Crime and Punishment

Crime and punishment are two dimensions of Ireland’s political as much as social history since 1740. Disorder was frequently taken to be characteristic of Irish life, capable of remedy only through ever more inventive techniques for disciplining the unruly Irish. Behind the stereotypes however lie the paradoxes – long periods of evident tranquillity, a capacity to re-shape policing and repression along lines that make possible the restoration of civil order. And every perspective we take on these dimensions reveals rich social and institutional histories, whose significance reaches out beyond the borders of the island. In this chapter we consider the changing contours of crime and the responses to it, embodied not only in the history of the Irish constabulary and its successors, but also in punishment, capital and carceral.