previous analysis to ensure theoretical and empirical coherence. The political generations form one of 13 independent variables tested, alongside several individual and socio-demographic markers and measures of recent victimisation. In addition, we include the police-recorded crime rate (per 1000 population) in the same year the interview was conducted. The CSEW does not provide a consistent geographic marker (to protect the anonymity of participants); however, we have employed an indicator for "inner-city" that is based on a population weight derived from ward-level information.

Let us turn now to the results of the APC analysis, which are presented in Table 6.5. As one might anticipate given the existing literature on perceptions of antisocial behaviour, females (compared to males) and people from Indian/Pakistani backgrounds (compared to white people) were more likely to perceive "teenagers hanging around," "noisy neighbours," and "vandalism" in the local area as a fairly or very big "common problem." In addition, those with the lowest education levels (compared to those with the highest qualifications), those with the lowest incomes (compared to the top 25%), those who were unemployed (compared to people in full-time employment), those who were married (compared to all other categories), and those living in rented accommodation (compared to those who owned their homes) all reported higher levels of concern about "antisocial" behaviours (in this case, noisy neighbours, teenagers "hanging around," and vandalism). As noted above, these results echo much of the existing body of work previously discussed.

Again, as one might expect given the literature, those respondents who reported recent victimisation were more likely to report anxiety about all three measures of neighbourhood problems. However, national crime rates followed a different pattern to personal experience of crime; not only were the odds ratios more modest, but also crime rates were positively associated with "vandalism," negatively associated with "noisy neighbours," and


**TABLE 6.4** Descriptive Statistics Dependent and Independent Variables—Crime Survey for England and Wales 1982–2012

\* The variable is police-recorded data.

non-significant for "teenagers hanging around." This highlights how immediate and proximate experience measures of crime are more sensitive to perceptions of local disorder than aggregate crime rates (Farrall et al, 2009).

Finally, we can focus on the APC results. In terms of age, the youngest group (age 16–34) were significantly more likely to report local problems with ASB than the oldest respondents (60+) on all three measures. The year of interview (period) was significant for the perception of teenagers and

#### *Common Local Problem: "Noisy Neighbours" Common Local Problem: "Teenagers Hanging Around" Common Local Problem: "Vandalism and Deliberate Damage" Odds ratios* Sex (male = 0, female = 1) .874\*\*\* .926\*\*\* .972\*\*\* Age category 16–34 (Ref) Age category 34–59 .956\* .971\* 1.055\*\*\* Age category 60+ .787\*\*\* .834\*\*\* .957\*\*\* White (Ref) Black 1.050 0.988 .937\* Indian/Pakistani 1.237\*\*\* 1.318\*\*\* 1.065\* Mixed/other 1.185\*\*\* 1.096\*\*\* .963 Married/cohabiting (Ref) Single 0.977 .921\*\*\* 1.001 Widow 0.725\*\*\* .863\*\*\* .799\*\*\* Divorced/separated 0.988 .953\*\*\* .942\*\*\* Employed full-time (Ref) Employed part-time .908\*\*\* .954\*\*\* 1.068\*\*\* Unemployed 1.162\*\*\* 1.072\*\*\* 1.150\*\*\* Education, retired, homemaker, other 0.906\*\*\* .870\*\*\* 0.999 Higher level education (Ref) A/AS levels/B-tech 1.055\* 1.214\*\*\* 1.181\*\*\* O-levels/CSE/GCSE 1.057\*\*\* 1.235\*\*\* 1.240\*\*\* Other/none 1.121\*\*\* 1.277\*\*\* 1.240\*\*\* Income—bottom 25% (Ref) Income—mid 25–75% 0.877\*\*\* .870\*\*\* .910\*\*\* Income—top 25% 0.599\*\*\* .648\*\*\* .672\*\*\* Total victimisation in the previous year 1.159\*\*\* 1.262\*\*\* 1.362\*\*\* Total recorded crime rate per 1000 population at the year of interview .993\*\*\* 1.000 1.016\*\*\* Inner-city (1 = inner-city resident, 0 = non-inner-city) .662\*\*\* .697\*\*\* .580\*\*\* Year of interview .998 .988\*\*\* 1.018\*\*\* Mortgage/owners (Ref) Rent 1.655\*\*\* 1.239\*\*\* 1.167\*\*\* Other/none 1.028 1.045 1.019 Pre-consensus generation (Ref) Post-consensus generation 1.463\*\*\* 1.461\*\*\* 1.421\*\*\* Wilson/Callaghan generation 1.770\*\*\* 1.811\*\*\* 1.645\*\*\* 1.955\*\*\* 2.012\*\*\* 1.693\*\*\* New Labour generation 2.223\*\*\* 2.296\*\*\* 1.985\*\*\* **Statistics** Constant 1.506 22.912 –38.686 *N* 422,680 422,249 422,033 Log likelihood 256,885 480,903 453,099 Pseudo R2 0.074 0.087 0.102 Thatcher/Major generation

**TABLE 6.5** APC Model for Crime Survey for England and Wales on Perceptions of Antisocial Behaviour in the Local Area, 1982–2012

\* *p* < 0.05, \*\**p* < 0.01, \*\*\**p* < 0.001 two tailed.

#### **142** Part II

vandalism, although the coefficients were modest. However, as already established with the analysis in Table 6.3, membership of a political generation was one of the most consistent variables in the model. Notably, the New Labour generation reported the most concern about all three forms of antisocial behaviour, followed by the Thatcher/Major generation. Specifically, the cohort who were statistically the most likely to identify three manifestations of antisocial behaviour as a "big problem" were the cohort who grew up when ASB was at the front of a political arms race. This finding suggests that public discourse has the potential to cast an enduring influence on the youngest political generation, as their early-life experiences become engraved on their perception of the world in adulthood.

#### **Conclusions: A Generational Model of Attitude Change of Crime and Disorder**

This chapter has explored if the concept of political socialisation (Tilley, 2002) was useful for understanding the development of punitive sentiments and perceptions of disorder. The secondary data we collated provided a rare opportunity to conduct an analysis that is not often taken advantage of in criminology—an examination of age, period, and cohort effects. The data was particularly useful for this endeavour as it contained the period of Conservative rule (1979–1997) and the numerous disciplinary frameworks that marked out this era of "law and order." Our results provide convincing evidence of a generational model of attitudinal change in public feelings about crime and disorder. We discovered that the youngest generation were *less* tolerant/liberal than the older generations we examined; the Wilson/Callaghan generation (born between 1945 and 1958) were followed by a generation who expressed increasingly punitive and punishing attitudes (the Thatcher/ Major generation), who were themselves succeeded by a generation (the New Labour generation) who reported even stronger punitive sentiments. Indeed, the New Labour generation comprehensively reproduced the rightward shift in social values that had emerged under the previous generation. Punitiveness had seemingly become a normative response to attitudes on (i) sentencing criminals, (ii) young people's moral conduct, and (iii) perceptions of neighbourhood disorder. What we detected in the data was a slow-moving "trickledown" effect; New Labour's children did not oppose the rightward shift in punitive values, but hardened their attitudes further (see also Grasso et al, 2019).

By separating APC effects (Grasso, 2014) and analysing attitudinal data over several decades, we can observe that political socialisation plays an important role in the formation of punitive opinions (Tilley, 2002). This investigation confirms that political conditions (in this case, a long period of neo-liberal governance, followed by a centrist shift from the opposition) can constitute "formative experiences" for emerging generations (Mannheim, 1928). How these developments unfold from here is an unfinished story; only time will tell how the British party system, the fallout from COVID-19, Brexit, and various economic, cultural, and climate-related crises will influence these trajectories going forward. APC analysis provides a powerful means to make sense of the past, but it is data-intensive and relies on the collection of pertinent data over a long period of time. Indeed, the data demands of APC modelling are one of the most serious limitations of this type of work.

A further challenge of the APC approach is how to make sense of the slowmoving or trickle-down effects that are only observable with a long-term perspective. Returning to the opening of this chapter, we noted how Thatcher's "Law and Order" discourse was initially harsher in words than deeds when we consider the domestic criminal justice system in the 1980s. However, the promise of greater control and stability was eventually a contract that the Conservatives were asked to deliver on as crime rates accelerated. Not least because, as we have demonstrated in Part II of this book, the enactment of Thatcherite policies in various domains was circuitously contributing to the rises in crime (cf. Cummins, 2021) alongside a heroin and crack epidemic that drove acquisitive crime (Morgan, 2014). This was a mantle that New Labour took up with an interventionist and legislative approach. As Driver and Martell noted, "there is a reliance on legislative solutions to what are presented as ethical threats. Whatever the problem – bad behaviour in schools, noisy neighbours, children on the streets in the late evening – New Labour seems poised to reach for the legal pen" (1998: 119). Not only did New Labour turn to legislation, but they also traded in the punitive public discourse, and their 1997 manifesto mocked the Conservative record on crime; "The Conservatives have forgotten the 'order' part of 'law and order.' We will tackle the unacceptable level of anti-social behaviour and crime on our streets. Our 'zero tolerance' approach will ensure that petty criminality among young offenders is seriously addressed" (quoted in Dale, 2007). If crime became a political battleground, New Labour emerged assertively at the forefront of the fight against it. Certainly, Loader (2008) reflected that crime at this point in British history became a "central organizing principle of political authority and social relations" (Loader, 2008: 399). The legacy here is that the New Labour generation, who were exposed to crime, disorder, and the discourse that surrounded it, have carried these punitive attitudes into adulthood.

Abramson and Inglehart (1992) have highlighted the value of exploring generational replacement, which they argue has had a major impact on the distribution of materialist/post-materialist values among Western publics. Certainly, our work points to the merit of Mannheim hypothesis (1928) about the influence of youthful experiences; we found that political socialisation can cast a long shadow over public attitudes about crime. It can exert an influence as individuals transition from young adulthood into middle-age and as new policy cultures become popular. This, we believe, demonstrates the value of criminologists developing a close theoretical and empirical relationship with political history and political ideology (Gottschalk, 2006; Enns, 2016; Loader and Sparks, 2016). Enmeshed in our narratives of crime, our perceptions of young people and our neighbourhoods are a set of heterogeneous components, that include assessments of our present circumstances, as well as our political history. Public opinion will react to various realworld conditions, but these sentiments will also peak at strategic moments in time. Clearly, political public sentiments do not move at a fast pace, nor are they an unsophisticated phenomenon (Pierson, 2004). The results imply that the New Labour generation had adapted to responding to the violation of social norms punitively. However, this development had its roots in the step-change that occurred under Thatcher's children—who were more likely to report right-authoritarian values than the generation who grew up before them (Wilson/Callaghan). In short, our results suggest a new intolerance relating to crime and disorder emerged after Thatcher came to power, but it was consolidated most strikingly under New Labour's generation.

#### **Notes**


#### **References**


Stiglitz, J. (2002). *Globalization and Its Discontents*. London: W. W. Norton.


Wilson, J. and Kelling, G. (1982), 'Broken Windows', *Atlantic Monthly*, 29–38 March.

# 7 **RECONFIGURING THE STRUCTURE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE**

#### **Introduction**

In this chapter, we examine the Thatcher governments' criminal justice policies. We will explore the extent to which the general tenor of legislation became punitive during the years Thatcher was in power and, more specifically, explore if this period set England and Wales on the road to a more punitive criminal justice system. Issues relating to "law and order" were topics on which Thatcher accumulated much political capital. However, as we shall see, her governments actually devoted little time to reshaping the criminal justice system in ways that resonated with her own beliefs about crime. Even whilst she was still in office, a number of commentators claimed that her government had passed legislation which would increase levels of punitiveness for various social groups (Wiles, 1988; Terrill, 1989; Norrie and Adelman, 1989). This is an opinion shared by others writing more recently (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 6; Faulkner, 2014: 89). However, as we will come to see, there are deficiencies with those assessments. In this chapter, we pose three research questions aimed at exploring if the key criminal justice Acts of the 1980s were indeed punitive. These research questions are as follows:


#### DOI: 10.4324/9781003328339-9

This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

We will explore not just those criminal justice Acts passed between 1979 and 1990, but also will extend our analytical reach to include the 1998 Act up to 1998 (passed by the Labour Party, led by Tony Blair). This allows us to assess if any changes in punitiveness survived not just a change of Conservative Party leader (from Thatcher to Major) but also a change of government (from the Conservatives to Labour). In order to make sense of the lasting legacy of her governments' criminal justice legislation for England and Wales.

Whilst there have been relatively few attempts to assess the impact of the Thatcher governments' criminal justice Acts, as mentioned above, some assessments were undertaken in the late 1980s. There are, however, various limitations with each of these contributions. Drawing upon with interviews we undertook with some of the key protagonists of the era,1 we attempt to overcome some of these deficiencies. For example, Wiles (1988) deals exclusively with the 1986 Public Order Act (in the context of industrial disputes); Terrill (1989) explores only four Acts of Parliament, whilst Norrie and Adelman (1989) focus on policing policies (as opposed to legal instruments). Our analyses of criminal justice legislation between 1982 and 1998 assess if the criminal justice system was becoming more punitive, in line with what might be termed a "Thatcherite instinct" on law and order (Riddell, 1991). Unlike previous efforts to assess Thatcherism's punitive impact on criminal law, we focus on Acts of Parliament (as these structure the legal environment in an enduring fashion), assess a large number of Acts (to more readily establish a trend), and consider those Acts of Parliament which were passed after Thatcher left office (1990) and after John Major became Prime Minister (1990–1997) as well as one passed by the incoming Labour government of 1997–2010. We find that whilst Thatcher "talked tough" on crime, the criminal justice Acts passed by her government were relatively benign, with the sharp move towards punitiveness arriving in 1994, after she had left office.

What might account for this gulf between rhetoric and substantive policy? We pose and answer this question in our final section. In short, however, we argue that there were a range of institutional and political impediments which hampered Thatcher's radicalism in the criminal justice arena and which are unexplained in the existing institutionalist political science literature. The rest of this chapter unfolds as follows. First, we more fully review the work by Terrill, Wiles, and Norrie and Adelman before outlining key criminal justice Acts from 1982 to 1998. In the next section, we commence with a summary of Thatcher's pronouncements on the subject of "law and order."

#### **Margaret Thatcher's Statements on "Law and Order"**

During the 11 years which she was in office, and during her time preceding this as leader of the opposition, Thatcher talked "tough" on crime. This was read at that time as implying that a more punitive approach would be taken. Lord Hurd (Thatcher's Home Secretary from 1985 until 1989), during an interview with him, said: "her whole instinct […] was to toughen policy, bring back capital punishment."2 Indeed, in her final election broadcast for the 1979 election, she referred to citizens wanting to feel "safe in the streets" (Riddell, 1985: 113). Prior to this, she had claimed that the country wanted "less tax and more law and order" (Savage, 1990: 89) and in March 1988 expressed the opinion that social workers were also to blame for the recent rises in crime as they "created a fog of excuses in which the muggers and burglars operate" (Riddell, 1989: 171). She also stated that she would never "economise on law and order" (Savage, 1990: 91) and was in favour of capital punishment (Thatcher, 1993: 307). Similarly, the 1979 Conservative Party Manifesto argued that "For violent criminals and thugs really tough sentences are essential," adding that "We will therefore amend the 1961 Criminal Justice Act which limits prison sentences on young adult offenders, and revise the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 to give magistrates the power to make residential and secure care orders on juveniles." Interestingly, and in a possible sop to the left of the Party, it also noted that "in other cases long prison terms are not always the best deterrent." These sentiments we interpret as signalling a wish for obedience to and respect of the law, and the desire for a criminal justice system that did not embrace penal welfarism to the extent it did in the 1970s, favoured crime control models of policing and harsher penalties. However, many commentators have pointed to the fact that Thatcher rarely intervened in matters relating to the criminal law or its administration. For example, Lord Hurd, in our interview with him (September 2014), said: "to my surprise, because of she had a reputation for poking her nose into everything; she really left me alone as Home Secretary," adding that the economy and the Treasury "were her two priorities really, and it [meant] that she didn't really have the time or the instinct to go too deeply into crime and the causes of crime" (see also Hurd, 2003: 349–372, 377–378; Faulkner, 2014: 68, 132). In what respects, then, have others argued that there was a clearly defined "Thatcher effect" in criminal justice?

#### **Previous Efforts to Analyse the "Thatcher Effect" on Criminal Justice Acts**

In the early 1980s, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher injected a heavy dose of [punitiveness] into penal policy. This meant being deliberately harsher in punishing offenders …

(Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 6)

Cavadino and Dignan's portrayal of the Thatcher governments as being "heavily" punitive is a common refrain amongst academic commentators. Of the previous attempts to explore the impact of Thatcher on criminal justice legislation, Terrill's is closest to our own (1989). Terrill explores four Acts passed between 1981 and 1986 (namely, the British Nationality Act, the Criminal Attempts Act (both passed in 1981), the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984), and 1986's Public Order Act). Terrill saw the British Nationality Act as attempting to make it harder for immigrants to enter the UK (which, he said, was aimed at reducing the number of young black males who might become involved in the welfare and criminal justice systems). Whilst Terrill may well have been right in his analysis, it is hard to see this Act as part of the criminal justice legislation. Terrill provides little evidence that the Act affected the criminal justice system. The second Act Terrill examined was the Criminal Attempts Act of 1981, which abolished the idea of "loitering with intent" (introduced in the 1824 Vagrancy Act). This Act had been used to arrest young black males under the suspicion that they were planning to commit offences (known as the "sus" laws). Terrill argued that this Act gave the police *more* discretion over arrest and that this would increase the arrest of young black men. Again, no evidence is provided by Terrill to support this claim. The third Act which he examined was the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. This was again reviewed in terms of its effect on the policing of black people and police discretion. Again, little evidence relating to the effects of the Act is provided. Finally, Terrill reviewed the Public Order Act, which he again cast as increasing the discretion of the police. However, as Terrill noted, "it is too early to tell what impact the Act will have on an actual public order incident" (1989: 452).

Norrie and Adelman's review (1989) was also hampered by a lack of evidence about what *actually* happened, as opposed to what *might* happen. Whilst they also explored the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the Public Order Acts, the bulk of their focus is on the policies adopted with regard to policing. As such they do not develop very much analysis of the legal instruments themselves. Wiles' review (1988) focuses on the Public Order Act, but in the context of industrial disputes. Again, he is unable to present any firm conclusions as to the effects of the Act on crime or policing. As such, the limited literature in this field is deficient in that in many cases it:


More widely, the extent to which the Thatcher governments were able to affect the changes they wanted has been the subject of debate within political science. Marsh and Rhodes (1992: 3) note, in their introductory essay to a collection on this topic, that the contemporary literature on Thatcher focused on the first term and tended to overstate her impacts generally. Additionally, it is important to note that the policy changes commenced in the early 1980s were unlikely to produce substantive outcomes for some considerable time. In effect and mirroring the problems, we detected with regard to the literature on the criminal justice legislation of the 1980s, the insights afforded by a longer term perspective were (understandably) absent. Our aim, therefore, is to explore not just whether England and Wales saw a trend towards punitiveness during the 1980s and since, but also to what extent, when, and why this might have been the case.

#### **Thatcher's Criminal Justice Legislative Programme**

In order to assess the extent to which the criminal justice legislation of the Thatcher and Major eras exhibited (and affected) a more punitive climate, we selected 11 Acts (all passed between 1982 and 1998). Our analyses focus on core aspects of the criminal justice system (such as sentencing, powers of arrest, and the burden of proof) although we recognise that there were also several attempts to reduce prisoners' rights to engage in political processes. For example, in 1981 the government passed the Representation of the People Act to prevent Bobby Sands from taking his seat in Parliament and extended this (via the 1983 Representation of the People Act) to prevent all people in prison from voting. We focused on "key" criminal justice Acts, with this meaning that each Act established new approaches to sentencing, levels of proof, ways in which "ordinary" members of the public or defendants were treated by the criminal justice system or which altered the nature and length of the sentences which could be given, or the ways in which the criminal process could unfold. The Acts we have analysed are as follows:


Faulkner (2014: 68) also selects many of these same Acts in his list of "legislative landmarks." These Acts cover 16 years and cover the period from Thatcher's premiership through to the start of Tony Blair's, allowing us to assess if Blair adopted the same approach as Thatcher and Major did.

#### *Operationalising Punitiveness*

Empirical studies on punitiveness have adopted one of two approaches to operationalising and measuring punitiveness (Hamilton, 2014). One way is to collect attitudinal data, measured at the individual level using surveys, on feelings about the extent to which wrongdoers are treated too leniently or too harshly. The other is to catalogue levels of imprisonment, length of terms of imprisonment, and such like. The former is the more common (Hamilton, 2014); however, we adopted the second of these two approaches since we are interested in the Acts themselves. We follow Hamilton's advice in using a range of indicators to measure punitiveness, including the use of mandatory sentences; support for increased police powers and resources; increase in post-prison release and community disposal controls; reductions in the control of police activities; increases in the possible length of prison terms; an increasing focus on victims; and limits to the decision-making of the judiciary and parole boards.

#### *The Criminal Justice Act, 1982*

This Act abolished Borstals, replacing them with youth custody (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998: 74) which had stronger post-custodial supervision (Burney, 1985: 1). Willie Whitelaw (Home Secretary 1979–1983) and David Howells published a short paper on criminal justice in 1978, and both it and the 1980 White Paper, "Young Offenders," highlighted the concern over the numbers of juvenile offenders (those under 21 years of age) in custody. Whitelaw, a "one-nation" Conservative, wanted to avoid custodial sentencing for young people by broadening and strengthening existing non-custodial provisions (Smith, 2003: 8–9). Whitelaw presented a "get tough" rhetorical stance in his statements to the media and in the House of Commons (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 372), referring to the idea of a "short, sharp, shock" for young offenders. He did not, however, pursue the idea with any vigour (Windlesham, 1993: 159). The 1980 White Paper included proposals for the introduction of a small number of detention centres with tougher regimes (Newburn, 2003: 197). The aim of this was to encourage sentencers to use what sounded like a punitive non-custodial sentence in place of a prison sentence, thereby encouraging the uptake of alternatives to custody (Ball, 2004: 28–41). As such, the aim of the Act was to restructure sentencing and penal institutions for young offenders (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998: 74). The Act also sought to move away from a welfarist "treatment" approach towards the idea that young offenders and their parents needed to take responsibility for the former's actions. Smith (2003: 8–9) claims that the Act saw a shift away from ideas of rehabilitation towards retributive sentencing, deterrence, and "just deserts." The Act also introduced Day Centres. These included a provision for courts to add requirements to probation orders (Newburn, 2003: 138) and introduced controlling powers such as Night Restriction Orders and a Charge and Control condition under a care order which allowed magistrates to indicate when children should be removed from their homes by local authorities (Burney, 1985: 4). Smith (2003: 8) described both these orders as "heightening the punitive aspects of intervention."

Whilst some worried that the Act would increase the numbers of young people being locked up, figures showed that between 1981 and 1987, the number of juveniles given custodial sentences for indictable offences fell annually from 7700 in 1981 to 4000 in 1987 (Blackmore, 1989: 165–166). This was due to the introduction of statutory criteria that Courts had to meet before they could pass custodial sentences (Blackmore, 1989: 165–166). However, in following the guidelines of the Act which required courts to only impose custodial sentences if certain criteria were satisfied, some courts were "imposing lengthy sentences of youth custody, rather than short, overtly punitive, detention centre orders, in order to ensure that offenders had the benefit of training" (Ball, 2004: 28–41). The Act however removed imprisonment for begging and for soliciting for prostitution (Faulkner, 2014: 89) and allowed some prisoners to be released up to six months early (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 372).

#### *The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984*

The roots of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act go back to the 11th report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1972 (Zander, 2013: 2). At the time, the Report was condemned as a result of the recommendation that adverse inferences should be drawn from a suspect's silence in the police station (Zander, 2013: 2). At the time, the Home Office felt that it was impossible to implement any of the recommendations as the report was so widely regarded as flawed (Zander, 2013: 2). In 1977, the Labour Government announced a Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure (the Philips Commission) "whose terms of reference were to consider the investigation of offences in the light of police powers and duties as well as the rights and duties of suspects" (Zander, 2013: ix–x). The Commission proposed that any new legislation governing the powers of the police should meet the standards of fairness, openness, and workability and result in the simplification of police powers of arrest and detention. The Commission proposed a new code of conduct "to ensure and safeguard the rights of individuals detained or questioned by police" (Morgan, 1990: 103). Virtually all of the Commission's recommendations were met with police support and were well received by the legal professional bodies (Zander, 1995: ix–x).

Those supporting the Act claimed that the current law governing police powers for criminal investigations was unclear and antiquated (Morgan, 1990: 104). Since PACE was passed, the conditions of detention and interrogation have been more strictly controlled and documented. Custody Officers (who are independent of the investigation) act to uphold the rights of detainees and regulate the conduct of those officers investigating the case (Morgan, 1990: 111). Several groups, however, viewed PACE as a serious threat to civil liberties (Maguire, 1988). The Greater London Council Police Committee, for example, saw the Act as "enshrining in the law the disturbing and growing trend of policing by coercion" (Maguire, 1988: 20) although also called the introduction of custody records "an innovation to be welcomed" (Maguire, 1988: 20). Baldwin expressed concerns that the Act may not "clarify the law, rationalise police procedures or effect a balance between the interests of the citizen and the police investigation" (Maguire, 1988: 20). However, he later concluded that the "wider availability of duty solicitors, the increasing use of legal advice by detainees and the introduction of new recording procedures can be expected to have some legitimising effect" (Maguire, 1988: 20). The PACE Codes of Practice were criticised because failure to comply with them is a disciplinary rather than legal matter (Maguire, 1988: 20). The content of the Codes of Practice has further been criticised for regarding the lengths of the time limits and the discretion left to the police to define exceptional circumstances warranting departure from the normal rules (Maguire, 1988: 20).

In theory, the changes PACE introduced to contemporaneous notetaking during interviews prevented officers from tactically manipulating the suspect into an admission of the alleged offence (Morgan, 1990: 113). However, concerns remained that such activities simply shifted to "informal" interviews (Sanders et al, 2010). Furthermore, despite the fact that Custody Officers ought not to allow visits to assess the possible strengths and weaknesses of a line of questioning, research suggests that some do (McConville and Morrell, 1983).

Whilst the recording of interviews *ought* to safeguard (in that "off the record" confessions are reduced), these are not eliminated (Maguire, 1988; Skinns, 2011: 123–124). In theory, suspects were to be read their rights, but this could be done in such a way as to suppress or confuse arrestees (Sanders et al, 1989: 59; Skinns, 2011: 9). PACE also laid down guidelines for the length of interrogations, including breaks or refreshments to be recorded (Morgan, 1990: 107). The accused is also entitled to a written notice specifying the charge(s) against him, which contains text reminding them that they are not obliged to say anything which may incriminate themselves (Morgan, 1990: 107), upholds the rights and freedoms of detained persons (Morgan, 1990: 109), and ensures that the rights of detainees are brought to the Custody Officer's attention (Morgan, 1990: 110). Whilst PACE introduced procedures to regulate custody and reduce abuse within the station (Maguire, 1988), evidence on the number of deaths in custody raises questions over this (Sanders et al, 2010: 223–228) An encouraging sign was that after PACE was introduced, the number of cases in which solicitors attended police stations to offer legal advice to suspects more than doubled (Maguire, 1988), despite police techniques to dissuade the sue of solicitors (Sanders et al, 1989). Research suggested a modest increase in the uptake of legal advice following PACE (Skinns, 2011: 112). Dixon (2008) noted that whilst PACE extended police powers, it also clarified and delimited them, arguing that whilst Custody Officers were far from perfect, the custodial systems were better with them than without them (2008: 32). Whilst there were criticisms of PACE, it is still considered an important Act in terms of protecting the rights of arrestees.

#### *The Prosecution of Offences Act, 1985*

This Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for England and Wales was created by this Act (seen by Lord Philips as an essential balance of the powers given to the police in PACE, Kirk, 2008). Prior to this, individual police forces were responsible for taking cases to court. The Act made provision for costs in criminal cases and imposed time limits in relation to preliminary stages of criminal proceedings (Newburn, 2003: 35), the latter being an attempt to reduce the numbers of remand prisoners (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 95). The Act's origins lay in disquiet about the police's role in prosecuting offenders (Windlesham, 1993: 126). The Act gave courts the power to award successful defendants their costs out of Central Funds and Section 20 set down the rates for the costs to be paid. As a result, the prosecutor could take into consideration issues such as the effect of silence and bad character.

#### *The Drug Trafficking Offences Act, 1986*

The main purpose of this Act was the introduction of mandatory Crown Court sentences for drug trafficking. Garlick (1990) argued that the Act shifted the balance of proof onto traffickers. This marked the beginning of a campaign to deprive criminals of the rewards of crime, which culminated in the Criminal Justice Act 1993 (see below) (Hancock, 1994). It had its origins in "Operation Julie," which resulted in the defendants being given long terms of imprisonment in the late 1970s (Garlick, 1990). However, this case highlighted the shortcomings of the forfeiture provisions of the day, which had no provision for dealing with the laundering of the proceeds of crime as a crime itself. Accordingly, the Act introduced a confiscation system for the proceeds of drug trafficking. This created heavier penalties, in that the High Court was able to make charging orders and restraint orders in anticipation of a confiscation order which would be discharged if no such order was made. The Act also permitted longer terms of imprisonment if guilty parties defaulted on payment of a confiscation order than were possible in the case of fines. The Act also shifted the burden of proof (assets were automatically assumed to be derived from drug trafficking) which led to concerns about basic principles of justice.

#### *The Criminal Justice Act, 1988*

The 1988 Act introduced a wide range of changes; taking a motor vehicle, driving whilst disqualified, and common assault were reclassified as summary offences. This reduced the number of people appearing in Crown Courts (Sanders et al, 2010: 546) and enabled "the conviction of alleged child abusers by allowing evidence to be given through a television link by a witness under the age of fourteen in cases involving assault, abuse, or sexual misconduct" (Boland, 1988: 124–125). The Act removed the requirement that unsworn evidence given by children was corroborated and that sworn evidence given by children be accompanied by a warning if uncorroborated. The Act increased the maximum term for cruelty to children and young persons (from two to ten years) and established that it was an offence to possess an indecent photograph of a child. It also placed the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme on a statutory basis, which gave claimants a right to compensation under certain conditions. The Act extended the confiscation regime introduced by the 1986 Drug Trafficking Offences Act (Feldman, 1989) and made hearsay evidence admissible for some cases (Birch, 1989).

However, it was for establishing three criteria to help decide whether an individual qualified for a custodial sentence that the Act will be remembered for (Thomas, 1989). If an offender had a history of failure to respond to noncustodial penalties and was unable or unwilling to respond to them, if only imprisonment adequately protected the public from serious harm from the guilty party, or if the offence they had been convicted of was so serious that a non-custodial sentence cannot be justified, then imprisonment was triggered. As such, the Act made custody a last resort for the most serious and dangerous young offenders (Pickford and Dugmore, 2012: 56). Douglas Hurd, who, as Home Secretary, oversaw the passage of the act through parliament, stated that he

gradually worked out ideas of my own which were to concentrate a bit less on the harshness of punishment and bit more on the rehabilitation of the offender so that he or she didn't go on release and didn't go out immediately and look to do the same act of violence or burglary again.

(Interview conducted in September 2014)

However, certain offences under the Act saw *increases* in maximum penalties (Thomas, 1989). This included Sections 17(2) and 18(1) of the Firearms Act 1968 (possessing firearm or imitation firearm at time of committing or being arrested for a scheduled offence) which were increased to life imprisonment; Section 1 of the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act (relating to cruelty or neglect of persons under 16) which was increased to ten years; Section 8 of the Company Securities (Insider Dealing) Act 1985, which was increased to seven years; and a new mandatory minimum term of disqualification of two years which applied in any case of causing death by reckless driving where the offence was committed on or after 29th September 1988. The maximum imprisonment for carrying an offensive weapon doubled to six months. Sections 35 and 36 of the Act allowed for "unduly lenient" sentences to be appealed (Cooper, 2008: 80) and allowed courts to order that the proceeds of the sale of property which had been the subject of a deprivation order to be transferred to the victim(s). The strengthened provisions for compensation orders meant that victims of personal crime were better catered for (Miers, 1989).

#### *The Criminal Justice Act, 1991*

The 1991 Act aimed to introduce a coherent framework within which sentencers' discretion could operate (Koffman, 2006: 281). Until this point, sentencers were at liberty to choose the sentences they made, leading to claims that sentencing decisions lacked consistency and coherence (Koffman, 2006: 281). The thinking behind the 1991 Act had developed over many years and was seen as the "high watermark" of informed, liberal sentencing policy. Although several previous attempts had been made to reduce imprisonment (which had been on the rise since the 1960s), these had not been effective. The Court of Appeal had attempted to provide clearer guidance with respect to the appropriate levels of sentence for particular crimes along with general guidance regarding which types of offences were considered to warrant incarceration (Koffman, 2006: 281). There was little that could be done to ensure that the guidelines were adhered to by courts. In 1988, the Carlisle Committee advised that unless sentencers changed their practices, the prison population would continue rising.3 The 1991 Act was preceded by a White Paper, which argued that imprisonment was "an expensive way of making bad people worse," echoing a sentiment outlined in 1978 by Whitelaw and Howells. It went on to argue that "more offenders should be punished in the community" and that "a new approach is needed if the use of custody is to be reduced" (Ashworth, 1992). One key argument made was that an offender should not necessarily be given successively more punitive sentences, but that any sentence should be based on the seriousness of the offence. The philosophy adopted was that custodial sentences should only be imposed when no other sentence would suffice. The Act created a series of new court orders; combination orders allowed courts to impose probation supervision and community service simultaneously, whilst curfew orders required offenders to be at a specific place at a specific time—the intention being to demonstrate that alternatives to custodial sentencing were sufficiently punitive. The Act also reformed early release from prison. "Short-term" prisoners could be paroled after serving half their sentences (as opposed to one third). "Longterm" prisoners could be paroled halfway through their sentence if the Parole Board approved but could be paroled having served two-thirds of their sentences. These changes were a pragmatic solution to the over-reliance on imprisonment by sentencers. The Act created a system of unit fines, which improved rates of fine payment. Suspended sentences were introduced (if the suspension of the sentence could "be justified by the exceptional circumstances of the case," Newburn, 2003: 171). The Act reduced prison numbers by about 7000 those in prison (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007: 115) and created a system for monitoring biases in anti-discrimination practices.

#### *The Criminal Justice Act, 1993*

As Rutherford notes, by the early 1990s, politicians were taking more interest in public opinion about crime (1996: 99). Public concern about crime was rising (Farrall and Jennings, 2012), and the policies which were adopted reflected these concerns and a wider Thatcherite authoritarian stance as crime moved centre stage in policymaking (Rutherford, 1996: 99). Against this background, the Act toughened penalties for young offenders (reducing the impact of the 1991 Act). More widely, the government shifted its stance on imprisonment, abandoning attempts to limit the use of custody. The Act removed the unit fines system from the 1991 Act, replacing these with means-related fines. Offending on bail became a mandatory seriousness factor, and there was an increase in some penalties. The Act not only raised the maximum penalty for an offence but also increased the starting points for sentencing proportionately (Turner, 2007). The principle behind sentencing remained, with the seriousness of the offence being the ultimate factor in determining the sentence; however, the Act changed the extent to which reference could be made to previous convictions. A failure to respond to a previous sentence should be taken into account (Edwards, 1994: 20), whilst being on bail at the time of the offence became an aggravating factor at sentencing (Cavadino and Gibson, 1993: 12–13). The Act appeared to increase those in custody; for the 1985–1993 period, the number of people on remand was around 9500–10,600, but rose over 13% in 1994, falling back slightly in 1995, and rising again in 1996 (Rutherford, 1996: 99). There was a 10% decline in cases brought to court for 1990–1995, yet the total number of immediate custodial sentences more than doubled from 20,600 to 44,800 (Rutherford, 1996: 99). So, although the increase in number of prisoners serving *long* sentences was lowered by the 1991 Act, there was an underlying pattern of growth which remained strong (as demonstrated by the 15% increase between 1993 and 1995, Rutherford, 1996: 99).

#### *The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994 and the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act, 1996*

Michael Howard (who became Home Secretary in 1993) rejected the orthodox Home Office philosophy that there was little that could be done to halt rising crime levels. In an interview conducted in September 2014 with Michael Howard, he said that:

There was a prevalent view among the criminal justice establishment which was that you shouldn't really send people to prison unless you absolutely have to. And they were reinforced by the Treasury which didn't like spending money on prisons. And so you had a kind of conspiracy under the Thatcher years to keep people out of prison.

He recalled that:

The first presentation that I was given by the officials of Home Office, they showed me a graph, and they said, "Home Secretary this is what's happening to crime over the last 50 years it's going to up with an average rate of about 5% a year. And the first thing you must realise is that it's going to carry on going up at an average rate 5% a year and there's nothing you can do about it. Your job is to manage public expectations in the face of this inevitable and continuing rise in crime,"

and went on to say:

I hadn't thought this through before I became Home Secretary because I never expected to become Home Secretary and indeed I'd never made a speech in the House of Commons before that on Home Office issues but I spent the first few months that I was in office as Home Secretary really listening to people and thinking about things.

Picking up on public concern about crime, Howard stated that he wanted to ensure that criminals would be held to account for their actions and punished accordingly. In a famous act of political theatre, Howard unveiled his approach at the 1993 Conservative Party conference, where he announced a "27-point plan to crack down on crime."4

The aim of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was to amend or extend the criminal law and powers for preventing crime and enforcing the law. Accordingly, the Act increased the powers of the courts (making it easier to impose custodial sentences on young offenders) as well as increasing police stop and search powers, reducing the rights of suspects, and allowing juries to infer guilt from a suspect's silence after arrest. This latter provision meant that adverse inferences could be drawn if a suspect failed to answer questions when arrested and then introduced something which they relied on in court. This change was felt to have encouraged suspects to cooperate with the police (Sanders et al, 2010: 261). The Act toughened squatting laws and prohibited bailing for those charged with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape, or attempted rape, or to anyone previously convicted of such an offence. It also extended police powers to detain young people after charge, by lowering the age at which they could be held to 12 (from 15), allowed those aged 10–14 to be given long-term detention for grave crimes, and increased the maximum term someone aged 15–18 could be sentenced to detention in a young offender institution (from one year to two years). Maximum penalties available for offences relating to fisheries, the misuse of drugs, firearms, and poaching were increased and courts were allowed to impose a custodial or a community sentence without obtaining a pre-sentence report. The prosecution's duty to disclose its case to the defence was reduced, whilst a duty on the defence to disclose its "case" was introduced. It also encouraged guilty pleas by restating a long-standing common law principle of giving more lenient sentences to those who plead guilty. The 1996 The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act had two aims: to "reverse the drift of the common law favouring ever greater prosecution disclosure and to force the defence to effectively participate in pre-trial process through advance disclosure of its case" (Corker, 2004: 6). The Act came about following various miscarriages against justice (which often came about from serial non-disclosures). The Act was also the Government's response to a number of proposals which were laid out in the Report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (Leng and Taylor, 1996).

#### *The Crime (Sentences) Act, 1997*

This was the last criminal justice Act passed by the Conservatives before they lost the 1997 general election. It outlined mandatory minimum sentences for serious offenders, such as residential burglars and drug traffickers. This meant that after an offender aged over 18 had been convicted for a class A drug trafficking offence for the third time, the court was mandated to pass a sentence of seven years or more. This created a "precedent for the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for just about any kind of crime" (Thomas, 1998: 83–92). The Act additionally introduced automatic life sentences. Since the Act, when a life sentence is imposed, so too is a fixed minimum term. This meant that Parole Boards could not release prisoners prior to the fixed minimum term. The Act also removed the requirement that those being given probation orders, community service orders, or combination orders consented to these disposals. The maximum sentence for the offence of indecency with a child was increased to up to ten years' imprisonment (which was the same tariff as that for indecent assault). The detention of a child or young person under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 was expanded to include indecent assault on a male.

#### *The Crime and Disorder Act, 1998*

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was New Labour's flagship criminal justice act. It created the Youth Justice Board in England and Wales. One of its aims was to improve the effectiveness of the Youth Justice System in terms of preventing, deterring, and punishing youth crime (as well as proposing orders to prevent reoffending through an interventionist welfare approach). It contains provisions (such as the reparation order and a revised supervision order) which represented the Government's support for restorative justice principles (Fionda, 1999). The Act introduced antisocial behaviour orders (ASBOs); aimed to "provide a more flexible means of dealing with persistent anti-social behaviour but without recourse to criminal sanctions" (Jones and Sagar, 2001), these proved highly controversial at the time since breaching an ASBO could result in imprisonment of up to five years. ASBOs were introduced against the background of political concern with nuisance neighbours, street thugs, and juvenile delinquency. The Act further blurred the boundaries between civil and criminal law in that civil court standards could be used in the criminal courts. The Act also abolished the doctrine of *doli incapax* (whereby those aged 10–13 could only be prosecuted if the CPS could prove that they knew the difference between right and wrong) and created a range of new racially aggravated offences which made existing offences more serious as these become subject to higher maximum penalties because of racial aggravation. The penalty for failing to report under a restriction order (introduced by the 1989 Football Spectators Act) increased from one to six months' imprisonment. Extending the philosophy initiated by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994), the Crime and Disorder Act allowed a court to draw inferences from a juvenile's failure to give evidence or to answer questions at trial. The Act increased courts' powers with regard to post-release supervision, requiring offenders to undergo longer periods of postrelease supervision if the person being released had committed a sexual or violent offence and if the court deemed it needed to prevent them from further offending and to ensure their rehabilitation (Padfield, 1998). Section 67 created the reparation order, which required an offender aged 10–17 to make specific reparation to their victim).

#### **Discussion**

Figure 7.1 summaries key aspects of the Acts outlined above. In the table's upper portion ("A)"), various non-punitive measures are listed. These represent the earlier, welfarist model of criminal justice. In the middle portion ("B)") are listed punitive measures. The very bottom of Figure 7.1 ("C)") lists the active dates for key situational crime prevention initiatives and policing directives. The dark grey shaded cells (top left-hand side) are those acts that can be considered to have been open to Thatcherite influence (since she


**FIGURE 7.1** Charting Changes in State-Backed Punitiveness (1982–1998)

was in power during key stages of their drafting or enactment).5 The dashed line running at about 45° visually alerts one to the proliferation of ways of being punitive which grew over time. Let us start by recapping the questions which motivated our enquiries:


The first thing to note in Figure 7.1 is that core aspects of situational crime prevention *started* in the mid- to late 1980s and that the non-punitive measures *ceased* in 1991. On the basis of this, the Thatcher governments did not witness (as some suggested) the start of a "toughening" of criminal justice. The Thatcher governments witnessed a reduction in prison inmate numbers (indeed they are one of the few to do so). There were also increases in postprison release and community controls, increases in some sentence lengths, changes to the burden of proof, and other measures that could reasonably be read as increasing punitiveness during this time too. However, it was not until 1993 that dramatic increases in punitive measures, such as repeated increases in sentence lengths, extended mandatory sentences, and changes to case disclosure, became more frequent. A such, 1993, not 1979 or 1982, represents the structural break in terms of the tenor of the criminal justice system.

A number of overall trends can be detected from this legislation. Whilst the 1982 Act did *not* bring about a radical recasting of the criminal justice system along more punitive lines, the 1982 Act was part of a wider "toughening" of the rhetoric around criminal justice. Nevertheless, one can see (in the creation of the Night Restriction Order and the Charge and Control conditions) the start of a more punitive approach. What may be key here is the development of rhetoric around the "toughening" of the criminal justice system. So, whilst 1993 represented a structural break, it was not a completely "clean" break; some of what emerged from that point drew heavily on past ideas (the answer to our second question).

Drilling down into the specific trends which can be identified (P1 to P8 in Figure 7.1), a number of more nuances can be picked out. We see, for example (P1), that the desire to limit the use of imprisonment was present in many Acts prior to 1993. This was a cornerstone of both the Home Office's philosophy and the paternalist (i.e. "wet") wing of the Conservative Party philosophy (Whitelaw and Howells, 1978, most obviously). This was an idea firmly rooted in sentencing policies unto 1993 (Loader, 2006). The 1982 and 1991 Acts both appeared to have reduced imprisonment (if not to the degree desired). In any case, these Acts did not reflect the "get tough" Thatcherite rhetoric on law and order. As Matthews notes (2005: 190), the Thatcher governments improved prison conditions for inmates, as well as putting fewer people in prison. Whilst one might argue that the decrease in inmates was a realpolitik response to the costs of the criminal justice system, this is harder to maintain with regard to prison conditions. In any case, the suggestion that reducing the number of prisoners was done for economic reasons seems unlikely; political objectives are not always tempered by economic constraints. Of course, as well as claiming that she would never economise on law and order, Thatcher's government raised the pay of police officers, it must be remembered. To defend the desire to limit imprisonment, successive Acts attempted to make community sentences "tougher" (P2). In short, rhetorical "toughness" was used to mask the Home Office's wider objective of reducing imprisonment.

The third path (P3) relates to the right to silence. This was significantly reduced after 1993. As noted above, debates about suspects' right to silence had been raised in the 1972 report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee (Zander, 2013: 2). This Report, however, had been condemned on the basis of its recommendation that adverse inferences should be drawn from a suspect's silence (Zander, 2013: 2), and the Home Office decided that it was impossible to implement any of the report's recommendations has it had been widely regarded as flawed (Zander, 2013: 2). The questioning of the right to silence was part of a wider pre-Thatcherite debate, then, but one which re-emerged during the 1980s and the increasingly tough rhetoric around law and order. It was not until the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, however, that juries could draw inferences from a suspect's silence (Sanders et al, 2010: 19). For some, this was an attempt to undo some of the rights gained from PACE.

The fourth and fifth paths (P4 and P5) relate to increases in sentence lengths and the use of mandatory sentences. These have their origins in the Drug Trafficking Offences Act (1986) and were extended in various Acts, especially from 1993. The Crime (Sentences) Act (1997) created a more punitive system; it introduced maxima and minima sentences for certain offences and their subsequent repetition (Robson, 2010). In general, the policies introduced between 1992 and 1997 appealed to increasing populism (Edwards, 2010). Not unrelatedly, there was a trend towards increased youth imprisonment (P6). William Whitelaw had been opposed to such a move in the early 1980s but was no longer a Cabinet member by the 1990s. The seventh path (P7) relates to changes to the duty of disclosure. This has shifted from the prosecution needing to disclose its case towards the defence needing to reciprocate. This again is likely to make conviction more likely.

The final path (P8) captures the developments in section C of Figure 7.1. These are the active years of several situational crime prevention measures. Neighbourhood watch schemes started in 1982 and in March of that year, Whitelaw set up an inter-departmental working group on crime prevention. In 1984, the Home Office established its Crime Prevention Unit, and crime prevention initiatives started to be rolled out (their roots can be traced back to the 1950s). Home Circular 8/84 promoted interagency working between various branches of the criminal justice system and local authorities, and the Five Towns Initiative started in late 1985, lasting until 1987. The Kirkholt Project started in late 1985 and lasted until late 1989 and in part inspired the Safer Cities programme. The Kirkholt and Safer Cities programmes included *both* social and situational crime prevention activities. However, as Gilling (1994: 244) and Faulkner (2001: 279) note, these two strands were difficult to reconcile with each other, not least of all because the Conservative government was reluctance to admit the social and economic basis of crime (Faulkner, 2001: 279). In 1986 the Prime Minister herself chaired a ministerial group on crime prevention, highlighting the importance of crime (and situational crime prevention) to the political agenda at this time. Both Crime Stoppers and Crime Concern started in 1988, and CCTV schemes (a form of situational crime prevention) started to gather momentum around 1994 (Fyfe and Bannister, 1996). The Home Office's car theft index was first published in 1992 (Hope, 2009: 51), although car manufacturers were starting to build alarms into new cars from 1985 (Farrell and Brown, 2016). However, as O'Malley notes, the argument that situational crime prevention "worked" was not well supported at the time that policy commitments to pursue it were taken: "The evidence [on SCP] is not sufficiently powerful to explain the rapid take-up of strategies" (O'Malley, 1994: 284–285). However, SCP's focus on the *individuallevel* causes of crime rather than on the *structural causes* resonated with the politics of the Conservatives at this time. Offending was a rational action taken when the right opportunities presented themselves, and as such the solution was to limit the occurrence of such opportunities. This, of course, also explains the attempts to make the "costs" of crime greater by increasing sentence lengths (P4).

In 1994, Michael Howard (then Home Secretary) issued a statutory notice to the police (no. 2678). This directed them to tackle offending.6 Then, in 1998, Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw issued a further statutory notice (no. 216) which pursued a similar objective.7 These represent both Howard and Straw's desires to "get tough" on crime. These had the effect of encouraging the police to arrest "the usual suspects" (i.e. those disproportionately drawn from the young, males, ethnic minorities, and who spent more time on the streets or who were living on the streets). These developments had the effect of driving up the rate of incarceration (Figure 7.2).

**FIGURE 7.2** Incarceration Rate (England and Wales, 1961–2006). The incarceration rate is equal to the prison population for England and Wales divided by the number of convictions for indictable offences (not including motoring offences). Data on the number of convictions is taken from Mitchell (2003) and *Annual Abstract of Statistics* and data on the prison population is Home Office data.

As we saw in Chapter 3, this policy fell disproportionately on those in their late teens to late 20s (who were likely to be amongst the targets for policing activities); those who were in their mid- to late 30s tended to be out drinking heavily in cities centres and were less likely to be targeted by the police.

So whilst the Thatcher governments were *indeed* ideationally punitive from 1979 (see her quotes above), that radicalism did not translate into substantive legislative change. During this time Thatcher was saying one thing about criminal justice but doing a very different thing. That is perhaps not so difficult to explain; ideational radicalism invariably precedes policy and institutional radicalism (Hay, 2002, 2015). Secondly, throughout this period, the Conservatives' "ownership" of the delivery of punitive criminal justice policies (even if it were something of a myth) was unchallenged. It was only with the modernisation of Labour and their toughening approach to law and order during Tony Blair's time as Shadow Home Secretary that this lead started to be eroded. By that time, however, the Conservatives were becoming substantively tough on crime (matching their punitive rhetoric). Up until this point, the Thatcher governments' priorities lay elsewhere (the economy, housing, industrial relations, and social security spending, for example). These were more important priorities which were much more closely implicated in their future electoral fortunes. It was only after the "core" Thatcherite policy arena had been attended to that other policy fields (schooling and criminal justice, for example) could be tackled. And by that time, with crime rates rising at an alarming rate, and with a much more concerted challenge from the opposition, they had much more need to do so.

One pressing question which emerges from our analyses is why Thatcher did not embark on a more radical recasting of the criminal justice system along more punitive lines earlier in her time as prime minister. Despite the rhetorical radicalism, there was no legislation on crime in the first two sessions of Parliament after 1979 (Windlesham, 1993: 152). Instead, Thatcher used TV programmes to speak out on individual sentences, reinforcing the "authoritarian populist" tones that had paid dividends during the campaign itself and consolidating the party's lead in the polls on the issue (Loader, 2006: 574). The effect of this served to mask an underlying policy continuity with early policies in this area, such as the 1982 Criminal Justice Act. The 1982 Act was based on ideas originally put forward under the previous administration (Faulkner 2001: 110), and which were essentially liberal in tone (Windlesham, 1993: 170). It was not until the early 1990s that criminal When it came, the transition was sharp with a clear departure from the preexisting consensus within whose terms both parties had sought to limit the size of the prison population (Newburn, 2007: 434). However criminologists have approached the question, they have found it very hard to see the policy record of successive Thatcher governments as matching the rhetorical radicalism of their law and order discourse (Loader, 2006: 577). So, why is this gulf between rhetoric and legislative action? Why *wasn't* law and order (a clear, obvious, and explicit target of the Thatcherite instinct) acted upon in *policy terms* during her period in office? Why, given the symbolic and discursive significance of crime and law and order to Thatcherism, was radical reform left to the Major government to implement? justice policies started to become staunchly infused with New Right thinking.

Our argument is that there were a range of other institutional and political impediments to radicalism in the criminal justice arena which were not anticipated in the existing institutionalist political science literature. Amongst these we would point to:


Key to understanding the impact of any administration is the recognition that the "old order" will continue to hold sway for some time. This we see for much of Thatcher's time in office: the welfare state expanded (initially) and education and crime policies largely remained as they had been for some time. Even into the late 1980s, crime policies and legislation were still largely inspired by ideas first developed in the mid-1970s (Faulkner 2001: 110). The Home Office "liberal elite" who steered much of criminal justice policy throughout this period found ways of weathering the storm of Thatcherism (Loader, 2006: 577). Ironically, then, it is really only *after* Thatcher leaves office that we begin to see the kinds of radical changes in criminal justice policy which warrant the label "Thatcherite." The endurance of the "old order" was partly maintained by people in key positions within Thatcher's governments. But it was also maintained by the slow-moving nature of civil service structures. These quite clearly hindered her administration at times and certainly took time to control and master. But even in the absence of such institutionalised opposition, Thatcher would have needed to share power with the "wets" in order to maintain party unity. Of the four big offices of state, she occupied one herself and needed a like-minded thinker in the Treasury. This left her little choice (at least to start with) other than to offer the Home Office and the Foreign Office to members of the old paternalist wing of the party.

That the timing of "Thatcherism," then, did not map neatly onto the period when she was either leader of the Tory Party or Prime Minister ought to surprise no one (see also Hay, 1996; Heffernan, 2000; Kerr, 2001). Thatcher was not surrounded by loyalists; the "real Thatcherites" came *after* her departure from office. To suggest that only the period 1979–1990 can be seen as "Thatcherite" ignores the ways in which a political legacy works. It is typically a politician's followers (temporally as well as ideologically) who are best placed to enact some of the reforms the former articulated the need for. This is what happened in Thatcher's case; she inspired a series of "post-Thatcher Thatcherites." She was fortunate that John Major won both the leadership contest and the 1992 General Election since these "second generation Thatcherites" were able to radicalise a series of policy domains, including criminal justice, between 1990 and 1997; domains that her governments had left largely unaltered.

#### **Conclusion**

The 1980s were a crucible for the ideas which were subsequently to come to shape criminal justice policy in England and Wales. In the late 1980s, the Home Office started to develop its response to rising crime (based on addressing the concerns of citizens and target-hardening, see section C of Figure 7.1). After 1993, the stance changed, and legislative action which more thoroughly reflected New Right thinking on the causes of crime was initiated. During this era, ideas about how to tackle crime were placed on a particular ideological pathway which has become difficult to change since. With crime rising dramatically in the late 1980s, the growing inadequacy of criminal justice policies was sufficient to lead to media and public attention. Policymakers, due to growing public concerns about crime, reacted, causing a shift in the policy equilibrium. As such, the 1980s saw a number of previously unremarkable Home Office policy goals (such as reducing imprisonment) run headlong into dramatic rises in crime which made some of these vulnerable to being challenged with the ideological framework developed as part of Thatcherism. The idea that prison was an expensive way of making offenders worse initially survived as the ideological and policy attention was on the economy, industrial relations, housing, and social security initiatives. As popular concern about crime was first charted and then recognised to be rising quite dramatically, the result of a new institution (the British Crime Survey and various local versions of this), the liberal stance on imprisonment started to come under pressure. In order to divert people away from prison, community disposals needed to be made to sound sufficiently tough, and in so doing tough rhetoric was given a further boost. When the idea of reducing imprisonment came to be questioned (by Howard), the discourse of "tough" responses to crime had been established and went unquestioned and unchallenged by the opposition party (who started to engage in their own rhetoric of toughness under Blair), thus making what was possible to imagine as criminal justice policy narrowly punitive (Newburn, 2007). Howard's appointment as Home Secretary was therefore a critical moment; an outsider at the Home Office, he had not been indoctrinated into the Home Office's approach to crime (it would always go up) or imprisonment (it ought to be used as a last resort). In this respect, Howard's appointment as Home Secretary was akin to the idea of a "critical nomination" (Robinson, 2013). For the first time, the Home Office was led by an avowedly Thatcherite Home Secretary. Prior to this, the post had been held for long periods by paternalists or non-Thatcherites (such as Whitelaw, Hurd, or Clarke) or by Thatcherites only briefly (Waddington). After that point, with crime a political issue on which the Labour Party was developing their portfolio, the post was held by a series of Home Secretaries who sought to extend the general tenor of the approach adopted by Howard. Given the findings of the British Crime Survey, it is hardly surprising that politicians of both main parties sought to focus their attention on being seen to be "tough" on crime.

Sanders et al (2010: 19) and colleagues argue that in the period since 1997 "Labour government … has dismantled suspects' rights and increased police powers at an even greater rate" (than the Criminal Justice and Public Order, Criminal Procedure and Investigations and Police Acts of 1994, 1996, and 1997). Emma Bell (2013) provides a good summary of these developments; the prison population rose by 58% between 1995 and 2012, due in part to lengthening prison sentences and the use of indeterminate sentences brought in by the 2003 Criminal Justice Act. Further mandatory minimum sentences were created by the 2003 Act and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (in 2012). Additional contributory factors include the limitation of parole for many and the trend towards recalling or breaching those who do not comply with parole requirements or community sentences (Bell, 2013: 63).

The Acts we have focused on operated in a number of ways to establish and then promote path-dependent processes with regard to the criminal justice system. Some Acts strengthened earlier provisions (such as those aimed at limiting imprisonment prior to 1993), whilst others extended a philosophy introduced with regard to one crime type to others (such as the introduction of mandatory sentences in 1986 which was later extended by the 1993 and 1997 Acts), or incrementally reinforced an ideal (such as the questioning and amendment of the principle of the right to silence). However, none of the path-dependent processes which we have identified owe much to *organisational* change, but rather owe more to changes at the *ideational* level. Hence it is the recognition that crime rises were starting to cause anxiety amongst the populace which drove the political interest in crime. As such, it was the ideas that were promoted by first Thatcherism generally, and embracing, amongst other things, a punitive attitude towards wrongdoing, and then by the likes of Whitelaw and the Home Office aimed at diverting people away from imprisonment by making non-custodial sentences sound "tough," which were adopted by Howard in order to promote his own stance on sentencing and crime control. By this reading, the punitive sentences of the recent era are the outcome of attempts to pander to the wider discourse established by Thatcher,10 the real rises in crime (in part a consequence of Thatcherite policies in other social policy arena), a growing recognition of popular anxieties about crime, the later arrival of a Thatcherite-minded minister at the Home Office in the form of Howard, and the adoption of this discourse by subsequent Labour and Conservative Home Secretaries.

#### **Notes**

	- a to maintain and, if possible, increase the number of detections for violent crimes;
	- b to increase the number of detections for burglaries of people's homes;
	- c to target and prevent crimes which are a particular local problem, including drug-related criminality, in partnership with the public and local agencies;
	- d to provide high visibility policing so as to reassure the public; and
	- e to respond promptly to emergency calls from the public." This came into force in November 1994.
	- a to deal speedily and effectively with young offenders and to work with other agencies to reduce re-offending;
	- b to target and reduce local problems of crime and disorder in partnership with local authorities, other local agencies and the public;
	- c to target drug-related crime in partnership with other local agencies;
	- d to maintain and, if possible, increase the number of detections for violent crime;
	- e to increase the number of detections for burglaries of people's homes; and
	- f to respond promptly to emergency calls from the public." We are grateful to Mike Hough for bringing the role of these two instruments to our attention.

#### **References**

Ashworth, A. (1992) 'Criminal Justice Act 1991 (2) Non-Custodial Sentencing', *Criminal Law Review*, (April), 242–251.


## **THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH PRISONS FROM 1901 TO THE PRESENT**

The Role of De-Industrialisation (*with Philip Mike Jones*)

#### **Introduction**

Whilst the study of the processes associated with prisons and imprisonment has a long lineage in European and North American criminology (with recent extensions to South American criminology, Darke, 2018), the geographical location of these key institutions has not received very much attention. Where prisons are located and the reasons why they are located in those communities has started to attract some attention in North America (see, for example, Norton, 2016; Schept, 2022), but has received scant attention within European criminology. Herein, and using Britain as a case study, we start the process of unpicking both the locations of prisons built since the year 1901 and the economic processes that underlay their location (chiefly de-industrialisation). Whilst drawing upon the experiences of countries in just one state (Britain), our approach has lessons for those studying the development of prisons in other countries, both in Europe and further afield.

This chapter is constructed along the following lines. We commence with a discussion of de-industrialisation, and how this has affected various European countries. Following this, we focus on the experiences of the UK, and most notably England, Scotland, and Wales in the period since the 1970s. Following this, we describe the methodology we employed, before describing both general trends within the data and more sophisticated spatial regression analyses. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings both for criminal justice policy and criminological thinking in this area, drawing on Derrida's work on hauntology (1994).

#### **De-Industrialisation: The European Experience**

De-industrialisation is the process by which the output from core industrial sectors (mining, heavy manufacturing, steel production, shipbuilding, and allied trades, such as railways and transportation systems) is reduced over time and with this an associated loss of employment in those sectors of the economy. Whilst this is most commonly associated with "industrially-developed" nations, there is evidence that de-industrialisation can (and does) affect developing nations too (Škuflić and Družić, 2016), including post-communist nations (Kandžija et al, 2017). As Clark et al. note (2019: 15):

From 1970 to 2020, several phases in economic change and transition among EU members can be observed. Although not all countries have deindustrialised, there is a long-term trend towards the loss of jobs in manufacturing, coupled with the rise of the service economy, and more recently the creative, knowledge, and innovation economies.

This process was partly driven by the 1973 Oil Crisis, which saw job losses in manufacturing coupled with the rise of Asian industrial centres. As Clark et al note (2019: 16), de-industrialisation had the effect of increasing inter-regional inequalities in European societies during the 1980s, with some cities losing 30–80% of their manufacturing jobs in this decade. They note that this was particularly the case where industry was concentrated in certain parts of the country, such as in Italy, the United Kingdom, or Germany, and where entire city regions de-industrialised at once, such as in the Rhine-Ruhr Valley (2019: 17), before adding that:

… de-industrialisation also affected Central and Eastern European socialist countries. As the Soviet economy grew increasingly complex throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it required more and more complex disaggregation of control figures and factory inputs. As the number of enterprises, trusts and ministries multiplied, the economy began to stagnate, and was increasingly sluggish in response to change or in providing incentives to improve growth.

(2019: 17)

#### **The UK's Experience of De-Industrialisation Since 1979**

The reverberations of industrial closures and high levels of unemployment in the UK after 1979 have been charted by numerous scholars (Showler and Sinfield, 1981; Goodman and Webb, 1994; Hay, 1996; Beatty and Fothergill, 1997; Jennings et al, 2012; Dorling, 2014). Shipyards, steel, and coal mining industries and parts of the British automotive industry were heavily affected by de-industrialisation (measured as the relative decline of manufacturing or the decline of manufacturing employment, Kitson and Michie, 2000).

Whilst this development began in many advanced economies during the 1960s, it accelerated rapidly in the UK following the pursuit of monetarist economic policies by Margaret Thatcher's administrations. These conditions hit the UK manufacturing sector particularly hard in the 1980s (Kitson and Michie, 2000). High interest rates and an over-valued currency rendered UK manufacturing exports uncompetitive domestically and internationally (Kitson and Michie, 2000). By 1995 nearly 90% of the coal mining workforce had been lost, and the impact of this unprecedented destruction of jobs was geographically concentrated.

In areas of the English Midlands, South Wales, and central Scotland, mining had been the dominant source of employment for men for generations, so the consequences for these communities were especially pronounced. Indeed, Britain's miners launched one of the longest and fiercest industrial disputes (1984–1985) in modern times. At its peak, 142,000 miners went on strike over pit closures and pay (Office of National Statistics, 2015), and a violent conflict, dubbed the "Battle of Orgreave" when a mass picket was charged by police, remains a controversial event some 35 years later. Such de-industrialisation is strongly associated with increasing rates of unemployment (Clark et al, 2019: 15), and in the case of the UK, this was centred on former coal mining areas.

De-industrialisation in Britain continued throughout the 1980s as the economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Notably, such was the impact of this economic transformation that Beatty et al (2007) found evidence that by 2004 (more than 20 years after the miners' strike had ended) former coal mining areas had still not fully recovered and that many had amongst the highest rates of unemployment in the UK. Substantial job losses in "heavy" industries were not matched with new jobs, and many former miners registered as "inactive" or "permanently sick" (rather than unemployed), suggesting that official estimates of unemployment may have been significantly underestimated (Green, 1997). Dorling described how this process transformed the British economic and social landscape:

The recession of the early 1980s was like a social storm which swept south from the north of the UK and which, in particular, reduced men's chances of gaining employment and of living into old age. It blew southwards, round the coasts, into inner London and the cores of some other southern cities but it was a social wind which went strangely still over the more rural parts of the Home Counties – places that never felt the economic cold. The 1980s recession had begun earlier, in the late 1970s along the Clyde and a little later on the Tyne and Mersey, but Thatcherism allowed its progress to be both encouraged and exacerbated.

(Dorling, 2014: 242)

Processes associated with de-industrialisation (most notably unemployment and other economic and social indicators, such as economic inequality, GDP growth, child poverty, adult suicide, teen pregnancy, and housing repossessions) have been found to be related to increases in crime (see Farrall and Jennings, 2012; Jennings et al, 2012; Farrall et al, 2017). In this chapter, we explore what happened to those regions which experienced the highest levels of de-industrialisation with regard to the location of prisons in the years since the 1980s. We look specifically at the places in those areas that were once economically dependent on coal mining, assessing the extent to which prisons were located in them relative to non-coal mining areas. We do this by examining the prison building programme that took place in England, Scotland, and Wales during the 1980s and in the period since. Notably, a number of studies have linked the uneven process of de-industrialisation with crime (Matthews et al, 2001), deprivation (Beatty and Fothergill, 1997), and more recently—albeit in the USA—prison building (Beale, 1998; Huling, 2002; Eason, 2017; Taft, 2018; Schept, 2022) and we contribute to those literature. We also reflect on why prisons in Britain have become spatially concentrated in former industrial areas and what this means for other countries in terms of the processes of de-industrialisation and prison building.

#### *The Growth of British Prisons after 1990*

From the 1990s, there was a substantial expansion of the prison population and the criminal justice system (Jennings et al, 2012; Ministry of Justice, 2013). Between June 1993 and June 2012, the prison population in England and Wales increased by 41,800 prisoners to over 86,000 as a result of new sentences and recalls to prison. During the Thatcher and Major administrations (1979–1997), 26 new prisons were built. Others were extended to manage the mounting pressure on inmate places as crime and punitive attitudes increased, resulting in a "tougher" criminal justice system (Farrall et al, 2016a, 2016b) and ultimately more inmates.

Older prisons also underwent refurbishment to improve conditions and security following disturbances, of which there were 46 in 1986, as well as a 25-day riot in HMP Strangeways in 1990 (Brodie et al, 1999). The privatisation of prisons also introduced an "enterprise culture" into public services in the early 1990s; HMP Wolds was the first contracted prison in the UK run by Group 4 in 1992 (Grimwood, 2014). We assess if it is possible to detect a patterning in the location in time and space of new British prisons. Did they appear evenly spread across British counties, or did the building of such establishments mirror other trends that were taking place historically?

We consider this hypothesis in two steps. First, we examine the number and former uses of the sites where prisons were built during 1901–2017, categorising key developments. Second, we compare the number of prisons in former coal mining areas to non-mining areas (controlling for population change).

#### **Identifying Previous Usage**

#### *Methodology*

Using a number of publicly available data sources (i.e. HM Prisons Inspectorate; each prison's own web pages, Wikipedia, local history websites, maps, and information from researchers at the Scottish Prison Service), we have recorded what (if anything) occupied the site of each prison prior to its use in the secure estate. This required careful investigation and cross-checking with local historians and those with relevant knowledge. For example, Belmarsh Prison was built on the site of the former Royal Woolwich Arsenal, which was not clear from the available maps but confirmed by researchers at Royal Arsenal History. In all, there were 115 prisons built after 1901 in Scotland, England, and Wales (some of which have now been closed).

Following this we geocoded all prisons that were already in existence in 1901 and all of those prisons that were built after 1901. For the purposes of our analyses, the dates for the prisons built before 1901 were taken to be 1901 so we could focus on the period we are interested in. All prisons built since 1901 had their start date (or date of conversion) recorded, and all prisons that closed similarly had their date of closure recorded. For those establishments constructed after 1901, we recorded the previous use in one of the eight categories (see Table 8.1). The categories are mostly self-explanatory; however, the military locations included Royal Air Force sites (such as HMP Bure, built on the site of RAF Coltishall), former Ministry of Defence sites (i.e. HMP Bullingdon, built on the site of MOD Bicester), former US Air Force sites (i.e. HMP Guys Marsh which used to be an USAF military hospital), or


**TABLE 8.1** Previous Usage of Sites on which Prisons were Opened (1901–2017)

sites such as HMP Ranby which used to be a British Army camp. Former industrial sites included, for example, HMP Peterborough (built on the site of Barker Perkins Engineering Works), HMP Whitemoor (built on the site of a much-reduced railway marshalling yard), and HMP Addiewell (built on Addiewell chemical works). NHS refers to the National Health Service. The "other" category included prisons built on former orphanages (HMP Styal), holiday camps (HMYOI Finnamore Wood), or on the site of a poultry farm (HMP Warren Hill).

#### *Analyses*

In all, our data set contains some 115 prisons that were opened in England, Wales, and Scotland between 1901 and 2017 (see Figure 8.1 which shows the prisons opened in 1981). The peak years for openings were during the 1960s when a flurry of prisons opened; 17 of these were purpose-built prisons that were conceived and constructed to replace dilapidated Victorian local prisons. However, due to the rise of the prison population, none of the proposed closures in the Victorian-era secure estate actually took place (Brodie et al, 1999).

Table 8.1 summarises the role the site had before it operated as a prison. There were 17 which were converted from or built on the grounds of former country houses. Eight were former hospitals (or similar institutions, such as HMP Longriggend which was a TB sanatorium). In all, there were 41 former military installations that were repurposed or converted into prisons. Five brownfield sites and 16 greenfield sites were also utilised (it was not possible to identify precisely what had been on the brownfield sites), whilst 13 prisons were built on the site of former industrial complexes. These include railway works, collieries and mines, brick works, and power stations. Nine prisons were built within the grounds of existing prisons, whilst six we classified as having had "other" uses (e.g. HMP Finnamore Wood was a wartime evacuation "camp school").

#### *Linking Previous Site Usage and Historical Period*

We sought to explore the opening of new establishments against the prior usage of the sites over the historical and political period since 1901. For the purposes of this chapter, we have divided the period into historical categories based on key shifts in political direction from 1901 to 2017. Specifically, we distinguish between "pre-war consensus" (1901–1945) and "post-war consensus" (1946–1960) categories, given the end of World War II marked a transformation in social and political arrangements in the UK with the wide extension and consolidation of the welfare state (Paterson, 2008).

As Butler and Kavanagh (1997) note, the popular vote was evenly split between the two major parties (Labour and the Conservatives) in this era,

**FIGURE 8.1** Coal Mining Counties (Grey) and Prison Locations (Black) in 1981

emphasising what is known as the "post-war consensus." From the mid-1960s this consensus began to be challenged (Paterson, 2008), hence our third category "the Wilson/Callaghan" period (1961–1979). At this time, alternative political parties began to gain support, such as the Liberals and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, and a growing dissatisfaction with Keynesian economics grew.

The Conservative governments (1979–1997) are our fourth category (the Thatcher/Major period). These embarked on a project to "roll back" the state and (ostensibly) give citizens greater choice, whilst reducing benefits for the poor and vulnerable in society (Paterson, 2008). Moreover, these Conservative administrations marked a key change in how crime and criminal justice were framed politically, with a greater emphasis on "law and order" (Hay, 1996; Farrall et al, 2009). Two decades of New Right dominance eventually ended with the election of "New Labour" in 1997. New Labour endorsed market economics and sought to synthesise capitalism and socialism. This period covers 1997–2010, whilst the final category is the more recent era of low crime and a decreasing emphasis on criminal justice populism via the Conservative-led coalitions of 2010–2017.

Table 8.2 presents a cross-tabulation of the above periodisation and type of institution that was repurposed as a new prison. Overall, we can see a small number of new prisons (nine) were opened in the first period from 1901 up to the end of World War II. During the "post-consensus" period, 24 new prisons were opened. We then have an 18-year period from 1961 to the election in 1979 of the first Thatcher administration when 39 prisons were opened. The Thatcher and Major governments opened 26 new prisons.


**TABLE 8.2** Political Period and Previous Usage of Sites on Which Prisons Were Built (1901–2017)

There are three trends which require further elaboration:


Let us take each of these in turn.

#### *Country Houses*

Country houses are a reminder of the wealth associated with landowners that can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Girouard, 1978). Many country houses were still in use as full-time or occasional private residences until the 1870s, after which the agricultural depression forced some landowners into financial hardship. The demise of privately owned country house increased during World War I. Large numbers of staff left the estates to join the war effort, many of whom never returned. Others found better paid employment in towns and cities. However, it was not until World War II that the real death knell for the country house sounded. Many country houses were requisitioned during the war and were returned to their owners in poor states of repair. The costs of repairing the houses (coupled with lower incomes from agricultural produce and higher rates of taxation), and the loss of heirs during the two World Wars, left numerous owners unable to maintain their buildings. Faced with a "perfect storm," many country house owners elected to sell either the contents of the houses, or parts of them (fireplaces or staircases), or to demolish them and sell the stone (Girouard, 1978). Others donated their houses to the State. It was in this way that Chequers was donated in 1921 for the use of the Prime Minister, whilst Chevening House was donated in the late 1950s.

In the late 1930s and the early 1950s, the government made it easier for country houses (and other objects) to be given in lieu of taxes owed. Other country houses had different trajectories of ownership. For example, in 1948 Keele Hall was purchased from Colonel Ralph Sneyd for the establishment of the University College of North Staffordshire, which opened in 1950 and in 1962 became Keele University. Similarly, Heslington Hall was used during World War II by the RAF, before becoming part of the University of York in the mid-1960s. In similar ways, a number of county houses became available for use as prisons after the end of World War II. Looking at Table 8.2, we see that of the 17 former country houses used as prisons, nearly two thirds (11.65%) were converted during the 1946–1960 period, with a further five in the 1961–1979 period. No prisons with this background were opened between 1901 and 1945 or after 1998.

#### *Demilitarisation*

The early part of the twentieth century saw a huge fluctuation in the number of service personnel. In 1901, 530,000 people were employed in the armed forces, which quickly rose to 2.49 million in 1915 as World War I entered its early phases. In 1921, three years after the war had ended, the figure had dropped to 491,000. By the end of World War II, 5.13 million service personnel were employed before the figure fell to just under one million by the end of the decade. Nevertheless, it was not until 1952 that the numbers employed in military services declined substantially to less than half a million for the first time since 1939, after which numbers remained reasonably consistent. In effect, the main period of sustained demilitarisation started in 1952.

Table 8.2 shows that of the 41 former military sites repurposed as prisons since 1901, 26 (63%) were established between 1946 and 1979. We can conclude, therefore, that the main period during which new prisons were opened on the sites of former military establishments took place after a significant phase of demilitarisation (measured as a reduction of state armed service personnel).

#### *De-Industrialisation and the Location of Prisons*

"De-industrialisation" is generally considered as a substantial reduction in industrial capacity in the manufacturing and heavy industry sectors. Taking this definition, one can trace a major decline of such work in the UK from 1973 (Kitson and Michie, 2000). Fieldhouse and Hollywood (1999: 483) note that the 1980s and early 1990s witnessed an "unprecedented transformation leading to the virtual destruction of the mining industry in Britain." From Table 8.2 we see the first real signs of the reuse of former industrial sites as prisons were in the 1960s. The one prison in the 1901–1945 period that was built on a former industrial site was HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire, which was the first open prison, and was constructed on the site of a former colliery in 1933. The prisons repurposed from industrial sites after 1960 were: HMP Hindley near Wigan (1961), which was built on the site of a colliery; HMP Low Newton in County Durham (1965), which was built on the site of a brick works; and HMP Glenochil near Stirling (1966), which was built on National Coal Board land, having first opened as a detention centre, before being extended into a Young Offenders Institution in 1975.

In the period between 1979 and 1997, five more prisons were built on sites formerly occupied by industrial institutions. HMP Wymott near Leyland (1979), HMP Frankland in County Durham (1980), and HMP Garth in Leyland (1988) were built on the sites of former brick works. HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire (1991) was constructed on part of a railway yard. Meanwhile, HMP Doncaster (1994) was built on the site of a former power station and in a former coal mining area. Since 1997, a further four prisons with a postindustrial history have been opened: HMP Forrest Bank in Manchester (2000) was built on the site of a power station; HMP Peterborough (2005), built on the site of Barker Perkins Engineering Works; HMP Addiewell in West Lothian (2008) took over the site of chemical works; and HMP Grampian in Aberdeenshire (2014) is located on the site of a former railway yard.

Of the 13 prisons built on former industrial sites, 10 are located in the former industrial heartlands of central England or central belt Scotland (the three exceptions were HMP Grampian in North East Scotland and HMP Peterborough and HMP Whitemoor, both in the more rural Cambridgeshire).

#### **Charting the Opening of Prisons and De-Industrialisation: A Spatial Analysis**

As part of a wider and longitudinal investigation into the impacts of Thatcherite social and economic policies on UK society, we have documented the unfolding relationships between economic restructuring and truancy from school (Farrall et al, 2020a), engagement in crime between ages 10 and 30 (Farrall et al, 2020b), and housing, homelessness, and crime (Farrall et al, 2016a, 2016b, 2019). Underpinning this work is a strong relationship between radical economic restructuring and the UK's geography during the Conservative administrations 1979–1997 (Hudson, 2013; Dorling, 2014).

Briefly, the economic restructuring that was felt most strongly in the 1980s was concentrated in a number of specific areas in the UK. These included the South Wales valleys (where coal mining had been a major employer); central belt Scotland (where mining, steel-making, and shipbuilding dominated); and the North East shoulder of England (a region with steel-making and mining) and what might be referred to as "Central belt" England (stretching from Merseyside in the west to Humberside in the east, and where shipbuilding, mining, and steel-making were again amongst the largest employers).

We know from the above analyses that several of the new prisons built after 1961 were on former industrial sites. This begged the question: to what extent was the establishment of new prisons related to the uneven geography of de-industrialisation that accelerated in the later part of the twentieth century? How closely associated are these new prisons with the geographical areas in which coal mines (a key marker of the industrial base) were located?

#### *Materials and Methods*

To answer this question, we examined whether the number of prisons in former coal mining areas increased as the mines closed during the 1980s and


**TABLE 8.3** Change in Number of Prisons in Former Mining and Non-Mining Areas (1981–2001)

1990s. Our hypothesis was that more prisons opened in former coal mining areas between 1981 and 2001 than in non-coal mining areas.

We define coal mining areas as counties that overlap with Coal Mining Reporting Areas. The Coal Mining Reporting Area, formally known as CON29M (Coal and Brine Consultation Areas), is used to determine whether a coal mining report is required for a property transaction in that location. These reports identify the areas potentially affected by nearby coal extraction and serve as a proxy for coal seams. These include areas in (from north to south) the Scottish central belt, North East England, the Midlands (Yorkshire and the Humber, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire), South Wales, and Kent. We use 1974–1996 county areas (with 2001 data geocoded back to these boundaries) as they were consistent for the longest continuous period of time for our study period.

Population change must, of course, be taken into account within these analyses; we cannot simply compare the number of prisons (or the number of new prisons) in the respective locations because the population increases in these areas differ in size over time. Tables 8.3 and 8.4 demonstrate the changes in the number of prisons and the working-age male population, respectively, over 20 years (population figures are taken from the 1981 and 2001 censuses).

#### *Results*

The growth in the working-age male population between 1981 and 2001 is about ten times greater in non-coal mining areas than in former coal mining areas, so we would expect to see about ten times as much prison capacity in these areas too, all things being equal. In fact, the raw number of new prisons in both former coal mining and non-coal mining areas is about equal, suggesting there are approximately ten times as many prisoners in former coal mining areas as would be expected. Figures 8.1 and 8.2 show the location of

**TABLE 8.4** Change in Working-Age Male Population in Former Mining and Non-Mining Areas


**FIGURE 8.2** Coal Mining Counties (Grey) and Prisons (Black) in 2001

prisons opened in 1981 and 2001, respectively, overlaid onto a map of coal mining counties. We have studied working-age males in our analyses rather than all ages as this captures the peak in offending between late teens and early twenties. We have also limited the analysis to males only, as the majority of the prison population is male, and the vast majority of coal miners were also male. As we focus on males, we have removed female-only prisons from this part of the analyses; however, this accounts for only 10 prisons in 1961, 11 prisons in 1981, and 14 in 2001. We also removed prisons with only maximum-security accommodation, that is, exclusively Category A prisons, which account for six prisons up to 2001. These tend to hold only those prisoners who pose the greatest risk to society should they escape and therefore do not represent the majority of those in the general prison population.

First a chi-square test was applied, finding a significant difference in the number of prisons built between coal mining and non-coal mining areas between 1981 and 2001 (*p*< 0.000). All things being equal, there were about ten times as many prisons opened in coal mining areas than in non-coal mining areas per capita. London, however, is an outlier as it had significantly higher population growth than other areas. To also ensure this did not impact the association between population change and prison openings, the test comparing coal mining and non-coal mining areas was repeated excluding London. The result was still statistically significant, suggesting there was a greater number of prisons per capita in coal mining areas than non-coal mining areas, even accounting for the higher population growth in London.

To apply a more sophisticated test, we next fitted a regression model to the data. The number of prisons in each county in 2001 (yi ) forms a Poisson distribution, that is, yi ∼ Poisson (μ<sup>i</sup> ). The mean number of prisons per county in 2001 was 1.2, and the variance was 2.5. Therefore, the parameter λ is (at most) 2.5, meaning linear regression is unsuitable for modelling this dependent variable but Poisson regression is. There were 110 counties and 127 prisons (excluding female-only and maximum security prisons) in 2001. The parameters of Poisson regression are estimated by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), so a sufficiently large data set is necessary. Specifically, we have more than 100 observations and more than 10 observations per coefficient estimated. The coefficients are estimated and tested against the null hypothesis that the coefficients are not statistically significantly different from zero. In a Poisson model, we predict the number of prisons in county i as the dependent variable, whilst our explanatory variables are the number of working-age males in county i and a dummy to indicate if county i is a former coal mining county. In addition, we control for unemployment, so we add the number of unemployed males in county i as an additional independent variable. The linear predictor for our initial model is therefore:

$$\mathfrak{n}\_{i} = \mathfrak{B}\_{0} + \mathfrak{B}\_{1}\mathbf{X}1\_{i} + \mathfrak{B}\_{2}\mathbf{X}2\_{i} + \mathfrak{B}\_{3}\mathbf{X}3\_{i}$$

where η<sup>i</sup> is the linear predictor for county i; β<sup>0</sup> is the intercept; β<sup>1</sup> is the coefficient for the values of independent variable X1i (working-age male population); β<sup>2</sup> is the coefficient for the values of the independent variable X2i (the number of economically active unemployed males); and β<sup>3</sup> is the coefficient for the values of the independent variable X3i (a dummy to indicate the area is a former coal mining area). One of the key assumptions of Poisson regression is that the individual residuals are independent of each other and follow a Poisson distribution. We test this using diagnostic plots of standardised residuals produced using the DHARMa package (2018). We use the natural log link function such that:

η<sup>i</sup> = λ ln( )

Table 8.5 demonstrates the outcome of the model: the independent variables are all significant (p<.001) and indicate that a coal mining county between 1981 and 2001 was approximately 90% more likely to have a new prison than a non-coal mining county (95% confidence interval 28% – 183%). This suggests that at some point in the period 1981–2001 prisons began to be built in coal mining areas in greater numbers than in non-coal mining areas, quite possibly as a large number of employed men became jobless as mines closed and employment opportunities were removed. As a result, the landscape of these regions changed considerably. Our results chime with those of Jennings et al (2012) who found that the strength of the relationship between unemployment and property crime increased during the 1970s and 1980s. Our findings suggest that as mines closed, unemployment rose, causing an increase in crime and an attendant increase in imprisonment.

#### **Discussion**

This chapter began by asking what happened to the landscapes affected by the de-industrialisation that accelerated during the 1970s and 1980s. To answer this question (in part), we looked at the prison-building programme that occurred around the same time and found two points of interest. First,


Unemployed males in 2001 –1.153 1.946 –5.924 \*\*\* Coal Mining Reporting Area 6.408 2.02 3.173 \*\*

**TABLE 8.5** Results of Poisson Regression of the Number of Prisons in Former Mining and Non-Mining Areas 1981–2001

using historical sources of the prior use of the land where prisons were established (1901–2017), we found that since 1901 prison building followed a series of trends. These included the utilisation of country houses in the immediate period after World War II (many of which had been left neglected and unoccupied and provided convenient accommodation). There was also a pattern of using former military sites that became vacant as the number of armed service personnel reduced.

Second, additional data highlighted the repurposing of land that had been affected by de-industrialisation to build new prisons. This result prompted a second statistical procedure that estimated and compared the number of prisons in former coal mining areas compared to non-coal mining areas, controlling for population growth. Our analysis identified that between 1981 and 2001 a coal mining county was approximately 90% more likely to have a prison built in it than a non-coal mining county. In short, as the coalfields closed more prisons began to be built in these former coal mining counties than elsewhere, after controlling for population growth.

We have used archival and statistical data to investigate the contextspecific ways that prison growth occurred in, and affected communities in England, Wales, and Scotland, casting a close eye on the role of the political economy. Our contribution highlights what can happen to areas when rapid, unregulated de-industrialisation takes place. Regions where industrial employment was concentrated may expect to see economic restructuring, but if the economic recovery is weak, the prison complex may come to replace the industrial complex. Indeed, scholarship has begun to carefully examine the complex dimensions of prison growth in rural post-industrial areas (Beale, 1998; Huling, 2002; Eason, 2017).

Eason's contribution, set in the rural communities of America, found that local residents largely accepted the building of prisons, as they felt that jobs might accompany them (2017). However, he argues that areas affected by de-industrialisation and long-term poverty experience "stigmatization" by hosting a new prison, and the economic boost provided by one is often short-lived. He concluded that prison building was the "best of the worst" options available to disadvantaged communities in precarious economic circumstances (Eason, 2017).

Similarly, Armstrong (2014), focusing on the Scottish context and using document and discourse analysis, articulates the struggles local communities faced to have their opinions recognised by the prison planning process and thus identifies some of the processes whereby prisons come to be sited on former industrial land. This chapter does not touch on how groups or individuals felt about the growth of local prisons or the social and economic repercussions of prison proliferation, but such routes of enquiry are clearly a worthy focus of future research. We also do not touch on the rationalisation of privatising prisons (Crewe et al, 2011; Andrew and Cahill, 2017), but this is another important dimension of neo-liberalism very much in keeping with the Thatcher ethos and worthy of further attention.

Historically, as imprisonment rates in Britain have increased, it has been necessary for the government to locate new areas in which to accommodate prisons. Such decisions were often taken under pressure (e.g. in 1996 the prison population increased quickly and an emergency accommodation programme was prompted, Brodie et al, 1999), and newly available sites became an attractive option, be vacant country houses, disused military property, or post-industrial land. Crucially, once prisons are built, they are very likely to remain there, since closures are rare. As previously noted, when new prisons were designed and built in the 1960s to provide a modern regime, none of the planned closures of old-style prisons took place.

The rising number of inmates and the need to increase capacity eclipsed the optimism of the new building programme. Interestingly, an analogous pattern is currently taking place; in 2016, the Prison Estates Transformation Programme (PETP) was announced. It aimed to create 10,000 new prison places to replace old unsuitable accommodation, renovate existing properties, and reorganise the estate to better meet the needs of the prison population (Brown, 2018). It committed £1.3 billion to do so (Guiney, 2019).

Since then, one new prison has been built (HMP Berwyn in North Wales) which is the second largest prison in Europe and was built on a disused Firestone tyre factory that closed in the 1970s. The factory was part of the Wrexham Industrial estate, which had its origins as a Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF Wrexham) during World War II. Meanwhile, four existing sites have been earmarked for expansion (HMP Rochester, HMP Hindley, HMP Wellingborough, and HMP Glen Parva) whilst HMP Full Sutton and HMP Stocken were to get additional buildings (Brown, 2018). It is expected that the inmate capacity of these institutions will expand significantly and consolidate a new generation of "supersize" prisons. Notably, six of these seven enterprises launched under PETP are in coal mine reporting areas.

Whilst prison expansion may appear to be a common sense response to an increasing prison population, it appears in the UK it has disproportionally taken place in the regions affected by the crises of de-industrialisation and urban decline. These areas may be further affected as plans to "supersize" existing prisons become customary, compounding the "legacy" of de-industrialisation even further.

What can this tell us about why prisons become spatially concentrated and what lessons might there be for policies in other countries? It is hard to provide any definitive answers to the first question. Prisons were concentrated in former coal mining/industrial counties, and several are geographically close to one another. Partly this could reflect the availability of brownfield sites and the desire to provide jobs in places where jobs have become scant (and crime rates possibly elevated). Pragmatically it could reflect the difficulty of a local community opposing a new prison when one already exists locally. What might this mean for other countries? Few other countries, except perhaps the USA, have de-industrialised on the scale which the UK did, or with the speed and absence of social welfare supports. In this sense, the UK may be an outlier. Nevertheless, if de-industrialisation does take hold in a country, there may be both pragmatic and political pressures placed on administrations to tackle rising crime rates (if these emerge). If (and it is a "big" "if") those countries were to follow the example of the UK, we might expect to see prisons concentrated alongside similar lines. That, however, would require both an unwillingness to invest in social welfare and a concurrent willingness to respond to crime punitively, and this may not always be the case.

As a means of wider reflection, we have endeavoured to question how radical socio-political events evolve spatially. Expanding Derrida's (1994) framework of "hauntology," Fiddler (2019) has encouraged the idea that urban spaces can be "haunted" by past traumas where geographical locations have a collective memory and deep connection to their past Haunting in this respect is not concerned with the detectable presence of "ghosts." Rather, it points to the impermanence of foundations we may have considered solid, where the past remains "alive and at work" (Davis, 2005: 373). Similarly, for Buse and Stott (1999), hauntology speaks to a dissolving of past and present, as well as imaginations of the future. Using the perspective of hauntology, one is drawn to consider how spectral undercurrents can open up institutions to a new type of analysis. Indeed, Rand (1994: 169) sees the value of hauntology in its "potential to illuminate the genesis of social institutions [as well as] a new perspective … into the psychological roots of cultural patterns and political ideology." This angle is a particularly interesting one to apply to the twofold history of prison building and de-industrialisation in parts of Britain, whereby coalfields were eventually replaced (in some instances) by prisons. Around 200 years earlier the country had begun to rely on coal to fuel the industrial revolution; after it was produced, it created plentiful opportunities and gave birth to mining communities with strong cultural bonds. Shaw (2012) observed how the identity of the miners became skewed after the 1980s when they were associated in popular culture with the strike of 1984–1985, the conflict with Margaret Thatcher's governments, and subsequently dislocated from their longer social history. Nonetheless, as mines closed, these regions continued to suffer as economic regeneration proved faltering, even with the passage of many years. In some places of industrial decline, prisons occupied the land where once a different type of institution had stood. Prisons, of course, bring with them a different type of architecture, culture, and meaning. Fiddler (2007) remarks that even newly built prisons (without their gothic architecture) remain associated as an "uncanny" site of punishment, myth, and projection, noting that the prison:

is a liminal space where conventional distinctions are disrupted and where the incarcerated are expected to change in order to return to the social body. What is key is that the uncanny informs how we see the inside of the prison. These dramatic representations of the prison therefore impact on our understanding of the people contained within its walls. (2007: 196)

The radical transition from a traditional mining community to a prison location cannot have taken place without some considerable turbulence. Not just economically, but culturally and spatially. There is little doubt that the complex geography of British coalfields remains subject to a kind of social haunting that draws the present gaze to its unsettling past. Indeed, in 2013, at the time of the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, in Goldthorpe, a Yorkshire village scarred by pit closures, approximately 1000 former pit workers started a procession through the streets. An effigy of the former Prime Minister was placed in an open coffin with the word "SCAB" (a term of abuse for non-striking miners during the 1984–1985 strike) written in flowers on the side. Accompanied by a bag-piper, it was taken by a horsedrawn carriage to the site of the former Goldthorpe Colliery, which closed in 1994, and burnt (Shute, 2013). Notably, Goldthorpe is approximately eight miles from HMP Doncaster, which was built in 1994 on the site of a former power station. Using a hauntological framework, it is possible to explore how the "haunting" effects of past trauma might impact our understandings of space, how the present is shaped by the past, and how the future is anticipated. There is considerable scope, we now believe, to take the work of spatial theory and prison building in the UK further and cast a lingering eye on the determinates of prison building and the impacts on community dynamics.

Indeed, the vestiges of neo-liberal economic policy in former coal mining areas have been a far-reaching expansion of criminal justice infrastructure. Whilst de-industrialisation in the 1980s could be described as a dramatic and hard-hitting process, with time, we can also recognise it as a "slowmoving" process, the consequences of which may not become fully realised for several decades (Farrall et al, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; Pierson, 2004). Our analysis points towards the value of thinking geographically and theoretically about the rise of the carceral state and the context of where prisons are built, how they came to be built in those locations and what this says about both those locations and their histories, and the people who live there now.

#### **References**


# **PART III INTRODUCTION**

In this, the closing part of our book, we summarise what we have learnt from our studies of Thatcherism and extract more general lessons from this enquiry. Our analysis adds to the body of work which sought to understand how political processes affected both crime and the responses to it. Our model, with some degree of elasticity, may be applied to other jurisdictions and to other periods of time, since the general ideas (that political ideologies affect social and economic policies, which in turn affect crime rates, which itself then affects debates and policies relating to criminal justice) are simple ones which can be used in other contexts. Our studies also hold lessons for those studying criminal careers, too few of which (in our opinion) sample individuals from more than one locale, and almost none of which employ repeated cohort designs. Little wonder, then, that so few scholars have been able to fully explore the ways in which social change can shape offending careers or how that might vary from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, city to city, or region to region. We hope that the intellectual project of producing more robust studies of offending careers over the life-course grows and flourishes over the next few decades.

# 9 **CONCLUSION**

### Crime — A Relational Understanding of Individuals, Institutions, and Ideology

#### **Introduction**

In the preceding chapters, we have detailed the breadth of our work on the relationships between Thatcherism, socio-economic policies, and crime and criminal careers in the UK, spanning the period from the 1970s to the present day. We have cast a series of spotlights on the fundamental domains of domestic policies; education, housing, social security, employment, and justice, as well as exploring how these provisions were impacted by slowmoving shifts in public opinion, political socialization, and political legacies (on the latter of which see Farrall et al, 2020). In so doing, we have sought to analyse and clarify the influence of political culture in ordinary people's real lives. Up to this point, however, we have explored the particular social policy arenas in turn, but in this concluding chapter we aim to remove the shadows between those areas of specificity and highlight grander theoretical and epistemological questions. In this chapter, we will explore what our work represents when taken as a whole. We will also assess if the intricacies of Thatcherism and crime can usefully be applied elsewhere in criminology and the social sciences, and if so, how. We reflect on the general conclusions which can be extracted from this context-specific case study, and on the value of case studies of this nature.

This chapter commences with a summary of our empirical results thus far. Once this groundwork is laid, the next section follows with an overview of the deeper parameters we believe are at play. For example, the relational nature of our work will help us highlight the crucial and interdisciplinary connections between crime, politics, inequality, and justice. We will then assess the distinctions between the particular and general arguments as they have manifested in our case study of Thatcherism in the UK. Finally, we will examine the process of theory development in long-term analysis. These final sections will reflect upon epistemology, theory, and method, which all have bearings on how one views the relationship between criminology and politics.

#### **Crimes of Ordinary Struggles: Examining the Impact of Thatcherism on Crime**

If one were to define Thatcherism, one would likely focus on describing the unique amalgamation of neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideas, also referred to as the New Right (Gamble, 1996; Marwick, 2003; Hay, 2007). Gamble (1989) observed that New Right political philosophy could be summarised as (i) a commitment to minimal state intervention; (ii) a belief that market alternatives are ineffectual; (iii) a conviction that government failure is more common than market failure, and (iv) a concern that individual citizens' rights are violated by state interference in social and economic life. In practice, Green (1999) notes that Thatcherism in the UK comprised the development of a private sector dominated market economy, which had hitherto been delivered by the state from the late 1940s; deindustrialisation of major industries, which disproportionately impacted the north of England, central belt Scotland, and south Wales; and a reduction of the welfare state, curtailment of union power, a lowering of personal tax burdens, and encouragement of property and share ownership. At heart, Thatcherism was a project that sought to dismantle significant state institutions and unravel what had come to be known as the "post-war consensus."

These were radical and seismic developments for much of the British population in the 1980s, but they were not unique to the UK (given the development of New Right governments across the "Global North" in the USA, New Zealand, and Australia), nor were they limited in scope to Thatcher's tenure of Downing Street. Indeed, the origins and reach of New Right politics were (and are) much more complex; Thatcherism was in many respects a longterm reaction against the welfarist reforms of the 1945–1951 Attlee government, and many in her party considered an official Conservative rejection of these principles long-overdue (Atkinson, 1990). Paterson (2008) notes that the "political consensus" had begun to decay from the 1960s; at that time, alternative political parties gained support, including the Liberals and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, and the Labour Party eventually lost credibility following a rise in Trade Union militancy (López, 2014). While deindustrialisation accelerated rapidly in the UK post-1979, its roots had begun earlier—and in many advanced economies from the 1960s (Kitson and Michie, 2000). Throughout the 1970s the UK had been marked by a combination of economic difficulties—in particular rising unemployment and rapid inflation. Frustration at the limits of the welfare state and Keynesian economics was beginning to gain traction, all of which foreshadowed the adoption of monetarist policies from the 1980s. The point here is that if we want to understand Thatcherism, we also need to survey what was happening before and after its emergence and ascendance, not least because Thatcher's legacy (Jenkins, 2007; Farrall et al, 2020) continued to ride the wave aboard the Major governments from 1990 to 1997 and arguably sustained momentum through the New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. Reflecting on her legacy, one influential commentator observed Thatcher "did some extraordinary things to her country" (Young, 1993: 135). Undeniably, such was the enduring legacy of Thatcherism in the UK that it remains important to return to her administrations, to make sense of how we arrived at our current position (Gamble, 1996; Hay, 2007; Vinen, 2009). Indeed, one might argue that the further we get *from* her administrations, the more urgent the need to *return to them* to seek explanations of current conditions.

This brings us neatly to our study of Thatcherism and its relationship with crime, criminal careers, and punishment. Our project has attempted to illuminate some of the long-term, often obscured, consequences that young British citizens experienced as they grew up in the 1980s. Our approach has been to conduct a series of investigations looking in turn at the impact of radical social change as it traversed discretely through housing, employment, social security, and education. However, when we appraise this work from a wider angle, we bring forth a new and higher level analytic framework. Specifically, if we review the cohort (the BCS70) who were nine years old when Thatcher entered office, we observe a group of people who were at increased risk of school alienation (Chapter 5), homelessness (Chapter 4), unemployment (Chapter 5), individual and familial poverty (Chapter 4), and who would become entrenched regional deprivation (see also Beatty et al, 2007; Dorling, 2013) and which is reflected in the location of British prisons (Chapter 8). Crucially, these stressful conditions would not have been experienced in isolation (as individual research papers may unwittingly imply) but in tandem with each other—at least for some members of the cohort—given the interdependence of the various institutions of welfare and the radical and far-reaching nature of the changes unleashed by Thatcher's governments. In short, in this book we have explored how citizens who experienced a variety of ordinary struggles with housing, school, and employment found themselves increasingly excluded and isolated from multiple social protections. And while these inequalities produced other tensions, they also rippled through society, impacting some more than others. As has been observed by many commentators of this period (Martin, 1988; Hills et al, 2009; Hills et al, 2010; Dorling, 2014; Philo, 2014; Farrall et al, 2020), there were winners, and there were losers. If you were growing up in a mortgaged property *outside* the industrial heartlands in the North, Wales, or Scotland, you might have benefitted from a wave of economic prosperity and widening job opportunities (particularly in the commuter towns flanking London). Beyond the "home counties" and the south of England however, long-term unemployment, income inequality, increasing crime, population loss, and the wider costs of deindustrialisation (see Chapter 5) became the fabric of everyday life (Dorling, 2014). And for many—we know from the work herein—this culminated in their increased chances of becoming involved in (i) crime (as offenders and as victims) and (ii) the criminal justice system.

Before we continue, an important clarification is in order; our stance is not that individuals or families affected by poverty are predisposed to crime because they lack moral integrity (as has been characterised by the political right since 1979, Hill and Walker, 2014). Rather, we recognise that composite layers of poverty may embolden people to act in ways they might not be comfortable with to "make ends meet." In this regard, research has demonstrated that the relationship between crime and welfare provision is not explicit but fluctuates at certain locations as conditions overlap (Gray et al, 2022). In the UK, the 1980s and 1990s economic hardship may have proved particularly challenging as it intersected with rises in unemployment, economic restructuring, a heroin epidemic, and the increased availability of easily stolen commercial goods (such as video players). Jennings et al (2012) pointed to a variety of macro-level mechanisms that drove the relationship between crime and the economy during this time, including resource constraints, spatial segregation, and shifts in social and cultural norms. In sum, at unique historical junctions, crime may become a necessary means of "survival" (Carlen, 1996) and one that further damages an individual's future, embedding them in routines and circumstances which tend to reinforce their developing criminal careers. Certainly, the many young people who faced homelessness in the 1980s (McGlone, 1990; Carlen, 1996) and found themselves on the streets are likely to have been more exposed to law enforcement activities. But contact with the criminal justice system does not immediately imply criminal behaviour; it indexes objective need, relative social status, and also vulnerability (Snow et al, 1989; Chen et al, 2006). Moreover, as welfare eligibility criteria contract (governing who can claim economic protections and under which circumstances), "cut-off" points relating to age, dates of implementation, and enforcement regimes may have a particularly unfavourable impact on some more than others. In sum, radical social and economic policy change will ripple through different sections of society in different ways and at different times.

#### **Multidimensional Policy Analysis: A Summary of Our Findings**

As we move towards our final thoughts, it is worth revisiting our approach of focusing on the temporality and "cascading" of Thatcherite policy development. As discussed in Chapter 3, a profusion of radical legislation traversed through key policy domains from the start of Thatcher's first administration, which undoubtedly reformulated the relationship citizens had with the state and the way their lives were structured (see also Rhodes and Marsh, 1992).

#### *Connecting Radical Policy Change with Crime*

While a plethora of key works examining the relationship between politics, crime, and punishment exist in and beyond criminology, we found that few were able to account for how specific policy and political processes touched the real lives of citizens (see Chapter 1). Moreover, few incorporated how upcoming generations might fare—as they shouldered the latent vestiges of restructured socio-economic policies. Drawing on key literature from lifecourse studies, as well as historical and constructivist institutionalism (Chapter 2), we embarked on a project that would seek to explain how radical policy change (in this case Thatcherism) disrupted the relationship between the state, the individual, and the criminal justice system, and in so doing, encouraged, deepened, and lengthened the criminal careers of some people. Adopting a "cascade" theory of policy radicalism (Hay and Farrall, 2011), we demonstrated how Thatcherism swept through multiple policy fields and domains. First were those policy arenas demanding immediate action (the economy, industry), and those key to the mobilisation and consolidation of an electoral base (such as discounted council house sales). Attention then quickly turned to social security and education to "roll back the state" and bring these institutions into accordance with economic neo-liberal ideals. Ultimately, as Thatcherism became embedded in the UK, the relationship between the state and the individual was reimagined and permanently remodelled (Davidson, 2020).

#### *Housing, Social Security, and Crime*

Radical changes were quickly applied to the social security and housing systems from 1980, which were seen to have (i) immediate, (ii) periodic, and also (iii) unexpected long-term effects on individuals and their families (Chapter 4). Our analyses demonstrated that, after controlling for macrolevel and individual characteristics, socio-economic variables, such as being reliant on diminishing means-tested benefits, being unemployed or accommodated in the social rented sector at critical points during the Thatcher administrations was significantly associated with contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood for participants from two birth cohorts born in 1958 and 1970. We interpret these findings in the context of the major socio-economic upheavals and welfare retrenchment that took place from the 1980s. At this juncture, social problems and increasing economic inequality were met with discourses of "less eligibility" and punitivity (Carlen, 1996). But while the poor were informed (by Thatcher herself) that the problem was their over-reliance on the state's generosity, our results suggested that the ideological hegemony of the New Right and the rise of free-market individualism had a detrimental "period" effect across the two birth cohorts (Ryder, 1965) that resulted in the increased risks of economically vulnerable people embarking on sustained periods of engagement in crime (i.e., criminal careers) and therefore becoming swept up in the criminal justice system.

#### *The Economy, Education, and Crime*

Economic restructuring simultaneously affected adults who lost employment from the long-established industries in certain regions of the UK, but also the children who were growing up in these areas at the time (Chapter 5). Relying on two birth cohort studies, we demonstrated that the BCS70 cohort was more likely than the cohort who were born a mere 12 years before them in 1958 (the NCDS) to feel alienated from schools in the regions impacted by deindustrialisation; more likely to truant from those school, with the longterm corollary being an increase in their offending careers. In other words, as the British economy shifted to a post-industrial base, we found stronger relationships between economic change and truancy and offending in adolescence which lasted into adulthood. Importantly, this underlies how truancy might not be just a matter of individual propensity, but also associated with periodic changes at the structural level. Our results ought to encourage criminologists to acknowledge the role of socio-economic conditions in explaining criminal careers and illustrate how the management of the economy may shape individual-level responses.

#### *Public Attitudes, Punitivity, and Order*

Emphasising the protracted but forward marching nature of attitudinal change, we found that an attitudinal legacy was detectable among the citizens of the UK some 40 years after Margaret Thatcher first became Prime Minister (Chapter 6). Drawing on repeated cross-sectional survey data collected between 1982 and 2019, we found that younger generations now express and reproduce key tenets of Thatcherite political philosophy. Importantly, Thatcherism has appeared to replace Britain's post-war consensus and remains pertinent given its enduring policy legacy and the profound changes it initiated on UK society, institutions (social, economic, and political), political discourse, and voting patterns (Albertson and Stepney, 2019). Nevertheless, despite all her statements on "law and order," the criminal justice system was not subject to the same "Thatcherite over haul" that social security, housing, or the economy were during conservative rule (Chapter 7). Indeed, we revealed that the most obvious vestige of Thatcher and Major's administrations in terms of crime was the increased number of people who became involved in crime and the criminal justice system as crime rates rose.

#### *Spatial Legacies: Deindustrialisation, Crime, and Prisons*

Throughout our analyses we found the harsh edge of Thatcherism occurred most prominently in particular regions of the UK (e.g. Chapter 5). The recession of the early 1980s, combined with deindustrialisation and radical policy change, swept across the north of the UK; from central Scotland; the northeast shoulder of England, what might be referred to as "central belt" England (stretching from Merseyside in the west to Humberside in the east) and the south Welsh valleys. Individuals who spent time in these areas were at increased risk of neighbourhood decay, long-term unemployment, school alienation, truancy, and becoming disproportionately involved in offending to the extent that they embarked upon criminal careers for longer than and more deeply than they might otherwise have done, and accordingly enmeshed in the criminal justice system. Extending the complex legacy between Thatcherism and crime, we also found evidence that the counties where the coal mining industry was dismantled during the 1980s and 1990s were approximately 90% more likely to have a new prison built than a non-coal mining county (Chapter 8). In short, as the coalfields closed more prisons began to be built in the former coal mining counties than elsewhere (controlling for population growth). While prison expansion may be a common sense response to an increasing prison population, it disproportionally occurred in the regions affected by the crises of deindustrialisation and urban decline.

#### *Temporal Processes: Policy Implementation and Crime*

The recognition of multiple temporal processes has been a prominent and unifying feature of our work. We have located both short- and long-term effects of Thatcherite policies with crime; age, "period," and generational effects (Tilley, 2002) as well as more complex "path dependencies" (Nelson and Winter, 1982) which demonstrate the connection between a *sequence* of events and not simply "contemporary conditions." Tracing the slow movement of policy processes has allowed us to statistically identify how past events (such as the decision to purchase one's council property after 1980 or not) have expedited future conditions which have left some citizens vulnerable to criminalisation. In so doing, we have found considerable value in utilising birth cohort studies (of which the UK is very lucky to have so many) and repeated national surveys, which have provided an excellent resource for researchers who seek to lock in "real world" temporal experiences in their assessments of socio-economic policies.

#### **Emergent Complex Inequalities**

From our perspective, the value of the body of work summarised above is not simply about expanding our appreciation of the "wider contexts." Instead, we argue that political and economic conditions are *fundamental* to understanding why, when, and how people offend and how long they continue to offend for. Despite the undoubted quality of research into criminal careers, as it pertains to the relationship between offending, schooling, employment, and welfare, it remains the case that much of the quantitative research has tended to tackle the causal processes of offending in a largely individualised manner (Farrall, 2021). Often, those interested in explaining and indeed managing crime have focused on individual-level variables (particularly in relation to youth crime, see Gray, 2007, 2009), such as age, sex, or drug addiction, and while these factors are important, they leave unaddressed the processes that are influenced by political, economic, or cultural factors. We therefore advocate for a greater investment in studying how macro-level determinants interact with individual life-courses (see Farrall et al, 2022). Such an approach enables us to think in ways which transform our understanding of how personal difficulties become political and public concerns and how biography and history are interwoven in everyday life (Mills, 1959). This, we believe, makes for both a more complete explanation of crime and challenges some of the more atomised assumptions of many current explanations of offending careers and trajectories.

The studies we have undertaken, when considered as a whole, achieve several things. One of which demonstrates how ordinary economic and social struggles—such as school alienation, diminishing access to welfare benefits, and the housing choices one's parents make—can have long-term consequences for young people growing up in these conditions. We have drawn attention to the profile of marginalisation that evolves when society undergoes significant change, and some citizens are impacted by a surge of exclusionary policies. This highlights the need for researchers to seek out and identify *how* marginalisation emerges—which may be subject to a range of permutations. The study of those experiencing economic distress and urban decline is common in criminology and associated disciplines, but we hope this book raises *new questions* about how exactly policy processes intersect and shape who becomes involved in the criminal justice system and how.

Our argument is that crime might arise alongside ordinary everyday struggles—which we recognise as one of many possible trajectories. Struggles that are slow-moving, regionally specific, and often progress in an exclusionary manner. Again, this is not to say that we believe that economically stressed communities "lack moral fibre." Rather, we found evidence in our case study on Thatcherism that radical policy reorganisation had a complex and inequitable impact on the population; it brought forth a set of policies that indiscriminately bequeathed some as "winners" and punished others as "losers." Importantly, the analysis demonstrated that these "ordinary struggles" were temporally sensitive; they occurred at specific points in history rather than tracking constant causal pathways. This lends weight to the "period effects" argument—that rapid social change contributed (in part) to the conditions in which the cohorts studied had increased contact with criminal justice agencies (Durkheim, 1897). It also emphasises that the policy-crime relationship is not fixed, but an intricate and dynamic phenomenon that oscillates in tandem with other social and economic forces.

Our research highlights the emergence of "differential citizenship" (Foucault, 1995; Lake and Newman, 2002), as Thatcherite policy developments favoured certain individuals, groups, or regions at the expense of others. For example, the 1980 Housing Act eventually made some people homeowners and others homeless, while the impact of economic restructuring differentially created prosperity for some parts of the country as other areas went into long-term decline. Beatty et al (2007) found evidence that by 2004 (more than 20 years after the miners' strike) former coal mining areas had still not fully recovered economically. Unfortunately, Lake and Newman (2002) stress that the harmful outcomes of differential citizenship tend to fall on the most vulnerable members of society who rely on the services and functions that the state has relinquished (often onto the private or voluntary sector). From the 1980s the poor were increasingly seen *as* society's problem rather than having problems that the state might need to mitigate. The neoliberal turn sought to change the behaviour of the unemployed (Etherington and Daguerre, 2015) through explicit government efforts to stigmatise welfare claimants as "scroungers" and "cheats" (Crewe and Searing, 1988). Throughout Thatcher's leadership, the poor were commonly referred to by politicians as "undeserving," an "underclass" (Murray, 1984; Green, 1990), "feckless," and "threatening" (MacNicol, 1987). Green (1990) stresses that stigma had been used as an overt means of social control. As one prominent British neo-liberal pronounced, "bring back stigma; all is forgiven!" (Green, 1990: 3).

The "differentiated" perspective is helpful here because it recognises the fluctuating and overlapping constraints that individuals and families were exposed to in the 1980s. Before then the British governments had sought to reduce inequality and promote social inclusion; certainly, despite the economic difficulties in the 1960s and 1970s, household income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, remained largely stable (House of Commons Library, 2023). By 1994 however, intensifying income inequality was revealed by Goodman and Webb, who established that by 1995 prices, the real incomes of the poorest tenth of the country fell from £73 per week in 1979 to just over £61 per week in 1991. These circumstances, the authors concluded, "represented a return to living standards of a quarter of a century ago" for the poorest sections of society (Goodman and Webb, 1995: 66). Around this time, inequalities in health began to emerge (Dorling, 2014), as did inequalities in the murder rate in the 1990s (Dorling, 2008) as well as the restructuring of heavy industries, social security, housing, and education provision. Such *complex inequalities*, those individual and social characteristics that overlap and create interdependent systems of discrimination (Heimer, 2019), can be much harder to operationalise methodologically, however (Acker, 2006). This means researchers will struggle to take account of the interaction between multiple inequalities in research. As social scientists, we may overlook the structure of compound inequalities and miss opportunities to problematise the relationships between inequalities, crime, and criminal careers. However, we hope our case study has afforded recognition of the context-specific processes that provoked the emergence of complex inequalities in the 1980s (Walby, 2009). Specifically, we have called attention to the march of social, spatial, and economic inequalities that pulled more people into crime and the criminal justice system.

#### **Examining the Impact of Thatcherism on Crime: Defending the Case Study Approach**

In this book we have considered the varying effects that Thatcherite policy developments had on the British populace over several decades, pertaining to crime and criminal justice. In many respects, the gathering of our various projects on this matter represents that of a *case study*; we have relied on an examination of a particular phenomenon (Thatcherism) in a particular state (the UK), drawn on a variety of data sources and statistical techniques, and examined a series of separate but connected topics. We agree with Feagin et al (1991) that systematic case studies of this kind, many of which have been done on cities and communities in sociology or political science (for key examples, see Lynd and Lynd, 1929; Hunter, 1953; Dahl, 1961; Sampson, 2012), are an important methodological tool in social science inquiry. Feagin et al summarise the key functions of a hybrid collection of works such as we have sought to create.


(Feagin et al, 1991: 6–7)

While long-term case-based methodologies may be common in certain domains of social science (such as urban studies), we also believe they have an equivalent value for criminology and social policy, by examining how legislation becomes realised in citizens' lives over time. Such an approach would also counter what Rock (2005) refers to as "chronocentrism" in the discipline, where he criticised criminologists for frequently "neglect[ing] what is old" (2005: 20) and overlooking historical configurations. Similarly, Pierson notes that "If we think … of how social processes unfold over time we will ask questions that we might not otherwise ask, identify flaws in possible explanations that we would otherwise not see, and find answers that we would otherwise not find" (2004: 167) (see also Yeomans, 2019). We complete this chapter with several lessons we hope others will take away from our body of work—this case study—on Thatcherism and crime.

It may be a colloquialism to say that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," but in academic philosophical parlance, this occurrence is referred to as *emergence* (Bedau and Humphreys, 2008) and pertains to the relationship between the individual and the collective. It has also been invoked by sociological and economic methodologists who explain how social properties can emerge from individual events (Homans, 1964; Axelrod, 1997). In some explanations, emergence is the way in which unintended macrosocial phenomena arise from the actions of multiple participants (Menger, 1963). This metaphor, we think, may also be an effective means for establishing the value of a hybrid collection of studies (perhaps called a case study), which contributes both (1) a corpus of detailed investigations of component parts and (2) a broader consideration about the structures and processes at work across these components. In other words, we believe that while our work has been able to examine the consequential function of context-specific (Thatcherite) social policies in the lives of individuals, it also has highlighted something more common (generalisable) about the long-term relationships between politics, policies, and crime (discussed above). While our results pertain specifically to Britain in the 1980s, we also believe it underlines the importance, however methodologically challenging, of taking macro-level contexts into consideration and of drawing implications from empirical results in a contextually specific manner when trying to explain crime.

#### **Integrative Relationships**

Research such as ours has produced material that straddles both *particularity* on the one hand (the impact of discreet Thatcherite policies on crime and criminal careers) and *generality* on the other (the relationship between politics and crime). While it focuses on a particular politico-historical context, wider generalities can also be abstracted that may be useful for other criminologists. Primary debates on the manner in which social policies trickle down into the lives of citizens remain important for researchers to incorporate in future work. These include considerations of realistic timescales appropriate to long-term political periodisation, concern with the secondary impact of social policies on future generations, and a commitment to understanding *how* exactly social policies might entangle some people into the criminal justice system—which as our work suggests is possible to demonstrate empirically.

We believe our results highlight *a set of integrative relationships* between individuals, families, social systems, and crime. Our work on social housing (Chapter 4), for example, identified a pathway between one's parents' response to new housing legislation, risk of homelessness in young adulthood, trailed by increased risk of violence and contact with the criminal justice system at age 30. This chimes with a growing body of work on social sequence analysis (Cornwell, 2015) and path dependence (Nelson and Winter, 1982) which highlight the temporal ordering of social actions. Such dynamics are important because they illuminate how social phenomena (in this case crime) are inextricably connected to both macro and micro processes. We have elsewhere voiced concern that some of the dominant research methods in the field tend to favour individual variables at the expense of social ones (Gray, 2007, 2009; Farrall, 2021) or that grand narratives ignore what happens in people's lives (Farrall et al, 2022) (see also Yeomans, 2019). However, we have sought to compile a body of work that acknowledges dynamic social processes, time-sensitive relationships, and variables that are permitted to change status through time. Investigating the precursors of crime clearly involves all sorts of dependencies and relations. This means that we should avoid, as the sociologist Brenner stressed, "the assumption that all social relations are organised within self-enclosed, discretely bounded territorial containers" (Brenner, 2004: 38).

Likewise, the theoretical framework with which we approach crime should not be reified, but understood as constructed, and subject to socioeconomic developments that can generate, adapt, and reformulate how crime is shaped in society. This implies a more open and embedded conceptualisation of crime. Acknowledging the relationality associated with a crime means that dependencies, actors, and institutions should be problematised, which might oblige attention to particular pieces of legislation. Through our case study we chose to examine the key areas of social welfare (education, social security, and housing) but of course other particularities such as war, debt, or media culture may be equally appropriate. Another example of such an approach is Black's influential paper on the social "Geometry of Terrorism" (2004) which illuminated the role of social structures in relation to violence and how "relational distance" was an important element in explaining conflict (Black, 1976, also Black, 1983). His research consequently inspired further works exploring the mechanisms leading to violent conflicts, including violent predation and violent retaliation (Phillips, 2003).

Evidently, scholars in criminology are increasingly turning to analytic methods that afford a greater insight into the dynamics of crime (see Heimer, 2019; McVie et al, 2020; Neil and Sampson, 2021). Dynamic, relational paradigms shift the focus to longer term processes, transitions, and other ordered developments. In the UK, we are fortunate to have access to highquality birth cohorts and repeated national survey data, as well as new techniques and software for maximising their potential. This book has presented a hybrid framework that has sought to utilise several different approaches to exploring the connections between citizens and the socio-political world. This kind of methodology may be adept at identifying unique *particula*r insights (such as the UK in the 1980s), but also identifies significant "common threads," per se—the relational structure of crime.

#### **The Ethical Dilemma of Exploring Thatcherism and Crime**

The epistemological theory offered here highlights the transactional links between individuals, institutions, and ideology. It is a model that captures the heterogeneity of social life in the construction/deconstruction of criminological research. It also brings forth ethical dilemmas that need to be addressed given that we are exploring the lives of people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, and perhaps—in the case of the birth cohorts we have explored—individuals who may have been subject to organised attempts to stigmatise their socio-economic status. Coming to conclusions about research participants and the data they produce is always a "political, contested and unstable activity" (Maynard and Purvis, 1994: 7). Working the wealth of life-course data from the BCS70 and the NCDS into this book has inevitably placed greater emphasis upon certain aspects of their lives at the expense of others. Bourgois (2003) has stressed that any examination of the socially marginalised encounters serious problems with the politics of representation. There is potential for those caught up in the criminal justice system to be misunderstood or misrepresented. It is possible that the depictions of regions impacted by deindustrialisation and decline may also feed into negative spatial stereotypes (Walklate and Evans, 1999). Popular representations of a disaffected youth or the miners' strike in the 1980s have frequently dwelt on the spectacle of public disorder (Osgerby, 1997; Dorling, 2014). Certainly, after the 1980s fears about an anti-work, anti-social, and welfare-dependent underclass had a continuing influence on the policies of right- and left-wing governments in the UK and the USA (Driver and Martell, 2002) as well as the public psyche (Farrall et al, 2009).

However, from an ethical and methodological perspective, it has also been our intention to better understand the latent and complicated influence of Thatcherite ideology on crime. We have sought to extract more detail and more precision (validity) about the mechanisms of this relationship from the best available data. Short-term singular policy assessments will only take us so far, and cannot access, with any degree of accuracy, the interactional effects of radical policy change. Notably, the author team could both be considered "Thatcher's Children"; we grew up in the 1980s in regions variously affected by Thatcherism (Essex and Basingstoke) and in homes purchased from the council. We have not taken the ethical concerns of this task lightly but feel confident that we have handled the data considerately, but truthfully and responsibly.

#### **Epistemology: From the Ground Up**

Reflecting on our work brings forth the question of knowledge development; ours is a project that has been built upwards from the ground using birth cohort data. Foucault (1980) similarly describes a form of "ascending" analysis that uses the case study to empirically work upwards from the local level towards theory, where attention can identify the particular or "molecular elements" of society (1980). Foucault stresses that these elements "have their own histories, own trajectories, own techniques and tactics" (1980: 99) which are essential to understand how "mechanisms of power have been – and continue to be – invested, colonised, utilised involunted, transformed, displaced, extended etc by ever more general mechanisms and by forms of global domination" (Foucault, 1980: 99). If one is to understand the nature of power, he stresses, the analysis must take into account the minutia, perhaps the ordinariness of citizens' everyday lives. An "ascending analysis" therefore has several advantages; it is adaptable and recognises that power might be diffused across multiple settings or systems. This might implicate institutions, policy cultures, regions, and the socio-economic profiles of specific spaces. Relatedly, Foucault has stressed that scholars should seek to identify "unintended consequences" of social processes since power relations are often unpredictable and contradictory (1980).

Our study of Thatcherism sought to discover if connections existed between people, crime, and politics and has found considerable value in examining these relationships by beginning our analysis with the life-courses of those who grew up during her administrations. In essence, our case study took a "bottom up" approach and found this "ascending" (Foucault, 1980) momentum a profitable one. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) explicated a similar conceptualisation in their model of a "rhizome." A rhizome is an underground plant system which sends out "creeping" roots from its nodes. As the stems move away from the original plant, the exact point at which they may break through the topsoil and produce a new plant is unpredictable. Estimations as to how far from the main plant the new stem may appear are possible, but only with a wide margin of error. In "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia," Deleuze and Guattari (1987) posit that rhizomatic knowledge mutates and moves in multiple directions at once; "A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances" (1987: 7). Rather than provide a narrative history between phenomena, the rhizome affords a dynamic map of growth and propagation. Approaching social problems, such as crime, rhizomatically instead of arboretically thus encourages one to imagine a network of hidden connections at play. As problematic corridors between phenomena are permitted, certain events, experiences, and unintended consequences can be brought into the theoretical and empirical modelling. The effect enables numerous expressions of power and influence to unfold and new questions that we might not otherwise ask to be posed and potentially answered.

We have certainly detected rhizomatic features in our work on Thatcher's political legacy (Farrall et al, 2020: 98–99); the long-term influence of her restructuring of society and the economy took many years to be fully "seen" and comprehended. Similarly, we have identified the chaotic (rhizomatic) relationship between Thatcherism and crime, as the impact of an intervention in one arena of social or economic policy later appeared in a seemingly unrelated policy arena. For example, we found that deindustrialisation began to influence how young people felt about education and their willingness to truant, which subsequently influenced their chances of embarking upon offending careers and their contact with the criminal justice system in young adulthood. Other rhizomic legacies can sometimes be anticipated; economic inequalities are typically associated with negative societal experiences, for example. Moreover, it is now evident that particular social policy arenas act as "collection bins"; that is, social spaces where the consequences of other social and economic policies are made manifest. Crime and health (Scott-Samuel et al, 2014) appear to be two of these social spaces in which the effects of sudden changes are registered. Thus, we have come to think of our case study on Thatcherism as "rhizomatic" – which has afforded us the opportunity to open new perspectives on how crime is generated and experienced. It is graphically represented in Figure 9.1 (see also Figure 1.14 in

**FIGURE 9.1** Model of Political Change between Socio-Economic Framework, Crime, and Punishment Systems

Chapter 1) and illustrates the relational complexity and temporal ordering between Thatcherism and crime.

This new, emergent model has reciprocal dynamic properties that are dependent upon but not present in the individual components from which it arose. By building "upwards" from the life-courses of those born in 1958 and 1970, we were able to empirically test how policies operated through time and through people's lives; we found specific pathways between several legislative shifts, crime, the onset and persistence of criminal careers and experience of the criminal justice system. Moreover, by taking this approach, something new came into existence ontologically—an appreciation of the relational context of politics and crime. Theorising the fit between crime and politics requires time, attention to detail, and boldness, and we hope that we have highlighted the need to open up such theorising to a much greater set of experiences and perspectives and to be much more sensitive to politics and ethics of criminological knowledge production.

#### **References**


Tilley, J. (2002) 'Political Generations and Partisanship in the UK, 1964-1997', *Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)*, *165*(1), 121–135.

Vinen, R. (2009) *Thatcher's Britain*. London: Simon and Schuster.


Young, H. (1993) *One of Us*. London: Pan Books.

## **APPENDIX**

### Modelling the Relationship between Radical Policy Change and Crime

This book draws on a variety of data sources that are available for (i) additional study, (ii) can be expanded as new sweeps of data become available, and (iii) modified for other social science analysis. This appendix will provide some details on how the data sets were collated for a multi-cohort study of New Right politics in the UK. There is a link to one of the collated data sets at the end of the chapter.

#### **The Value of Multi-Birth Cohort and Other Long-Term Data**

Many challenges facing individuals and their risks of becoming involved in the criminal justice system or exposed to crime victimisation have their origins in early life. Indeed, our analysis suggests that attitudes and emotional responses to crime and disorder are also associated with experiences in youth (Mannheim, 1928). There is a need therefore to effectively leverage opportunities for understanding the rhizomatic long-term relationships associated with crime. Existing data provide a vital resource for mapping these early processes and their impacts across the life-course. Birth cohort and long-term repeated studies—of which there are many sources available in the UK—can provide effective and cost-efficient evidence to support robust analyses. This is further strengthened by methodological advances that provide a framework for analysing causal relationships to more directly assess policy directions (O'Connor et al, 2022). Adopting multi-cohort and other long-term analyses allows researchers to draw on large-scale data sets, improves the precision of estimates, and enhances the replicability of findings, within a more established theoretical model. Multi-cohort approaches have incredible potential to advance knowledge of the relationship between crime and politics over the life-course in ways that extend beyond what is possible from any single study.

#### **Birth Cohort Data**

We drew on material from two UK birth cohort studies, namely the British Cohort Study born in 1970 (BCS70) and the National Child Development Study born in 1958 (the NCDS). The BCS70 cohort was born in one week of April 1970 and grew up in the 1980s (during which they would have experienced changes in economic, social welfare, housing, and schooling policies). The sample is large enough to explore the unfolding of life-courses over several stages of life. In all, 16,135 babies were born and recruited into the BCS70 (98% of all births in that week). Although the births are limited to one week in 1970, there are no reasons why this cohort ought to be considered unique or nonrepresentative. As such, the cohort has been repeatedly used as if it were a nationally representative sample (see Mostafa and Wiggins, 2014 for a discussion on attrition in the BCS70 sample). The BCS70 allows us to explore the social and economic changes of the 1980s because of the regular timing of the follow-up interviews (at ages 5, 10, 16, 26, 30, etc.). Mothers were interviewed in 1970, providing us with some background data on the social environments in which the cohort would spend its formative years. In 1975 mothers were reinterviewed and asked questions about their children's behaviour. In 1980 the children were interviewed and questions relating to crime were first fielded. In 1986 (when the cohort was 16) the survey questions were expanded to include contact with the police and convictions in court. Those topics were revisited in 1996, when the cohort was 26, and again in 2000. Teachers and head teachers were also interviewed while the children were at school (in 1975, 1980, and 1986). The survey regularly fielded questions on cohort members' social and economic circumstances (type of housing, neighbourhood characteristics, schooling and employment experiences, household composition, home leaving, homelessness, relationship formation, marriage, and child rearing, peer relations, and medical experiences), as well as social attitudes, political affiliation, alcohol consumption, and psychological well-being. The cohort's geographical location was also recorded at each interview, which became useful for county-level analyses.

To understand the impact of shifting social and economic conditions, we also relied (where appropriate) on a similar birth cohort study that preceded the BCS70 to provide a comparison. The National Child Development Study (*n* = 18,558) was born in one week of March 1958 in the UK—when the welfare state was expanding. Cohort members were 21 when Thatcher came into power. Again, data were collected from birth and at regular points into adulthood. Both cohorts have low attrition rates, with around two-thirds being interviewed at sweeps since 2000. Gerova (2006) investigated the representativeness of the BCS70 and concluded it remained representative of the original cohort in 1970. To undertake our analysis, we merged the data so that each cohort had a longitudinal version of some of the data from birth to the year 2012. All the original data sources can be accessed via the UK Data Service and the file codes are specified in Tables A1 and A2.

#### *NCDS Datafile Aged 0–55*

Each data set from birth to age 55 (10 sweeps of individual data) (see Table A1) was merged chronologically to form a life-history data set. Individuals with missing years were included. We began to build the file from the year of birth sweep (1958) and added each consecutive sweep, matching on the cohort members' identification number. A consistent series of checks and cleaning procedures were conducted to ensure data security and remove repeat variables. The data set consists of the following files.

#### *BCS70 Datafile Aged 0–42*

Data from birth to age 42 (nine sweeps of individual data) (see Table A2) was merged sequentially to form a life-history profile. Again, individuals with missing years were included and cohort members were matched through their unique identification number. The data were regularly cleaned and checked to ensure the integrity of the data. The following files comprise the final data set.

#### **Integrating Multiple Data Sets of Crime, Criminal Justice, and Social Attitudes**

#### *Individual-Level Data*

In addition to the birth cohort data, we created a series of data sets drawn from national-level surveys and official statistics. Two of the key surveys that we draw on in this book are the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)1 and the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS). The integrated data sets include both individual- and aggregate-level data sources. They can be linked through common variables, most notably the observed


**TABLE A1** List of Sweeps from the NCDS Birth Cohort


**TABLE A2** List of Sweeps from the BCS70 Birth Cohort

time period (i.e. year), but also categories of respondents (e.g. age, ethnicity, income, region, education, employment status). Features of the content and structure of the data sets are described and summarised in Table A3 (see also Jennings et al, 2015).

#### *Aggregate Level and Context*

Many of the longitudinal processes that we are interested in require us to examine key socio-demographic trends over time. To support our analyses, we collected over a hundred time series data (most at the annual level but a few at quarterly and/or monthly intervals), which are summarised in Table A4.


**TABLE A3** Summary of Individual-Level Data—CSEW and BSAS



They include measures of the criminal justice system, economic performance, welfare, inequality, and employment.

#### **Free Access to the Data**

The data included in Tables A3 and A4 are available from the UK Data Service under SN7875 "Long-Term Trajectories of Crime in the United Kingdom, 1982-2013" https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7875-1

The data has been collected and stored mindful of potential uses for other researchers. It has been "preserved" so that it is possible to use at both individual and aggregate levels. This should provide users with the flexibility to adapt the data set for their own purposes—either integrating additional contextual variables or collapsing the data by specific demographic markers. Each survey can be analysed as a large "stand-alone" data set.

#### **Useful Resources**

• **The UK Data Service**

The UK Data Service holds the largest collection of economic, social, and population data in the UK. It provides free access to over 6,000 social science data sets, including quantitative and qualitative sources and all the birth cohort data we have utilised in this study.

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/

• **Closer**

Closer is the hub of longitudinal and cohort research data in the UK. It is an interdisciplinary partnership of leading social and biomedical longitudinal population studies, the UK Data Service, and the British Library. It delivers useful information on all the cohort studies, ongoing sweeps, and technical developments.

https://closer.ac.uk/

#### **Note**

1 First conducted in 1982, the BCS was commissioned by the UK government to measure the "dark figure" of unreported crime incidents. Its name was changed to the "Crime Survey for England and Wales" in 2012.

#### **References**

Gerova, V. (2006) *BCS1986 Data Note 1: Enhancing the Head-Teacher Dataset*. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education.

Jennings, W., Gray, E., Hay, C. and Farrall, S. (2015) 'Collating Longitudinal Data on Crime, Victimisation and Social Attitudes in England and Wales: A New Resource for Exploring Long-Term Trends in Crime', *British Journal of Criminology*, *55*(5), 1005–1015.


## **INDEX**

Adam Smith Institute 56 age 24, 40, 41, 44, 55, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 85, 88, 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 106, 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 122, 123, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 155, 159, 163, 164, 165, 180, 188, 189, 191, 192, 206, 209, 210, 214, 225, 226, 227 age (or birth) cohorts 24, 41, 43, 44, 71, 72–80, 85–90, 92–93, 98–99, 103–112, 115–123, 128, 130, 136, 143, 205, 207, 208, 209, 211, 215, 216, 224, 225–227, 229 age generation(s) 87, 93, 130–131, 132, 133–134, 136, 143, 144–145, 171 age, period and cohort 128, 131–144, 208, 209 agency/agents 5, 7, 10, 16, 18, 19, 23, 40 agenda 11–12, 33, 39, 45, 51–52, 55, 58, 60, 61, 127, 138, 168, 174n10 America/American/Americans 12, 178, 193 Annison, Harry 4, 6, 19, 21, 26, 128 antisocial behaviour 54, 128, 129, 130, 138, 140, 143, 164, 228 Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003 138 attitude/s 10, 13, 15, 19–20, 24–25, 37, 46n1, 100, 128, 129, 130–131, 132–133, 134–138, 143–144, 173, 181, 208–209, 224, 225, 226

#### authoritarian populism 127, 131, 134, 136, 145, 161, 167, 170, 185

Baker, Kenneth 58 Barker, Vanessa 4, 7, 9–10, 19, 20–21, 24, 26 Beckett, Katherine 7, 13, 16, 20, 21, 24, 26, 130 belief/s 37, 40, 104, 131, 150, 204 Bell, Emma 4, 18–19, 173 benefit/s (welfare) 55–56, 67, 69, 71, 73, 77–80, 80–81, 90, 92, 94n5, 133, 185, 207, 210 Benefit claimants 55, 70, 79 Beveridge Plan, The 67 Birmingham 130 black people 9, 12, 112, 130, 136, 153 Blair, Tony 33, 128, 130, 133, 134, 138, 151, 155, 172, 174n10, 185 Blair's Babies 133 Blunkett, David 173n1 British Cohort Study (BCS70) 13, 72–73, 78–79, 85–89, 93, 103, 205, 208, 215, 225–227 British Crime Survey 132; *see also* Crime Survey for England & Wales British Social Attitudes Survey 83, 128, 132, 134, 226 Brixton 145n1 Brown, Gordon 133–134, 185 budget 53

building societies 82 Building Societies Act (1986) 80 Callaghan, James 133, 143, 145, 185 capitalism/capitalist 4, 17 20, 134, 185 Cavadino, Michael 4, 10, 14, 20, 21, 150, 152–153, 155, 156, 158, 161 child benefit 55, 73 choice (concept of) 17, 31, 40, 51, 56, 103, 185 civil service/servants 4, 5, 25 Clarke, Kenneth 53, 172 class 54, 58, 135, 136; Working/lower class 25–26, 68, 72, 81, 82, 90, 92, 104, 112, 130; middle class 25–26, 82 coal/coalfields/coalmining 105, 106, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 188– 189, 190–196, 209, 211 Coal Mining Reporting Area 189 Coalition Government (2010–2015) 185 community sentences 128, 163, 167, 173 complex inequalities 210–212; *see also* inequality conditionality (in welfare benefits) 78 Conservative Party/Government 7, 38, 46,52, 67–68, 69, 81, 93, 127, 133, 143, 151, 152, 163, 166, 168, 173, 174n9, 185, 188 constructivist institutionalism 39, 42–43, 44, 207 council house 54, 61, 68, 69, 81-82, 85, 89, 92-93, 207 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 145n4, 154, 164–165 crime control 4, 11, 152, 173 Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 58, 154, 163–164, 167 Crime Survey for England & Wales *see* British Crime Survey criminal careers vii–viii, 24, 39, 41–42, 44, 93–94, 98–124, 203, 205– 209, 210, 212, 214, 219; *see also* Chapter 2 Criminal Justice Act 1961 152 Criminal Justice Act 1982 154, 155–156, 170 Criminal Justice Act 1988 57, 154, 159–160 Criminal Justice Act 1991 58, 127, 154, 160–160 Criminal Justice Act 1993 154, 158, 161–162

Criminal Justice Act 2003 5, 6, 7, 173 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 58, 154, 162–163, 164, 167, 173, 174n4 criminal justice system 1–28, 34, 57–58, 61, 72–73, 73–79, 85–88, 92–94, 105, 123, 144, 150–174, 178–196, 206, 207–208, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215, 217, 219, 224, 229 Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act, 1996 154, 162–163 deindustrialization 45, 204, 206, 208, 209, 215, 217; *see also* economic restructuring Di Giorgi, Alessandro 3, 9, 16–18, 22, 26 Dignan, James 4, 10, 14, 20, 21, 150, 152–153, 155, 156, 158, 161 discipline (at school) 113, 115 Drug Trafficking Offences Act, 1986 154, 158–159, 167 economic change 32, 41, 44–45, 77, 103–104, 111, 117, 127–145, 179, 208 economic inequality *see* inequality economic policies 51, 52–54, 58, 61, 123, 196, 206, 217 economic regeneration/recovery 193, 195 economic restructuring 15, 46, 61, 70, 98–123, 188, 193, 206, 208, 211; *see also* deindustrialization economy 7, 11, 14–15, 16–18, 20, 27, 33–34, 35, 42–43, 45–46, 51, 52–53, 57, 59, 68, 70, 84, 90, 100–101, 106, 112, 127, 128, 133, 152, 169, 172, 179, 180, 193, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 217; *see also* political economy education 31, 42, 51–52, 53, 56–57, 58–59, 60, 67, 73, 78, 81, 100– 101, 102, 105, 112, 117, 130, 135, 136, 140, 171, 203, 205, 207, 208, 212, 215, 217, 227 Education Act 1980 56 Education Act 1988 56, 59 Education Act 1992 56 Education Act 1993 56 educational qualifications 73 Elder, Glenn 39–40

electoral systems 10, 15 Enns, Peter 4, 5, 13–14, 20, 21, 24, 128, 145 exclusions (from school) 56, 100, 101 families 31, 39, 42, 55, 67, 69–70, 71, 73, 78, 80, 82, 92, 94, 98, 100, 101, 106, 111, 122, 206, 207, 211, 214, family allowance 73 Faulkner, David 4–5, 19, 26, 58, 150, 152, 155, 156, 168, 170, 171, 174n5 fear of crime 13, 128, 129 Foot, Michael 127, Foucault, Michel, 211, 216–217 Fowler, Norman 55 Fowler review, the (1984) 55 Gamble, Andrew 23, 31, 204, 205 Garland, David 3, 7–8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 128, 129, 130 gender 44, 72, 135, 139 general elections: 1964 133; 1979 50, 174; 1983 53, 174; 1992 171 generational effects 209; *see also* generations generations 34, 38, 87, 93, 130–136, 139–145, 207, 208, 209, 214 geographic patterns 27, 41, 44, 84, 90, 106, 112–113, 122, 123, 178–196, 225 Hall, Stuart 3, 32, 51, 130, 131, 139 Hauntology 178, 195 Heath, Edward 38, 52, 55, 133, 171 Historical Institutionalism 39, 42–43 'Home Counties' 69, 180, 206 home office 6, 127, 156, 162, 166–167, 168, 171, 172–173, 174n9 home ownership 54, 80–92 homeless/homelessness 54–55, 68–69, 70, 71, 73–90, 92–93, 188, 205, 206, 211, 214, 225 House of Commons 155, 162 House of Lords 81 housing 15, 26, 34, 45, 51, 54–93, 100, 101, 106, 169, 172, 181, 188, 203, 205, 207, 208, 212, 214, 215; council homes/houses 54, 68, 69, 73, 81, 85, 87, 90, 207;

polarization of 54, 68, 81, 82; residualisation of 68, 81, 82, 83, 87; social housing 26, 67–71, 73–77, 79, 85, 87, 214 Howard, Michael 38, 58, 59, 87, 162– 163, 168, 172, 173, 174n9 Hurd, Douglas 152, 159, 172, 174n9 ideology/ideologies/ideological 4, 13, 14, 19, 27, 30, 31, 32, 38, 43, 44, 92, 134, 145, 171, 172, 195, 215–216 imprisonment/incarceration 4, 10, 14, 16, 25, 35, 58, 124n11, 127, 155, 156, 158, 159–160, 161, 164, 166, 167, 172, 173, 178, 192; Rates of 14, 16, 71, 128– 129, 194 income groups 82 income inequality *see* economic inequality income support 55, 93 inequality 14, 15, 16, 21, 24, 46, 53–54, 55–56, 61, 70, 79, 85, 90, 92, 93, 112, 127, 134, 179, 181, 203, 205–206, 207–208, 210– 212, 217, 229 inflation 52, 53, 113, 204 interaction/interactional effects 41, 45, 87, 212, 216 interest rates 102, 180 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 53

Job Seeker's Allowance 56 Johnson, Boris 52

Keynesian/Keynesianism 32, 52, 53, 133, 185, 204–205 Kinnock, Neil 127

Labour Government 1997–2010/New Labour 4, 5, 7, 46, 128, 130, 133–138, 142–145, 164, 185, 205 Lacey, Nicola 7, 10–11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28 Laissez faire economics 31 Lamont, Norman 38, 53 Late Modernity 7, 9, 11, 14, 20, 22–23, 28 Law and order 46, 50, 57, 59, 127, 143, 144, 145n2, 150, 151–152, 167, 169–170, 185, 208

Lawson, Nigel 53

legacies 34, 35–39, 44, 144, 151, 171, 194, 203, 205, 208, 209, 217; our definition/operationalisation 35–39 life-course/life-course perspective 24, 39–41, 43, 44, 67, 71, 72, 89, 94, 103–123, 201, 210, 215, 217, 219, 224–225; offending over the 103–123 life-course criminology 41–42 Liverpool 130 local government 59, 81 *Local Government Finance Act, The* (1988) 60 low income households 55, 83 macroeconomic policy *see* economic policy Major, John 32, 33, 53, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 143, 151, 153, 154, 155, 170, 171, 181, 185, 205, 209 manufacturing 51, 53, 101–102, 112, 113, 179–180, 187 'marketisation' 10, 81, 101 marital status 72, 135 Miller, Lisa 3, 11, 15, 20, 21, 26 miners' strike (of 1984–85) 60, 61, 113, 145n1, 180, 191, 195, 196, 211, 216 mining *see* coalmining Ministry of Justice 181 modernity 7 monetarism/monetarist 32, 52, 53, 102, 123, 180, 205 moral conservativism 31 moral panic(s) 130, 131, 138, 139 morality 31, 129 multiple linear regression 123n1 National Child Development Study (NCDS) 72–73, 77, 78, 79, 85– 89, 92–93, 103, 208, 215, 225 National Coal Board 187 National Curriculum 56 National Health Service (NHS) 59, 60, 94n1, 182, 183, 185 neoconservative/neoconservativism 23, 31, 32, 127, 204 neoliberal/neo-liberalism 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 19, 23, 31, 45, 71, 99, 128, 133, 134, 143, 194, 196, 204, 207, 211 New Labour *see* Labour Government 1997–2010

New Right 23, 30–33, 46n1, 50, 51, 56, 57, 71, 79, 84, 92, 132, 134, 170, 172, 185, 204, 208 North of England 106, 113, 180, 188, 189, 204, 205, 209 nostalgia 129

offending 24, 27, 39, 41, 42, 44, 56, 61, 71, 73, 78, 79, 87, 93, 98–123, 128, 161, 165, 168, 191, 208, 209, 210, 217 Oil Crisis (1973) 130, 179

parental tenure trajectory 85–89 path dependency/path dependent processes 9, 43, 209, 214 peak age of offending 78, 98, 191 pensions 73 perceptions of crime/disorder/anti-social behaviour 25, 128–129, 131, 132, 138, 140–141, 143, 145 periodisation(s) 32–33, 34, 51–52, 59–60, 185, 214 permissiveness 31 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996) (US) 10 police 19, 23, 57, 59, 72, 87–88, 94, 94n4, 109, 115, 117, 129, 138, 153, 158, 163, 167, 168, 169, 173, 174n6–7, 180, 225 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 57, 153, 154, 155, 156–158 policy radicalism 59, 61, 170, 207; cascading policy radicalism 59–60 political affiliation 225 political change 8, 27, 32, 39, 44, 218 political culture/s 4, 9, 21, 203 political discourse 16, 25, 27, 42, 138, 208 political economy 7, 11, 14–15, 16–18, 20, 27, 33–34, 35, 42–43, 45–46, 51, 52–53, 57, 59, 68, 70, 84, 90, 100–101, 106, 112, 127, 128, 133, 152, 169, 172, 179, 180, 193, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 217; *see also* economy political generations 130–144 political ideology/ideologies 4, 30, 134, 145, 195 political leaders/leadership 3, 10, 13, 19, 23, 26, 104

political legacy/legacies 30–46, 171, 217 political rhetoric 5, 12, 13, 33, 50, 127, 151, 155, 166–167, 169, 170, 172 political socialisation 128, 131, 134, 136, 138, 143, 144 political values 133 populist punitiveness *see* authoritarian populism Portillo, Michael 38, 55, 56 post-War Consensus 32, 33, 51, 67–68, 133, 136, 183, 185, 204, 208 poverty 17, 21, 56, 67, 68, 70, 90, 101, 112, 134, 181, 193, 205, 206 'poverty trap', the 55, 69 prison building/prison-building programme 181, 192–193, 195, 196 prison capacity 189 Prison Estates Transformation Programme (PETP) 194 prison population 57, 128, 160, 169, 170, 173, 181, 183, 189, 191, 194, 209 prison sentences 152, 173 'prison works' 59 prisoners 154, 156, 158, 161, 162, 164, 167, 181, 189, 191 prisons, locations of 178–196 privatisation 18, 52, 53, 54, 90–92, 181 Prosecution of Offences Act, 1985 6, 154, 158 public expenditure 68, 69, 81 public opinion 24, 128–129, 145, 161, 203 public sector reform 59–60, 61 public sentiment 128, 132, 145 punctuated equilibrium in public policy 33 punishment 3–17, 20, 24, 27, 31, 50, 113, 132, 138, 152, 159, 196, 205, 207, 218 punitive/punitiveness 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 50, 87, 88, 94, 115, 117, 123, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134, 136, 138, 143, 144, 145, 150–156, 161, 165–166, 167, 170, 172, 173, 181, 195

Queen's speech 46

radical right 34, 50, 70 radicalism 33, 39, 50–51, 54, 57, 59– 61, 123, 151, 169, 170, 207

recession 42, 53, 77, 101, 180, 209 recorded crime rates 10, 12, 13, 19, 21, 24, 26, 27, 44–45, 46, 70–71, 78, 87, 104, 127, 128, 130, 139, 140–141, 144, 170, 171, 195, 201, 209, 228 Reagan, Ronald 132 rhizomes/rhizomatic 217, 224 right-wing think tanks 56, 59 riots 46, 130, 145n1, 227 'right to buy' (one's council house) 54, 68, 69, 80–81, 92–93 Sampson, Robert 41, 89, 98, 104, 129, 130, 212, 215 school exclusions 56–57, 99, 100, 101, 113 school pupils 42, 61, 100, 104 'school to prison pipeline' 99, 111 schools 4, 12, 15, 31, 39, 41, 42, 51, 56–57, 59, 61, 98–100, 101– 105, 106–109, 110, 111–112, 113–117, 122, 134, 136, 144, 170, 188, 205, 208, 209, 210, 225, 228; Alienation from 98, 99, 106–109, 110, 113, 115– 117, 122, 123–124n10, 205, 209, 210 Scotland 94n3, 102, 106, 113, 117, 133, 134, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189, 193, 204, 205, 209 scroungers 79, 211 sickness benefit 67, 69 Simon, Jonathan 4, 11–13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 26 social anxieties 129, 140, 173 social conservativism 22, 23, 31–32, 127, 204 social control 17, 90, 112, 129, 211 social exclusion 37, 210 social security 34, 39, 42, 45, 51, 52, 55–56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73–77, 79, 81, 82, 92, 93, 100, 169, 172, 203, 205, 207, 208, 212, 215 Social Security Act 1980 (No. 1) 69 Social Security Act 1980 (No. 2) 69, 79 Social Security Act 1986 69, 80, 81, 93 Social Security Act 1988 54 Social Security and Housing Benefit Act 1982 81 social status 70, 206

social values 10, 11, 15, 16, 27, 31, 46n1, 130, 132–133, 134, 136, 143, 144, 145 social work/workers 50, 71, 152 South Wales 106, 113, 180, 188, 189, 204, 205 'stagflation' 52 Straw, Jack 87, 138, 168 strikes 53, 60, 61, 69, 113, 145n1, 180, 195, 196, 211, 216 structural equation modelling 123n1 structural processes 42, 99, 103 supplementary benefits 55, 69 survival/survivalism 9, 93, 206 teachers 101, 115, 225 Tebbit, Norman 61 tenure (of housing) 68, 72, 73, 82–86, 88–89 Thatcher Governments: crime policy 46, 50, 51–52, 57–58, 59, 60, 61, 88, 123, 127, 144, 150–174, 207–208, 208–209; economic policy 34, 41, 44, 45, 51, 52–54, 58, 61, 98, 102, 105, 112–113, 180, 196, 203, 206, 207, 210, 217; education policy 52, 60; electoral base of 51, 54, 61, 207; Housing policy 54, 58, 59, 61, 80–82, 90–92; ideology of 30–32, 92; implementation of 33–34, 51–52, 58; periodisation of 33, 51–60; policy making of 33, 42, 51–60; radicalism of 33, 50–51, 54, 57, 59–61, 123, 151, 169, 170, 207; social security policy 55–56, 67–70 Thatcher's children 93, 127–145, 216 Thatcherism: impact perspective 33–34, 41, 52–53, 54, 69, 101, 111, 113, 151–154, 171, 188, 203, 204–206, 210–212, 212–213, 214–215, 217–219; implementation perspective 33–34, 51–52, 58 Thatcherite: 'instinct' 31–32, 51, 55, 59, 60–61, 151, 152, 170; rhetoric 50, 127, 151, 166–167, 169, 170, 172 Tonry, Michael 4, 5, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' 52 trade unions 15, 16, 31, 58, 67, 101, 133, 204 traditional values 31, 134–137

truancy/'bunking off' 42, 61, 98–111, 112–115, 122, 123n2, 188, 208, 209; trends in 102 underclass 12, 211, 216 undeserving 211 unemployment 12, 15, 16, 17, 24, 35, 38–39, 42, 46, 53–54, 56, 59, 61, 67, 69, 70, 78, 79, 82, 83, 92, 101–102, 104, 106, 110, 111, 113, 123, 127, 179, 180–181, 191, 192, 204, 205, 206, 209 unemployment benefit 55, 56 universal benefits 73 universal credit 70 United States of America (USA) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 84, 112, 182 Victim(s) 5, 15, 24, 26, 27, 155, 160, 165, 206 victimisation 13, 45, 56, 84–85, 88–89, 92, 139, 140, 224 Wacquant, Loic 3, 7, 8–9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 26, 71 Wales 133, 134, 178, 180, 185, 188, 189, 194, 204 welfare claimants 55, 70, 79, 159, 211 welfare retrenchment 9, 53, 70, 207 welfare state/system 8–10, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21–22, 27, 30, 31, 38, 52, 54, 61, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 78, 79, 87, 93, 94n1, 171, 183, 204, 225 Wenzelburger, Georg 14, 15, 25 'Wets' 127, 166, 171 Whitelaw, William 57, 155, 160, 166, 167, 168, 172, 173 Wilson, Harold 133, 136, 143, 145, 185 Windlesham, George 4, 5, 19, 20, 21, 26, 57, 58, 155, 158, 170, 174n4 'Winter of Discontent' 53 workfare 9, 17 World War I 186, 187 World War II 30, 133, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 194 Young, Jock 7, 19, 20, 21, 23

Youth Cohort Study 102 Youth Training Scheme (YTS) 55

Zedner, Lucia 8