The past as a foreign country - Some methodological implications of doing historical criminology

This article describes methodological issues that arose from the author's r esearch on early modem women's imprisonment in order to reflect on broader questions about how crime and punishment are studied. She demonstrates that the ways in which a criminologist interprets his or her data, what evidenc e exists, and the emotional repercussions of writing on crime and punishmen t reveal the researcher's ethical stance towards his or her subjects and th e allegiances he or she creates with them. These problems of interpretation , evidence and emotion transcend time and culture and are built into the re search goals of the discipline of criminology itself.