“El hambre le impulsara”: The subsistence crisis and the boom in crimes against property in Galicia during the 1850s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/hispania.2020.006Keywords:
crime, delinquency, social history, crime against property, subsistence crisis, GaliciaAbstract
In the decade of the 1850s, Galician courts witnessed a significant increase in crimes against property, both in absolute and relative terms, which coincided with a subsistence crisis and increase in food prices. There was a rise in thefts and pilferage committed by ordinary people, integrated in their communities and without criminal records, especially among the rural proletariat. They stole to subsist, despite the high risks that this kind of crime involved, and the intolerance shown by the judicial system towards this kind of survival crime. Most prosecutions were not initiated by police forces, but by ordinary people: theft victims, neighbours and, sometimes, perpetrators’ relatives. In the countryside, particularly, the complainants informed local elites connected to local government. Rather than jail sentences, the crimes were punished by the imposition of the costs of the trial, which were so expensive that even defendants who were not condemned became utterly ruined.
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