Why was there so much crime in Victorian England? Essay Example

disguise themselves in a street filled with lower and working class hanging around and upper class sticking out like sore thumbs. Most criminals would have been middle or lower class, who with low profiles weren't easily recognizable so they wouldn't find much difficulty approaching the streets and committing crime unnoticed. London and other large Victorian cities were built with tall dark building all closely knit with narrow alleyways and few street lamps; the perfect label for criminals.

The police force was also poor meaning crime went unnoticed often.

Punishments had also not properly been put Into place so lots of crime went unpunished too. The undeveloped police was another reason why crime was so popular in Victorian England. The police force was only introduced in 1829 and could only stop crime if the policemen were at the right place and the right time. This was also unstable because the police lacked authority and power.

To help improve their status they wore long black coats and tall hats to show that they were superior and that people should obey them. Policemen were armed only with a truncheon (a long wooden stick) and policing wasn't the most popular occupation, resulting in no less crime.

In 1835 the Municipal Corporations Act allowed borough councils to have their own police force though many were still reluctant; by 1837 only 92 of the 171 roughs had organized one. In 1 869 the County Borough Police Act forced the whole country to have a police force and 239 were put up.

However, variations In pay and conditions meant only half were efficient enough to stop and prevent crime. At the successful,

the murders did stop (though this couldn't actually be proved to be because of the dogs).

Later it was decided that the dogs were too expensive to feed and keep. The police could have stopped more crime if they had had faster, more efficient and developed technology. Our final reason why crime was so high in Victorian England was due to the lack of technology.

Today we have forensics, databases, fingerprinting and criminal records to help us solve and prevent crime; if only that were true for the Victorian police.

True the Victorian era was an industrially revolutionary time and new inventions were being produced at a rapid rate, yet it Just wasn't good enough. The police were forced to collect evidence on paper meaning a slow procedure was needed to recollect any data. The undeveloped technology and control meant the police were inefficient.

Tracking, fingerprinting and face identification hadn't been invented yet also proving an easier escape route for Iranians - the government were likely not to be able to match name to face in the lower class Victorian England. Communication was also a big issue; the Communications Act of 1869 introduced 'rapid' telegrams as the main source of communication between police forces yet without telephones (invented in 1875) or email (much later in 1995) they still couldn't let information travel quickly.

Cameras however were in place, alas; they were rarely used properly in detecting criminals.

To conclude, the main two reasons why there was so much crime in Victorian England are poverty and lack of technology. Without technology like modern days' the police ores couldn't prevent crime or stop it without it appearing

on their doorstep and when criminal evidence was found they couldn't use technology to communicate it with other police forces or to link it to previous crimes using a database.

Poverty provided a desperate motive and an alibi for criminals. Thankfully nowadays poverty rates have decreased technology and policing has been developed and our cities are being built to design out crime all resulting in a much safer England.

There are plentiful reasons for the high crime rate in Victorian England but four main reasons appear to the most prominent. These are: poverty, lack of punishment, lack of police force and lack of technology.

Really we Just see Victorian England to have a high crime rate because nowadays it isn't as popular due to development. Most crime was simply committed because no punishments were issued to those who had done it before. Nevertheless we can still find more probable reasons why their crime was likely to have bad childhoods and may have grown up influenced by this; a common characteristic of a serial killer or murder is that they had traumatic or deprived childhoods. Poverty wasn't getting any better meaning there was a huge difference unnoticed.