Have been working on a history essay for my minor, and been reading Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish' as an introduction. He mentions the decline in the use of public punishments, but also the impact of the industrial revolution in France and in England for shifting the limits of 'socially acceptable illegalities', which changed as property moved from landed to more absolute property rights.
What social dynamics of mutual 'criminality' were occurring between different social strata before this shift in the mid-18th century? And was the formation of the new social norms of punishment tied to these new property rights, or was it a more general shift towards punishing lower classes for general criminal activities that hadn't been adequately prosecuted by judicial courts before?
I understand why you would start with D&P, but I would strongly recommend moving to a different introductory text written by an historian. Foucault's influence on criminal and legal history is inescapable, but (to put it bluntly) he does not treat historical trends with the care that someone trying to write history does. Foucault's prime motivation is to try and explain what modes of thought and action led to the present day. With D&P he is trying to explain the transition from public execution to the modern death penalty by lethal injection; he's showing the transition from E.P. Thompson's "Moral Economy" to modern police forces and riot control.
I think part of what you are getting at in describing "socially acceptable illegalities" for England describes two things (at least). One is the "moral economy" I mentioned above - Thompson's essay is the hallmark of the study, changing how we understand "riots". For Thompson (and for Early Modern Englishmen), riots were not chaotic events characterized by a suspension of reason, they were carefully constructed actions made by rational actors against some form of injustice - an extra-legal method of policing, or an illegal act that was taken to enforce community norms. The second thing Foucault could be talking about is how the courts functioned in early modern England. The legal code of 18th century England was incredibly strict; most property crimes (theft, burglary, forgery, etc) carried the death penalty. Juries, judges, and state officers had several methods to ameliorate such a harsh legal code; they could convict a person of a lesser crime, they would devalue the amount of property involved (any amount over 5s I believe carried the sentence), they could offer conditional pardons, they could find a guilty person innocent - all these were ways of working around a rigid system. Working around "socially acceptable illegalities" to spare someone of the harsh sentence of death.
There is a wealth of historical literature describing the transition to a modern police force, or modern criminal code, but where you should start depends on what material are you trying to research? A basic introduction is Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England. Stevenson's Popular Disturbances in Early Modern England covers much of the later territory, and can help guide your thinking. Beattie, Crime and the Courts is essential reading for anyone working on crime and punishment in the 18th century. I would be happy to try and help more once I have a sense of where you are headed.