Reconsidering Crime in Urban Working-Class Homes and Family Life, 1918-1979

重新思考城市工人阶级家庭和家庭生活中的犯罪，1918-1979

• 批准号: AH/X000338/1
• 负责人: Charlotte Wildman
• 金额: $ 27.08万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX000338%2F1
• 关键词: Reconsidering; Crime; Urban; Working; Class

This project provides the first history of 'everyday' minor illegal activities committed by women and children. Both the subject matter and its methodologies promotes a rethinking of how and why we address the history of family life and crime, both within academia and beyond. It aims to understand the nature and scale of home-based and family-orientated non-violent offences and explores whether they become increasingly designated as criminal through welfare reforms and policies of intervention, 1918-1979. In asking how far probation and social workers applied class-based models of domesticity through casework; by exploring the unforeseen consequences of state welfare; and analysing the varied application of new legalisation by the police and local and national government, the project asks who was criminalised, when and why. By uncovering the ways in which methods to alleviate poverty increased surveillance of family life after 1918, the project considers that interventions may have inadvertently criminalised vulnerable women and children. It aims to influence current welfare policies and improve charitable support for families in need by providing new historical knowledge around the entry point of women and children into the criminal justice system and identifying the influence of outdated legislation on current legal categories of welfare fraud. This focus is crucial amid current policies of welfare conditionality and concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic on child poverty. As current government policies of 'levelling up' acknowledge, local disparities persisted throughout the twentieth century and justifies a regional historical analysis of homes and family life. This project undertakes a comparative assessment of the inner urban areas of Belfast, Liverpool, and Manchester, with Bolton, Birkenhead, Salford, and Sheffield as secondary locations, as sites associated with poverty, unemployment, and crime, 1918-1979. It examines: 1. The use of the home and engagement of children for the handling of stolen goods, gambling, benefit fraud and financial crimes; 2. The impact of welfare legislation and new jurisdiction on homes and family life, including on monetarising, regulating or criminalising provisions that had pre-existed within these communities, such as unofficial adoption, abortion, and the care of those with disabilities; and 3. how state intervention could be rebuffed or manipulated by families. This comprehensive approach explores the idea that the policies of housing and welfare and new jurisdiction may have created new categories of offending and had unanticipated consequences for the entry of women and children into the criminal justice system. This bottom-up approach seeks to provide an alternative understanding of working-class lives that privileges the voices and experiences of those who remain unheard in existing histories of crime and urban life, such as older women and children, to challenge how we think about homes and offending. Alongside government reports and policies, the project offers the first assessment of post-1918 regional court archives, analysed as forms of personal testimony to explore how the home and domestic roles were used for minor, everyday offences and justified or presented as supporting familial domesticity. It embraces the contradictions and silences of memoirs and autobiographies to address the consequences of illegal behaviours, including on childhood, police scrutiny, community pressures, and risks of violence and retribution, but also questions the presumption that the presence of minor financial or property crimes was necessarily harmful to families. Shifting the analytical focus away from public spaces, the project centres working-class homes to craft a history of quotidian cultures of deviance that challenges received views of welfarism and working-class domesticity, placing contested concepts of family life at the heart of interactions between the state and its citizens.

该项目提供了妇女和儿童“日常”轻微非法活动的第一个历史。这两个主题和它的方法，促进我们如何以及为什么解决家庭生活和犯罪的历史，无论是在学术界内外的重新思考。它旨在了解家庭为基础的和面向家庭的非暴力犯罪的性质和规模，并探讨他们是否越来越多地通过福利改革和干预政策，1918年至1979年被指定为犯罪。在询问缓刑和社会工作者如何通过个案工作应用基于阶级的模式;通过探索国家福利的不可预见的后果;并分析警察和地方和国家政府对新合法化的各种应用时，该项目询问谁被定罪，何时以及为什么。通过揭示1918年后减轻贫困的方法增加了对家庭生活的监督，该项目认为，干预措施可能无意中使弱势妇女和儿童犯罪。其目的是通过提供有关妇女和儿童进入刑事司法系统的切入点的新的历史知识，并确定过时的立法对当前法律的福利欺诈类别的影响，影响当前的福利政策，改善对贫困家庭的慈善支助。在当前的福利条件政策和对新冠肺炎疫情对儿童贫困的担忧之下，这一重点至关重要。正如目前政府的“拉平”政策所承认的那样，地方差距在整个二十世纪一直存在，这证明了对住房和家庭生活进行区域历史分析的合理性。本项目对贝尔法斯特、利物浦和曼彻斯特的城市内部地区进行了比较评估，并将博尔顿、伯肯黑德、索尔福德和谢菲尔德作为次要地点，作为1918-1979年与贫困、失业和犯罪有关的地点。它审查：1。利用家庭和雇用儿童处理赃物、赌博、利益欺诈和金融犯罪; 2.福利立法和新的司法管辖权对家庭和家庭生活的影响，包括对这些社区内先前存在的货币化、管制或刑事定罪的规定，如非正式收养、堕胎和照顾残疾人;国家干预如何被家庭拒绝或操纵。这一综合办法探讨了住房和福利政策以及新的管辖权可能产生了新的犯罪类别，并对妇女和儿童进入刑事司法系统产生了意想不到的后果。这种自下而上的方法试图提供对工人阶级生活的另一种理解，这种理解优先考虑那些在现有犯罪和城市生活历史中仍然闻所未闻的人的声音和经历，如老年妇女和儿童，以挑战我们如何看待家庭和犯罪。除了政府报告和政策外，该项目还首次评估了1918年后的地区法院档案，将其作为个人证词的形式进行分析，以探讨家庭和家庭角色如何被用于轻微的日常犯罪，并被证明或呈现为支持家庭独立性。它包含了回忆录和自传的矛盾和沉默，以解决非法行为的后果，包括对儿童的影响、警察的监督、社区压力以及暴力和报复的风险，但也质疑轻微的金融或财产犯罪的存在必然对家庭有害的假设。将分析重点从公共空间转移，该项目以工人阶级家庭为中心，精心制作了一部挑战福利主义和工人阶级自律性的传统观点的埃塞俄比亚文化史，将有争议的家庭生活概念置于国家与公民之间互动的核心。