Using ideas derived from historical institutionalism to illuminate the long-term impacts on crime of ‘Thatcherite’ social and economic policies

In this working paper, we outline our thinking on a very large and complex undertaking; namely the assessment of the ways in which the Thatcher governments of the 1980s may have had quite unintended consequences on crime via some of the policies which they set about pursuing for quite separate reasons, but which, nevertheless contributed to amongst other things, the upswing in crime in the 1980s. Our thinking is not heavily informed by theories commonly examined by criminologists; instead our thinking about both the causal antecedents of these governments and their approach to re-engineering society, and the causal antecedents of crime are informed by thinking inspired by historical institutionalist scholars writing within political science, and sociological and economic theories of crime causation. We outline historical institutionalism and identify the ways in which it may be of use to ourselves.