Study title

United Kingdom

Other

Data was derived from the following sources:*PCOM 3 (1853-1887, 1902-08, 1912-42) – these files contained 45,000 licenses and also the registers of license holders. They listed the prisoner’s name, sentence, where/when convicted, dates and conditions of the current license; previous convictions, age, previous occupation, when and from where the prisoner was released; and most had photographs of the prisoner. The National Archives granted us access to these records pre public release (they are now available on Find-My-Past and Ancestry).*Criminal Registers 1853-1892 (contained offenders tried for indictable crimes, whether they were found guilty, details of the offence, and sentence imposed). Where possible we traced these offences in the Quarter Sessions Calendars in order to trace the antecedent criminal history. From these main sources, we were then able to trace prisoners released on license using a wide variety of other extant sources. These sources provided us with a considerable amount of additional information on offenders who were released on license: *Census returns from 1841-1911 censuses (which gave details of the residence, family status, and occupation, of each person we will be searching for).*Online Birth, Marriage and Death indices (which detailed if and when our offender was married, and had children; and, of course, when they died).*Military records (mainly referring to World War One; these included service records - which in turn included disciplinary breaches - medal indices and pensions details.*Metropolitan Police records including Habitual Criminal Registers (MEPO 6) which contain details of criminals as defined by sections 5-8 of the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871. From the sources above we constructed approximately 650 life grids. These were divided into an early (1853-55 n=62), middle (1871-73 n=201), and late (1885-1887 n=184) tranche, for 356 men and 288 women. Each life-grid charted offending/life histories for each offender. Studies funded by Leverhulme Trust (F/00130/H)) and ESRC (RES-062-23-0416) used life grids and `whole-life’ research methods and the method is now well-tested. The life-grid data was then entered into excel and SPSS in order to produce quantifiable data on - the progress of their criminal careers, their periods of incarceration, their employment careers, life events such as marriage, death of parents, and other significant life events. We had over two hundred thousand fields of data at the conclusion of our data collection/analysis. By analysing each of the life grids we were able to see the relationships and connections between life events and offending post-imprisonment (both short and long periods of custody, whilst on licence, and after license had expired.