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Amid the societal changes in the 150 years between the early 18th and early 20th centuries, violent crime plummeted in Western civilizations.

To examine the evolution of the Western legal and bureaucratic system during that time, three researchers examined transcripts of trial proceedings at London’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, between 1760 and 1913. The work, much of it conducted while former SFI graduate fellow Sara Klingenstein and former SFI research fellow Simon DeDeo were at SFI, was published June 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their collaborator is historian Tim Hitchcock of the University of Sussex in England.

Read the article about the research in The New York Times (June 17, 2014)

By classifying words used in trials into synonym sets and dividing court cases by type of crime, the authors found that around the year 1800, a distinction emerged between words used in court to describe violent crimes and those used to describe non-violent crimes.

According to the authors, the distinction constitutes a new bureaucratic system of managing violence, which led to changes in societal views on violent acts. Decreasing acceptability of violent acts reinforced bureaucratic control of violence, the authors write, as well as changing legal strategies available to victims of crimes.

The results suggest that a decrease in violent crime during the 18th and 19th centuries was due to a gradual reinforcement and strengthening of social norms and bureaucratic processes rather than specific legislative actions, according to the authors.

Read the article in The New York Times (June 17, 2014)

Read their paper in PNAS (June 16, 2014)

Read the article in New Scientist (June 13, 2014, subscription required for feature-length article)

Read the article in Nautilus (April 24, 2014)

Read DeDeo's article in Nautilus (April 24, 2014)

Watch clips of a video interview with DeDeo at nautil.us (April 24, 2014)

Watch "The Violence Paradox" on PBS Nova (November 20, 2019)