Crime and Punishment - Causes

• famine and disease

• taxation

• warfare

73.5%

• rebellions (1069-70)

• new laws

• homes + property destroyed

• refugees, poverty

• rebels executed

• harsh, efficient ruler

• death penalties

• fear

due to Henry VIII's treason laws, heresy became treason as having religious ideas differing from the monarch's was now against the law. Heresy would be tried in the harsher King's courts and was a capitol crime.

due to the constant fluctuation of the monarch's religion during the Tudor period, people were expected to constantly change their religious ideas according to the monarch. This lead to protest and many were executed, hung drawn and quartered or burnt as heretics.

• changes in farming methods: crop farming exchanged for livestock, which needed less workers.

• rural depopulation

• dissolution of the monasteries: loss of charity

• rising population: 2.9 mill in C16th- 4.3 mill by 1600.

• costly foreign wars.

• redistribution of the population + population growth.

• disenfranchisement: working class deprived of voting rights.

• growth of industrial towns and poor living conditions.

• wage of an industrial worker was higher than an agricultural worker.

• not enough farming jobs to go around.

• railways made it cheaper and easier to travel.

• agricultural work was seasonal

• employment was available for the whole family (men, women and children)

• poverty and deprivation: more relative poverty.

• alcohol misuse

• ethnic/ racial injustice.

• perception of lenient sentences.

• quicker and faster communications (criminal networks)

• break-up of families

• impact of TV

• breakdown of traditional values (religion)

• gang culture

• drug misuse

although the numbers of violent crimes has risen with the population, the ratio of murders to population has fallen in the last 100 years.

the dark figure- unrecorded crime in C20th and C21st, the reporting of crimes increased. This can make it look like crime has increased dramatically where it hasn't.

due to the spread of the media, more people hear about crime and because violent crime such as murder and terrorism is mainly shown it can feel like there's more violent crime than there actually is.