496 keeping the unpropertied in order and creating a cleaner and more well-administered town. Religious powers everywhere made their own forward moves, within the framework of secular law, under the flag of the reformation and counter-reformation. Forms and degrees could vary but the trends were similar. There seems to have existed a difference everywhere between those who belonged to a class of respected and accepted citizens, versus a group of unaccepted citizens and those considered as marginal, when it concerned the manner in which local justice acted. If we compare society of today with that of earlier times, then we find considerably more physical violence between people in the older society. The reasons for this change can vary somewhat between different environments, but certain phenomena should be common. The middle class citizens and the farmers stopped, amongst other things, carrying weapons in evervday life, which contributed to lessening the most serious acts of violence. Times became gradually calmer, when great wars were no longer fought in the midst of the civilian population by more or less undisciplined troops. Attitudes towards physical violence became more negative, either when it was bv individuals or as corporal punishment. The belief that one could solve problems with the help of rationality grew, which is also one of the explanations as to why laws and ordinances increased in number to regulate more and more details of evervday life. The conception that the growth of capitalism automatically leads to more crimes against property has been difficult to substantiate. Theft and pilfering appear, until the latter part of the 19th century, to have fluctuated in pace with trade cycles, without any long-term tendencv to an increase. Certain environments attracted a Lumpenprolctariat, and there the number of crimes was greater, but when economic and social factors became more favourable, then criminality decreased. The connection between urbanisation and criminalitv was subtle. During certain periods the towns, including the small town of Linköping around the year 1800, offered a more anonymous environment, where patriarchal control certainly existed, but where it worked less well. Traditional conceptions came to be queried and sometimes they had to be buried, as was the case concerning the criminalization of pre-marital intercourse. On some occasions it is possible to identify decisive moments in time, as, for example, the effects on the courts of Gustavus Ill’s reforms of 1778 with the aim of relieving the situation of the unmarried mothers. Often developments were more evolutionary than revolutionarv, which makes it more difficult to give a decisive chronology. The penal laws often codified a previously changed practise. By observing long periods of time, it is relatively easv to see that things had changed, but in between we have to be satisfied with tracing trends most of the time. The chronology is also different in different countries, sometimes even between different areas in Sweden. Some events occurred earlier, for example, in the towns than in the rural areas, some earlier in more densely
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