Book excerpt: Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900draws on recent research to assess the changes in the understanding of crime, policing, the courts and penal sanctions in England as the country industrialised and urbanised during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The third edition brings the subject up-to-date by reflecting recent shifts away from class towards gender analysis, and the growing interest in violence as opposed to property crime. Explores the value of criminal statistics, the significance of contemporary notions of class and gender in understanding and formulating the image of the criminal Describes developments in policing and the shifting ideas that led to a decline in corporate and capital punishments and an increasing focus on the prison Challenges the view that crime can be attributed to the behaviour of a criminal class, and the ideas that crime patterns can be explained simply in terms of the trade cycle Examines changes in crime and the criminal justice system against the larger changes in an industrialising society