Crime and Punishment in the Queen Victorian Era

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Recommended: Changes in the criminal justice system

Out of 1.4 million people that were trialed for a crime 900,000 were imprisoned while 97,000 were sent to transportation, the other 10,300 people were put to death by the guillotine or were hanged .Though the types of crimes occurring during this Era varied the punishments can be seen as somewhat severe and should have been made more fair to the person being trialed. Many things from this Era emerged an example is the idea of long term imprisonment which is just one of the ideas that started then but also can be seen occurring in today’s society.
During the Queen Victorian Era many crimes were going on. The most uncommon crime that was going on was Capital crimes (Mitchell). Capital crimes are any crimes that would be sentenced to death as a punishment with either no trial or a very quick trial. The top 3 capital crimes that occurred in this Era were Piracy the act of stealing at sea, second is setting fire to a arsenal or a dock, and finally murder of any one. The most common crimes that were serious but not serious to be considered as a capital crime were public riots, Robberies that ended up assaulting another individually physically, abduction of kids for their clothes ,and finally poaching in rural and urban England(Mitchell). Capital crimes would either be sentenced to a short term imprisonment or fine to the person that had done the crime.
Crimes occurring during the Victorian Era can be seen happening now, even the names of the categories used to categorize the crimes are still used to label the crimes today .Crimes that were going on during the Queen Victorian era were classified in to two categories(Mitchell). One of the categories was Indictable crimes. Indictable Crimes were crimes that would lead to being put to death or being thrown into jail for long term imprisonment. Examples of Indictable Crime today and then are the murder, armed robbery, larceny, fraud, and finally Rape. The next type of crime is a Summary crime. Summary Crimes are crimes that are less than a felony and would usually lead to a short term imprisonment. Examples of this type of crime then are Vagabonds wandering around without a job. Summary Crimes then that are considered Summary crimes now are poaching of animal when not in season or on private property, Petty theft which is a lesser version of theft, and finally vandalism (Mitchell).

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