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The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have produced the most rapid change in English criminal justice since the medieval period. New categories of crime have emerged — motoring, cybercrime, hate crime, terrorism, domestic violence. Attitudes to young offenders have softened. The death penalty has been abolished. Policing has been transformed by science, by the car, and by repeated crises of public confidence. This lesson surveys the new crimes of the modern period, changes in juvenile justice, the abolition of capital punishment, the evolution of policing, and the contested purposes of modern punishment.
Modern technology and modern legislation have created whole new categories of offence.
| Crime | Legislative milestones |
|---|---|
| Motoring offences | Locomotives on Highways Act 1896; Road Traffic Act 1930; breathalyser 1967 |
| Hate crime | Race Relations Act 1965; Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (racially aggravated offences) |
| Cybercrime | Computer Misuse Act 1990; cyber fraud within Fraud Act 2006 |
| Terrorism | Prevention of Terrorism Acts 1974, 1989; Terrorism Act 2000; Terrorism Act 2006 |
| Drug offences | Dangerous Drugs Act 1920; Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 |
| Domestic violence | Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004; Serious Crime Act 2015 (coercive control); Domestic Abuse Act 2021 |
Some of these crimes were technologically impossible before the modern period (cybercrime, motoring). Others, such as domestic violence, represent a change in attitudes: behaviour once tolerated or treated as a private matter is now prosecuted by the state. This is a valuable point for a Q5/6 essay on change, because it demonstrates that criminalisation is socially defined.
Attitudes to child and adolescent offenders softened dramatically across the twentieth century. The nineteenth-century system had placed children in the same adult prisons as hardened criminals; reformers had already begun separating them in reformatories from the 1850s, but the decisive reforms were twentieth-century.
| Year | Measure |
|---|---|
| 1902 | Borstals introduced (from a village in Kent), focused on training rather than punishment |
| 1908 | Children Act: separate juvenile courts; under-14s not to be imprisoned |
| 1933 | Children and Young Persons Act: capital punishment abolished for under-18s; minimum age of criminal responsibility raised to 8 |
| 1948 | Criminal Justice Act: detention centres for young offenders, end of corporal punishment in courts |
| 1969 | Children and Young Persons Act: emphasis on care orders rather than custodial sentences |
| 1998 | Crime and Disorder Act: Youth Offending Teams, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders |
The trajectory is clear: under-18s were progressively removed from the adult system, then from custodial punishment, then redirected towards welfare and community-based orders. The 1969 Act is particularly associated with the idea that juvenile offending is often a symptom of wider social problems.
The abolition of capital punishment is the single most significant change of the modern period.
timeline
title Abolition of the death penalty in England
1868 : Public hanging ends; executions moved inside prison walls
1933 : Capital punishment abolished for under-18s
1957 : Homicide Act restricts capital murder to narrow categories
1965 : Murder Abolition of Death Penalty Act (5-year trial)
1969 : Abolition made permanent for murder
1998 : Death penalty abolished for all remaining offences (treason, piracy)
Two cases drove public opinion. Timothy Evans was hanged in 1950 for the murder of his daughter at 10 Rillington Place. His neighbour John Christie was later revealed to be a serial killer and confessed to the murder before his own execution in 1953. Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1966. Derek Bentley was hanged in 1953 at the age of 19 for the murder of a policeman committed by his 16-year-old companion Christopher Craig, even though Bentley was under arrest at the moment of the shooting. Bentley had a mental age of about 11 and had not personally fired the gun. He was posthumously pardoned in 1993 and his conviction quashed in 1998.
The Homicide Act 1957 narrowed capital murder to six specific categories (murder in the course of theft, by shooting, of a police officer, etc.), a compromise that proved unworkable. In 1965 Sydney Silverman's Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act suspended capital punishment for murder for five years. In 1969 the abolition was confirmed permanently. The death penalty lingered in law for treason and piracy with violence until 1998, when the Crime and Disorder Act (and the UK's accession to the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights) removed it entirely.
Grade 4 answer (simple): "Capital punishment was abolished because people thought it was wrong. Derek Bentley was hanged when he shouldn't have been. This made people upset. Parliament then voted to abolish it in 1965."
Why this is Grade 4: there is a relevant fact (Bentley), but no development of what made the case controversial, no precise mechanism by which public opinion influenced Parliament, and no second reason.
Grade 6 answer (developed): "Capital punishment was abolished partly because of high-profile miscarriages of justice. Derek Bentley was hanged in 1953 for shooting a policeman, even though the shot was fired by his companion Christopher Craig. Because Bentley had a mental age of 11 and had shouted 'Let him have it, Chris' (which could mean either 'shoot' or 'give him the gun'), the case produced public protest and doubts about the fairness of the system. The Homicide Act 1957, which tried to narrow capital murder, was widely seen as unworkable, which increased pressure for full abolition."
Why this is Grade 6: one reason is fully developed with evidence, mechanism, and consequence. It misses a second reason and a judgement.
Grade 9 answer (analytical): "Capital punishment was abolished through the combined pressure of miscarriages of justice, the failure of reformist compromise, and shifting political attitudes. The cases of Timothy Evans (hanged 1950, pardoned 1966) and Derek Bentley (hanged 1953) undermined public confidence in the reliability of a penalty that could not be reversed. The Homicide Act 1957, which attempted to limit capital murder to narrow categories, proved arbitrary in practice — two murderers with similar guilt could receive different sentences depending on whether a weapon was used — and thereby strengthened the case for total abolition rather than reform. Sydney Silverman's 1965 Bill succeeded because a post-war Labour government, an increasingly professional civil service, and a liberal parliamentary majority were receptive to abolitionist arguments that had circulated since the Royal Commission of 1949–53. The most significant factor was the loss of public confidence produced by specific cases, because without it the political majority would not have formed."
Why this is Grade 9: two or three reasons developed with specific evidence; explicit judgement of which reason mattered most; interaction between reasons.
Twentieth-century policing has been transformed by three pressures: technology, specialisation, and repeated crises of public confidence.
| Development | Date |
|---|---|
| Fingerprinting used in English courts | 1902 (Henry system adopted 1901) |
| National Criminal Record Office | 1913 |
| First police use of radio | 1920s |
| Forensic science service | 1935 |
| DNA profiling in prosecutions | 1987 (Colin Pitchfork conviction 1988) |
| CCTV in public spaces | 1980s expansion |
| PNC (Police National Computer) | 1974 |
Modern forces contain squads for fraud, drugs, terrorism, child protection, cybercrime and organised crime. The 1960s Regional Crime Squads, the 1992 National Criminal Intelligence Service, and the 2013 National Crime Agency all represent attempts to co-ordinate investigation above the level of individual county forces.
The rise of the patrol car in the 1960s produced a counter-movement. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) was passed following the 1981 Brixton riots and the Scarman Report; it codified stop-and-search powers and required recorded interviews, aimed at reducing abuses. In 1999 the Macpherson Report into the killing of Stephen Lawrence concluded that the Metropolitan Police was "institutionally racist" and recommended wide-ranging reforms, including a duty on forces to promote race equality.
The Crown Prosecution Service was created in 1986 under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. Before 1986 English police forces both investigated and prosecuted most offences — a combination widely thought to distort decisions about charging. The CPS took prosecutorial decisions out of police hands, independent of investigators.
Modern penal policy is a contested mix of three ideas. Retribution holds that punishment is deserved for wrongdoing. Deterrence holds that punishment must discourage future offending. Rehabilitation holds that punishment should change the offender. The twentieth century oscillated: borstals and the 1948 Criminal Justice Act emphasised rehabilitation; the 1990s "prison works" rhetoric of Home Secretary Michael Howard emphasised deterrence and retribution. Prison population rose from c42,000 in 1992 to over 80,000 by 2010. Critics argue that rehabilitation has lost ground to deterrence and retribution; supporters point to modern drug treatment, education programmes, and prisoner employment schemes.
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