«Quiet thieves, quiet punishment»: private responses to the «respectable» offender, c.1850-1930
The Victorian period witnessed a widespread proliferation in new varieties of employee crime, associated chiefly with the «respectable» echelons of the nineteenth-century workforce. Alongside the rapid growth of business the emergence of offences such as embezzlement reached unprecedented levels. Wi...
Αποθηκεύτηκε σε:
| Τόπος έκδοσης: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/chs, |
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| Κύριος συγγραφέας: | |
| Μορφή: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Γλώσσα: | Anglais |
| Έκδοση: |
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés
2012
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| Διαθέσιμο Online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Περίληψη: | The Victorian period witnessed a widespread proliferation in new varieties of employee crime, associated chiefly with the «respectable» echelons of the nineteenth-century workforce. Alongside the rapid growth of business the emergence of offences such as embezzlement reached unprecedented levels. Within the private arena of the company confidential staff perpetrated considerable amounts of such crime, a claim widely accepted by academic scholars. Yet this criminal world remains largely obscured by its predominantly private character. In consequence, historians and criminologists have generally neglected the key centre for «respectable», «white-collar» delinquency, and therefore current knowledge about the spatial dynamics of justice remains limited. Moreover, when discussed the theoretical interpretations of scholars concerning the skewed picture of public/private responses to this offender type have hitherto typically resonated around a set of longstanding aetiological axioms. In examining the records of one of the most significant industries of the Victorian era, the railways, and the key offence of embezzlement, this article explores the responses of industry to the «respectable» offender, and offers a critique of earlier theorising about the motivations underlying a system governed predominantly by private justice. |
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