Introduction: urban stability and civic liberties

Extract

One of the most widespread stereotypes about modern urban life claims that it is more dangerous and crime-ridden than life in the country. Journalists use the evidence of delinquency-rates in big cities to argue for the presence of contemporary crime waves. The police apply new methods of crime prevention such as the so-called ‘zero tolerance’ strategy first in large metropolises. The tabloid press detects ‘murder capitals’. The film industry loves scenes from urban life in their thrillers and we love to watch them. Evidence used in the popular press seems to prove an almost natural link between urban life and crime. This connection, however, is not a contemporary phenomenon. In his famous Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers Henry Fielding described the streets of London in 1751 as places of crime and insecurity. Archives of towns and cities are full of court proceedings and criminal records dating from the late middle ages, when town magistrates started to take measures against so-called delinquency – a contemporary legal term. Violence, in particular, seems to have been endemic in towns and cities. It could be tempting, therefore, to conclude that the link between urban life and crime is self-evident, if not to say timeless. However, historical statutes and town records can also be read in a rather different way. In both normative sources and court proceedings we can discern a clear will to ensure peace and stability in towns and cities. Without this will, our sources would simply not exist, for crime and conflict would have gone by unnoticed and unrecorded.