The objectives in the research project were to: * analyse over a considerable length of time individual offenders' gradual or sudden, partial or complete desistance from serious and persistent criminal activity within their lifetimes, and relate these pathways to their marital status, employment careers, and other life circumstances * analyse the offending trajectories of individual offenders (for the entirety of their lifetimes) to reveal desistence/re-emergence of serious criminal activities * inform current debates about punishment and law and order via an examination of similar debates 100-150 years ago * production of comprehensive computer-readable datasets of prosecuted serious crime in Cheshire 1851-1951, and a subset of the relevant life-details of offenders and their descendants * investigate the impact of the Penal Servitude Acts and the Habitual Offender Acts on individual persistent offenders over the course of their lives The variables in the dataset include gender, age at first conviction, reason for onset, persistence and desistance from offending, nature of sentence given at court and the outcome of such sentencing. All data are at the individual level.