Eduqas GCSE History: Component 2 Option 2E — Changes in Crime and Punishment in Britain, c.500 to the present day

What is included

What this course covers

• Topic 1 — Causes of crime

  • 1.1 – Problems in the medieval era: poverty, famine and warfare
  • 1.2 – Economic pressures and religious change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
  • 1.3 – The pressures of industrialisation and urbanisation, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  • 1.4 – Twentieth century pressures: technology, violent crime and anti-social behaviour

• Topic 2 — Nature of crimes

  • 2.1 – Common crimes in the medieval era
  • 2.2 – Vagrancy, heresy and treason in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
  • 2.3 – The growth of smuggling and highway robbery in the eighteenth century
  • 2.4 – Crimes of urbanisation and industrial and agrarian disorder in the nineteenth century
  • 2.5 – Twentieth and twenty-first century crimes: motor car, computers, hooliganism and terrorism

• Topic 3 — Enforcing law and order

  • 3.1 – Saxon and medieval communal responsibility; manorial, church and royal courts
  • 3.2 – The growth of civic and parish responsibilities in the sixteenth century
  • 3.3 – The concept of state police forces in the nineteenth century
  • 3.4 – The changing nature of policing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

• Topic 4 — Methods of combating crime

  • 4.1 – Communal methods of combatting crime; Tudor Justices of the Peace and parish officers
  • 4.2 – The Bow St. Runners; Peel and the setting up of the Metropolitan Police in 1829
  • 4.3 – The extension of police forces in the nineteenth century
  • 4.4 – Twentieth century policing: transport, communication, specialisation, community policing

• Topic 5 — Methods of punishment

  • 5.1 – Punishment in Saxon and medieval times and the treatment of vagabonds in Tudor times
  • 5.2 – Public punishment: stocks, pillory and executions; transportation, 1770s to 1860s
  • 5.3 – Prison reform: Howard, Paul and Fry; new prisons and the silent and separate systems
  • 5.4 – Twentieth century prisoners: borstals, open prisons, probation, parole, community service

• Topic 6 — Attitudes to crime and punishment

  • 6.1 – Retribution and deterrence; punishment in public, from humiliation to public execution
  • 6.2 – Banishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; prisons to punish and reform
  • 6.3 – Young offenders, abolition of the death sentence, and rehabilitation and restitution

• Topic 7 — Historic site assessed 2026 and 2027: Policing in Liverpool c.1787 to 1900

  • 7.1 – The historical context
  • 7.2 – The main features of the historic environment Policing in Liverpool c.1787 to 1900
  • 7.3 – The significance of crime and policing in nineteenth century Liverpool

• Topic 8 — Historic site assessed 2028 and 2029: Criminal gangs in Birmingham c.1870 to 1945

  • 8.1 – The historical context
  • 8.2 – The main features of criminal gangs in Birmingham c.1870 to 1945
  • 8.3 – The significance of criminal gangs in Birmingham c.1870 to 1945

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