Clayton, M. and Shoemaker, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-0969-0373 (2022) Blood money and the bloody code: the impact of financial rewards on criminal justice in eighteenth-century England. Continuity and Change, 37 (1). pp. 97-125. ISSN 0268-4160
Abstract
The introduction of rewards for the conviction of serious criminals fundamentally transformed English criminal justice. The prospect of rewards totalling up to £140 encouraged additional prosecutions, more full (as opposed to partial) guilty verdicts, and more death sentences. In the process, in a series of largely unintended consequences, two fundamental pillars of early-modern justice were undermined: reliance on the public to prosecute, and the death penalty to deter crime. Policing agents began to play a much more important role in apprehending criminals, while the high level of executions contributed to growing doubts about the efficacy of capital punishment.
Metadata
Authors/Creators: |
|
||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Continuity and Change. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | The University of Sheffield | ||||
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of History (Sheffield) | ||||
Funding Information: |
|
||||
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield | ||||
Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2022 14:14 | ||||
Last Modified: | 20 Jul 2022 14:14 | ||||
Status: | Published | ||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press (CUP) | ||||
Refereed: | Yes | ||||
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1017/s0268416022000078 |
Downloads
Filename: Blood Money and the Bloody Code January 2022.pdf
Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
Filename: Blood Money Figures and Tables Revised.pdf
Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0