Crime and Policing in the Twentieth Century : The South Wales Experience

Using South Wales as a case study, this text on crime in the 20th century places the discussion in its historical context, and contributes to debates on crime, policing and punishment. South Wales has the geography of a county police, and some of the problems of a metropolitan police area.

This pioneering work is based on entirely original research. It gives a detailed assessment of the pattern of crime and of developments in policing during the twentieth century, a period for which little historical analysis of crime has been published.
The author focuses upon a specific police authority area which typifies the challenges faced by the police in Britain this century. The area covered by the South Wales Police contains a rich tapestry of communities, from isolated, rural villages to urban industrial centres including Cardiff and Swansea. It has the geography of a county police force and some of the problems of a metropolitan police area. It also has some well preserved police records which have here been analysed in depth.
This volume points up clearly the changes in the nature of crime and policing in the last hundred years. In 1900, the modern problems of motoring and drug offences, for example, were hardly mentioned, and police work early in the century was similar to that of fifty years earlier. The years of the late 1950s and 1960s witnessed major changes in criminal activity and transformed policing and public attitudes.
This work will be vital for all those who need to set the current debates on crime, punishment and the performance of the police in a historical context and to trace the historical roots of today''s fears, myths and prejudices.