Unique Criminal Patterns

Improved Essays
Theme One: Unique Criminal Patterns Compared To Other Classes
Criminal behaviour amongst the nobility during the Fourteenth-Century was distinct from the lower orders for several reasons. In her article Hanawalt defines the nobility as the “fur-collar” class and defines this group as ranging from the wealthy and ancient gentry to the higher nobility. The main distinction Hanawalt remarks that most of the crimes the nobility committed during the Fourteenth-Century related to their control of wealth and power. Most of their criminal activity related to their occupations and position in society, therefore it was not considered criminal and even tolerated and expected, as long as it did not become excessive. This class tended not to commit felonious
…show more content…
The wealthier nobility with large households committed less violent crimes, preferring to hire or order someone to carry out those crimes. If they had enough wealth they commonly did not commit robbery. Whereas the lower ranks of the nobility tended to commit the crimes themselves or led gangs from which the upper nobles hired to commit crimes. Knights and the poorer nobles tended to commit the most robberies, in an attempt to continue their lavish lifestyles. Lower gentry criminality worsened with economic situation worsened. Money was also a factor that determined the level of personal involvement, as maintain men and dressing them in livery was expensive, even on a temporary …show more content…
Their position of influence and connections in society also made it difficult to control and prosecute them. Often the government chose alternatives to direct confrontation, especially as nobles had many techniques to subvert justice, such as intimidation, bribes or kingship/social connections. Sometimes the king relied on commissions and justices with special powers granted by the king to hear and determine cases. Other times the king tried to enact statutes and laws to help curb the problem. However, mostly the idea was to regulate not eradicate noble crimes. Another approach was to elevate crimes to more serious charges, such as treason. This gave the king more legal clout to act and punish the offender. Hanawalt argues the most effective methods involved skipping the courts and punishing or rewarding the nobles through positions for land. This involved such practices as sending the nobles to fight in the foreign wars, appointing them to peacekeeping or administrative positions or confiscating their lands. These schemes were generally more successful then trying to seek justice through the courts. Given the limitations, Hanawalt argues that the fourteenth century kings were effective in diverting nobles from criminal

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    These statistics show that there is still a significant amount of crime within the United States with property crimes being reported more frequently. According to Baron (2006), people engage in property offenses to gain money in an attempt to decrease feelings of relative deprivation. It is also mentioned that deprivation is linked to violence as people get angered by their failure to fit in with the wealth that surrounds them which in very difficult to attain. Although it is important to understand the amount of crime being reported within the United States, it doesn’t explain why these crimes are happening or what can be done to address the issues of property and violent crime within the United States. One possible way to explain crime in the 21st century is to look at the Strain Theory.…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Historians often regard the eighteenth century as one of the most criminal in the history of Early Modern England. Property crimes were the most common sort of vagrant behaviour, but some violent incidences did take place, usually in the form of riots. Many times, these riots were to express the general discontentment of the population against certain factors. Property crime was a certain eventuality, especially when the growing economic prosperity of England is considered. It is likely that the wealth of the nation may have proved too strong a temptation for poorer individuals and soon, cities such as London became hotbeds of criminal activity.…

    • 2100 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Furthermore, the causes of her behavior in committing seven murders had a lot to do with Social reaction theory. People have labelled Wuornos because of her crimes, which put a damaging perception on her self-image. This labeling on her relates to Interpreting Crime; people’s reactions and thoughts of her devastating crimes. For instance, many labeled her as a psychopath, murdered, serial killer, uneducated, poor, emotionally and physically corrupted. Interpreting crime, also helps label positive behavior from negative behavior.…

    • 146 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Theories Of Crime

    • 166 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Why people commit crime can be a very thought question, and maybe impossible to answer without some concepts. “Theories are devised to explain how a number of different correlates may actually be causally related to criminal behavior rather than simply associated with it." Anthony, W. (2012) Criminology, page 13. Theories of Crime brought lights on a various causes and reasons for crime such as poor parental, birth on financial hardship, and birth defects. Other reasons provided are genetic, psychological, and environmental; example, a mother on drugs and father’s cell compromised by drug use, lack of food, hunger, poor education, and all of these negatives things can influence someone to commit crimes.…

    • 166 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Our society today have become masters at labeling a person, whether or not it is respectable or ruthless. The labeling theory is a concept used to help explain why someone’s behavior is acceptable in one group but termed deviant in other groups. In theory, criminal behavior is deemed as such only if the perception of the person is recognized to be so. Theorists of labeling communicate that not everyone who commits a crime is labeled as a criminal (Trueman, 2015). Primary and secondary deviance are terms used to distinguish a normal act of deviant behavior as opposed to one that is not accepted so easily.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Magna Carta Dbq

    • 191 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The nobles stand helped increase the nobles privileges gaining some of which include habeas corpus and other helping rights. The king however still stood true to his principles being dishonest about his promises. Because of this the nobles took stand after stand reissuing…

    • 191 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crime Simmons Case Study

    • 1165 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Facts of the Case At the age of 17, Christopher Simmons murdered Shirley Crook in the state of Missouri in 1933. Simmons was sentenced to death after it was found that he had concocted a plan to break into the home of Crook, tie her up, and toss her off of a bridge with two other friends, Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer. In the middle of the night at about 2 a.m., Benjamin and Simmons broke into the victims home through an open window and carried out the crime as planned without Tessmer, who dropped out of the plan. Simmons had no criminal history but because of the overwhelming evidence, a testimony from his younger friend Tessmer, Simmons confession to the murder, and videotaped reenactment at the crime the court considered the murder…

    • 1165 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the 1980s, there were numerous murders and missing individuals in different cities of British Columbia, and the police were puzzled for a period of time as to who the murder was. The murder, Clifford Olson, pledged guilty for his crimes after substantial time had passed. The childhood of Olson may provide support for why he committed such crimes. Clifford Robert Olsen was from Vancouver, British Columbia, and he was born on January 1st, 1940 (Mulgrew, 2011). Although Olson did not face any abuse from his parents, he was known to be an aggressive child.…

    • 2092 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Jonathan Nobles was a man from Texas who stabbed three people which left two dead and one severely injured. He was of course put on death row and was on it for about thirteen years and when the time ca was given lethal injection. Some people say he was rehabilitated or was changed for the better after the crime while others say no he was most defiantly not rehabilitated. According to statistics less than half of people who commit crimes do not change their ways.…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Criminal Profiling White Paper Ali Wiethe University of Dayton According to Kocsis (2010), criminal profiling is defined as “A forensic technique which seeks to provide investigative agencies with specific information which will help focus attention to individuals with personality traits that parallel traits of other perpetrators who have committed similar other offenses.” Through this definition, it is believed that profiling will help law enforcement officers pursue and interview suspects, because they can narrow in on the right suspects and use interviewing tips for the “type” of suspect being questioned. As a relatively new aspect of criminal investigation, criminal profiling has required several studies in which the accuracy…

    • 1050 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Some kings who were especially obsessed with their kingdom's honesty, attempted to capture every criminal. If a criminal got away with a crime, a some kings went to the nearest village to kill people out of spite. Kidnapping was very frequent during the Dark Ages. This was mostly done by foreign invaders who needed kids to work their own lands. Landlords who lacked enough workers, frequently resorted to kidnapping kids in order to populate their own villages.…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    England was a difficult place to live in the medieval times if one was not born into a noble family. If one was not considered to be a noble from birth, then that person would likely have little to nothing for their entire life. The only real way that a person could improve their position would be to become a part of the church or perform a great feat that would cause a king to crown them as a noble. This was because there were only three real classes in England in the medieval times: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasants. The nobility consisted of kings and other people that were rich, had a lot of land, or held important positions in the government.…

    • 2356 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jack the Ripper is arguably, the first serial killer to ever be profiled. The Whitechapel murders are infamous in the history of unsolved crimes and whodunit cases. The case of Jack the Ripper was influential in the conception of criminal profiling. Although, it was unsuccessful in the Ripper case, criminal profiling has come a long way since the 1900’s. Originally criminal profiling was considered an art form, however, it is slowly being accepted as a science.…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction: Offender profiling can be defined as making predictions about offender’s characteristics from the way they behaved during a crime (Davies & Beech, 2012). Offender profiling can play an important part in criminal investigations, especially when there is no DNA left at crime scenes. It requires using other types of evidence such as characteristics of the crime scene and eye-witness testimonies from victims and witnesses. Profiling techniques can be unified with police forces to help elicit and prioritise suspects and may predict what an offender may do next (Canter & Youngs, 2009). However, it’s important to assess the reliability of such psychological procedures as they are frequently applied to serious and violent forms of crime…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crime Pattern Theory (Brantingham and Brantingham 2008) examines people’s activity patterns, especially when traveling to, or gathering at particular places, in terms of ‘paths, nodes and edges’; and whether places are ‘crime generators’ (many crimes happen there simply because lots of people are passing through, some of whom happen to be opportunistic criminals) or ‘crime attractors’ (criminals are specifically attracted there because of features that make crime less risky, less effort or more rewarding). Broken Windows is a specific theory (Wilson and Kelling 1982) that suggests that if we fail to maintain the environment (for example by leaving broken windows unrepaired, or allowing litter to build up and public places to become dirty and…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics