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(Phys.org) —A scientific analysis of 20 million words recorded during 150 years of criminal trials at London's Old Bailey reveals how changes in culture rather than law helped to reduce violent crime, according to a co-authored University of Sussex study.
Researchers applied a statistical formula based on the frequency of certain words, as categorised in Roget's Thesaurus, to a digitised version of the court's records, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, between 1760 and 1913.
The results showed that before the 1800s there was little distinction in the language used for violent and non-violent crimes – and the punishments were likely to be as severe for "theft" as for "assault". But by the 1840s this had begun to change and crimes that involved "wounding" victims received more severe punishments.
Sussex historian Professor Tim Hitchcock, director of the Old Bailey Online project and co-author of the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (16 June 2014), says: "Historians have recognised that levels of violence, throughout Europe and North America plummeted during the 19th Century. Murder became a rarity.
"Scholars using traditional historical methodologies have ascribed this to the 'civilising process' of society, led by the emergence of the modern Western state and its bureaucracies. The state became important in the control of cultures that encouraged violence, and in the direct policing and control of violence itself.
Read more here. (PhysOrg)
Researchers applied a statistical formula based on the frequency of certain words, as categorised in Roget's Thesaurus, to a digitised version of the court's records, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, between 1760 and 1913.
The results showed that before the 1800s there was little distinction in the language used for violent and non-violent crimes – and the punishments were likely to be as severe for "theft" as for "assault". But by the 1840s this had begun to change and crimes that involved "wounding" victims received more severe punishments.
Sussex historian Professor Tim Hitchcock, director of the Old Bailey Online project and co-author of the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (16 June 2014), says: "Historians have recognised that levels of violence, throughout Europe and North America plummeted during the 19th Century. Murder became a rarity.
"Scholars using traditional historical methodologies have ascribed this to the 'civilising process' of society, led by the emergence of the modern Western state and its bureaucracies. The state became important in the control of cultures that encouraged violence, and in the direct policing and control of violence itself.
Read more here. (PhysOrg)
