Lawlessness, Modernity and Social Change: A Historical Appraisal.

This article presents a historical appraisal of lawlessness, modernity and social change, with specific reference to Great Britain. Among the many questions which impinge upon the problem of "modernity," the one most deeply rooted in popular convictions insists that the advance of civilization brings in its wake a deluge of crime and violence. Within criminological and social theory there is an impressive line of consistency which indicts "social change" as a cause of the break-up of tradition and authority. The juxtaposition of lawless modernity as against the stable traditions of the past, which uses the past as a stick with which to beat the present, is a vital political metaphor in the contemporary world. In attempting to bring some empirical clarity into these matters, the article author focuses on the social history of the preoccupation with lawlessness in Britain. The cinema--the principle symbol of cultural modernity and adulteration in the inter-war years--attracted to itself the more specific charge that it encouraged imitative crime among the young in Great Britain.