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The Criminal Courts in “Young America”: Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1820–1860, with Some Comparisons to Massachusetts and South Carolina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Craig B. Little
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Extract

Historians generally agree that crime, especially serious violence and disorder in America’s urban areas, increased during the first half of the nineteenth century, then leveled off, and eventually declined to the end of the century (Ferdinand 1978, 1980; Lane 1968,1979; Warner 1968). The need to improve institutions of control seemed apparent to many city dwellers in the early part of the century. Their responses, which remain part of our criminal justice system, included urban policing, large-scale penitentiaries, and specialized facilities, such as houses of refuge and reform schools for juvenile offenders. While the story of these urban developments has been well told previously (for example, Barnes 1927; Lane 1967; Rothman 1971; Platt 1969; Johnson 1978; Schneider 1980; Monkkonen 1981; Harring 1983), comparatively little is known about crime and control in peripheral communities, even though less than one-tenth of the American population was urban in 1820 and only one-quarter in 1860.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 457 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1991 

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