Crime News in Modern Britain (PDF)

Judith Rowbotham is a (founding) Director of SOLON and one of the General Editors of the SOLON series, Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice History. Currently a full-time independent scholar (London-based), she was previously a full time academic historian. Her research interests include the presentation or reportage of the legal process, including the criminal justice system, in various media formats (non-fiction, including newspapers and fiction) and issues of gender, violence and cultural comprehensions of the law in action, from the late eighteenth century through to the present.

Kim Stevenson is a (founding) Director of SOLON, one of the General Editors of the SOLON series, Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice History, and an Associate Professor in Law at Plymouth University. Her research interests include interests include historical and contemporary aspects of the criminal law with particular emphasis on sexual offences, sexuality and violence, newspaper representations of crime and the criminal justice process.

Samantha Pegg is a Director of SOLON, and Senior Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests include socio-legal constructions of criminality especially murder, media presentations and legal responses to child on child killing, Victorian responses to juvenile crime, Victorian constructs of insanity.

'Those of us interested in how contemporary media construct criminal or deviant behaviour remain aware that this process has a long history. We are grateful for scholarly works which exhume history's implications for current preoccupations. Crime News in Modern Britain is one such work. For a decade the authors have analysed exhaustively local and national newspapers from the past. From that base they have compiled evidence about initial developments and subsequent changes in the authorship, sources and format of crime reporting. It is the first fully historical account of the nature of crime reporting over nearly two centuries.'

- Chas Critcher, Swansea University, UK