Anti-social City: Science and Crime in late Victorian Britain

Abstract

In an age of Anti-social Personality Disorders (ASPDs) and Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), when anti-social behaviour is often presented as the consequence of a quinte ssentially contemporary ‘breakdown of authority’, it is easy to forget that the question is far older than early twentieth- century promoters of moral declinism would have us believe. It is what the criminologist Geoffrey Pearson has identified as one of the ‘disturbing continuities’ of British society: ‘what is wrong with government and media responses to youth crime and anti-social behaviour’, he points out, ‘is its emphasis on the unprecedented nature of the problem, while losing its grip on the actual social and historical background’ (Pearson, 2006: 7).