Joyriding has a largely uncharted history and it will be demonstrated here that popular and academic understandings of the term have often been far from clear-cut. The theft of motor vehicles for temporary use was first identified as a matter for UK legislation in 1930, when it was made an offence to take and drive away a vehicle without the owner’s consent (hereafter TDA). As shown below, the nature of TDA was incompletely recorded and understood for much of the twentieth century. TDA statistics capture a number of criminal practices. These include the short-term use of cars for use in other offences (where the stolen car, but not the other crimes, are detected) and the instrumental use of stolen cars, to travel from A to B. However, it is with the expressive use of vehicles, in activities that are labelled as joyriding, with which TDA has been most commonly linked. This is certainly the case with respect to media representations of TDA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was strong interest in the most visible forms of TDA, associated with high-speed police chases and other forms of dangerous driving indulged in by young males. This article will extend knowledge of TDA, presenting the initial findings from ongoing historical research examining the changing social dynamics, and meaning, of joyriding in Belfast between 1930 and 1990. In this paper, findings relating to TDA cases in 1930s Belfast are juxtaposed with the interpretations of this crime offered by British and North American criminologists and sociologists. This process will enable us to trace continuities and changes in both the profile of joyriders, as they were commonly described in the courts, and the potential meanings of this phenomenon since UK legislators first addressed it in 1930. The point of this exercise is to provide a constructive critique of the criminological literature and to create a fuller historical understanding of the term ‘joyrider’ and of trends in TDA. The article will conclude by suggesting that TDA needs to be understood within the broader relationship between masculinity and car culture, and that parallels should be drawn between the actions of those labelled joyriders and of many other young men in legally owned cars. (Author/publisher)
Abstract