Serious Offenders

Clarendon Studies in Criminology aims to provide a forum for outstanding empirical and theoretical work in all aspects of criminology and criminal justice, broadly understood. The Editors welcome submissions from established scholars, as well as excellent PhD work. The series was inaugurated in 1994, with Roger Hood as its first General Editor, following discussions between Oxford University Press and three criminology centres. It is edited under the auspices of these three criminological centres: the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics, and the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. Each supplies members of the Editorial Board and, in turn, the Series Editors.

Serious Offenders: A Historical Study of Habitual Criminals examines the persistent offending careers of men and women operating in northwest England between the 1840s and 1940s. The book focuses on a group of serious and persistent offenders who as well as offending in the region, had lengthy offending careers spanning serveral decades in various other locations. These were highly mobile persistent serious offenders who appear not to have been so closely bound in to the processes and structures which aided desistence from offending for the vast majority of the petty offenders.

The authors explore why some people remained minor offenders, whilst others developed into serious offenders, and the triggers that propelled previously minor offenders towards persistent serious criminality. They conclude by drawing on the lessons to be learnt for today's debates about the regulation and surveillance of serious habitual offenders.

Professor Barry S. Godfrey is Director of the Institute of Law. Politics, and Justice at Keele University. He has authored or coauthored eight books on the history of crime, policing, and long term trends in sentencing offenders, and is the co-author of Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending.
Dr David J. Cox is Research Fellow at the Law and Criminal Justice Centre, Univerisity of Plymouth, and Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University. He has a PhD on policing in the early 19th century, and is the co-author of Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending.
Professor Stephen D. Farrall is Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, at the University of Sheffield. He has previously worked at the Universities of Oxford and Keele. He is the author of over 40 journal articles and is the co-author of Criminal Lives: Family Life, Employment, and Offending.