Crime and Urbanization

Increase in Crime Due to Urbanisation

What is certain is that the crime rate certainly rose during the period of industrialisation, particularly in towns and cities. The difficulty for historians is to determine whether this was due to more crimes being reported or that crime had increased. Police forces often didn’t want to report crimes as a high crime rate would make them look rather poor and ineffective, while the poorest in society often had a distrust or a dislike of the police, and were less likely to report a crime. This is even taking into consideration the fact that crime rates were often higher in poorer communities.

Illustration of Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police Force, 1880s. Wikimedia Commons.

It is therefore difficult to compare urban and rural crime rates, due to more crime being reported. What can be determined is the variety of crime was certainly different when comparing urban and rural areas. This can be attributed to the changing nature of crime, which was now largely committed against person, property or authority. Ultimately, rural communities lacked the population or opportunity for large-scale crime waves, such as those which had occurred in the cities.

Types of Crime in Urban Areas

Crime against the person generally involved fatal offences such as murder or manslaughter and non-fatal offences such as assault or battery. Crime against property includes theft, arson, vandalism, smuggling and fraud. Crimes against authority meanwhile became increasingly common. This generally included rioting, sabotage and treason. Authority included the government, police and religious institutions. Urbanisation produced areas concentrated with a high number of individuals.

People demanded change in large numbers with many resorting to sabotage and rioting to get across their point. In urban industrialised communities, groups such as the Luddites destroyed industrial machinery to discourage mechanisation.

Perhaps the most extreme example can be found in Scotland, the “Radical War” in 1820. Sometimes characterised as the “Scottish Insurrection”, this event involved mass unrest and strikes, with workers demanding radical reform. This is particularly representative of the time, as its root causes were industrialisation and the economic downturn in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.

Luddites Destroying Machinery in a Factory, Wikimedia Commons.

As the last armed uprising on Scottish soil, it was violently suppressed by soldiers (many privately hired) and the ringleaders were tried for treason, with three sentenced to death and nineteen transported to Australia. The whole incident is symptomatic of the demands for radical change urbanisation and industrialisation had created, but also the necessity for a professional police force in response.

Causes of Urban Crime

During periods of economic strife, urban areas would be plagued by unemployment and economic hardship. The period in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars perhaps saw some of the more extreme incidences, before prison reform had occurred and when economic conditions were terrible. This only serves to demonstrate that the rising crime trend wasn't confined to crimes against people or property but also had political motivations demanding greater social change. Likewise, the motivations for many crimes against people and property can be attributed to the poor conditions many political movements stood against.

Overcrowding

An issue with these newly emerging overcrowded urban areas was the fact the tight living conditions would often result in criminals living side by side with ordinary hard-working people. This made it hard to police but also went against the separate system theory. This became the blueprint for new prisons at the time and theorised that if criminals were taken away from wicked influences they would be reformed. In the context of many of the overcrowded slum areas of cities like London, this was almost impossible.

Overcrowded Tenement housing in 19th Century London, Wikimedia Commons.

This resulted in certain areas being overwhelmed with crime, making it difficult for those involved in crime to turn away, but also difficult for crime to be prevented. This also created an environment where opportunistic crime was a real threat, in comparison to rural areas where such opportunities were scarce and hard to complete undetected.

Urban Crime Examples

Here are three types of urban crime:

The rate of urbanisation and emigration from rural to urban areas had never been seen on such a scale before. With cramped conditions in cities lacking infrastructure, many cities had become criminal hotbeds in areas. This undoubtedly rapidly altered the way criminals operated but also how lawmakers responded. Urbanisation and Industrialisation were the emergence of a system of crime and punishment that largely remains to this day.