The book's first section looks at the incidence of crime and explanations for criminality. Chapter 1 deals with the way in which the law developed and the problems of measuring crime, followed by a chapter that looks more closely at the nature of crime; this becomes the background for the discussion of the changing image of the criminal in Chapter 3. The second section focuses on the development of the new police and their role in society. Chapter 4 addresses the advent of the "new police," their initial impact, and the popular response. This is followed by a Chapter that considers the period of consolidation in late Victorian and Edwardian England and challenges the popularly held view that police legitimacy was widely established by 1914. The third section deals with changes in trial procedure and punishment. Chapter 7 discusses the issue of capital punishment, and chapter 8 focuses on the development of secondary punishments, notably imprisonment. The concluding section interprets the significance of these historic developments for the evolution of England's criminal justice system. Chapter notes, a 308-item bibliography, and a subject index