Crime and Deviance in 20th Century Britain

Supported by the University of Lincoln and the Institute for Historical Research
Conference organisers: Dr. Eloise Moss and Dr. Christine Grandy
Email: CADconference@lincoln.ac.uk

Keynote Speakers: Dr. Andrew Davies, University of Liverpool and Dr. Matt Houlbrook, University of Birmingham

The 20th century witnessed new terrains on which crime and deviance were encountered and understood by state and citizen. Imperial expansion and decline, warfare, accelerated urbanization and suburbanization, gendered shifts in work practices, new cultural media such as film and television, and more psychologically-informed types of marketing and advertising, created new conditions for both the perpetration and evocation of crime. Popular and official attitudes towards those termed ‘deviant’ were in a constant state of flux as the state, media, and market competed to shape dominant moral values and behaviours. Perceptions of crime’s effect on society and the lives of individuals in this period were orientated as much around practices of consumption and imaginative fulfilment, as direct experiences with criminals, the police, and judiciary systems. Prevailing forms of domestic and imperial citizenship, cities and homes, and expectations of everyday life were shaped by fear of victimization, even as contemporaries also appeared increasingly attracted to narratives that extolled the ‘excitement’ of a criminal life or a deviant lifestyle.

Thus the complexities of the 20th century have prompted scholars interested in using crime and deviance as a vehicle for examining broader social, cultural, and political shifts to engage with new materials and approaches alongside, and sometimes outside, established paths within legal and penal history. Historians now draw on the fields of Geography, Cultural Studies, English, Media, Film, and Gender Studies, amongst others, with often provoking results. This conference aims to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines working on crime and deviance, broadly construed, in the 20th century in order to prompt new discussions about recent work, approaches, and the future of this field. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Empire and the concept of crime
• War crimes/crimes committed during war
• Theft and racketeering
• Sexual deviancy
• Victims of crime
• Financial or political crime
• Crime and poverty
• Transnational cultures of crime and surveillance
• Police and protest in imperial or domestic settings
• Theorizing crime and deviancy
• Villainy in mass culture: Press, fiction, theatre, film, and television
• Shifting geographies of crime
• The language of eccentricity
• Teenage troublemakers
• Celebrity and crime
• Obscenity and censorship
• Urban and suburban crime or deviance