77 books like The Female Offender

“POP!” An arc light sets to kill over 600 people in the Iroquois Theatre. In 1903 the lack of safety, faulty and missing equipment, greed, and ego caused the deadliest theater fire in U.S. history. It began with briberies and ended with dismissed charges. There are books on the Iroquois Theatre fire, but this is a journal of eyewitness accounts written immediately after. Actors recount experiences behind the curtain, theater employees discuss their roles, and survivors talk about losing entire families. This book also discusses the aftermath, including the demand for criminal action. Negligence and outright illegal activity created the fire and the public paid in ashes - the final court decisions leave you outraged at a judicial system built for the wealthy.

The Iroquois Theatre fire set a precedent for fire prevention measures in place today. Had those in charge used prudence, higher expenditures, and legal requirements, over 600… show more.

Manipulation is a simple art.

I require all students and mentees to read this book and keep it on their shelves. It is an easy read and contains information that will keep future law enforcement officers safe from inmate behavior. Civilians can apply these skills to everyday life to protect themselves as well. We call it “the trick bag”, falling for a simple ruse and landing as a pawn in an inmate’s game in prison. The “game” is a series of manipulations over time that might lead to the target’s incarceration, loss of job, and public humiliation. 

This book is an effective tool for offender management and exposing criminal scams. The examples are accurate and anyone can use the tools it discusses. The authors discuss the anatomy of the setup, susceptibility profiles of both inmate and target, survival traits, and more. It can start with a pencil and end with… show more.

One of nine Black students to integrate the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, Beals faces threats to her life as well as constant cruelty not only from white people but also from members of her own community, who disapprove of her decision. Her book gives us an unflinching account of what it feels like to be inside the maelstrom. Education seems almost beside the point when she needs protection from the National Guard. Most resonant to me, Beals admits that being a warrior for social change is exhausting. “Sometimes,” she writes in her diary, “I just need to be a girl.”

This book is forensics for the layman. No mechanical component replaces education and knowledge. Electronics break down and computers are just machines. It is a good "old-fashioned" investigation work that solves crimes. This book explains how. It is easy-to-read, exciting for students, "couch cops," and even investigators. This book appeals to all types of learners with a thorough history of investigative processes filled with photos, charts, sketches, and maps. It also includes case studies of criminals and criminal behavior, manner of death, and profiling.

No, this book doesn't discuss the latest in lasers and it only briefly touches on DNA. It's about the natural investigative process: reasonable doubt, time and cause of death, criminal behavior, and courtroom proceedings. Want to read up on the future of orbiting satellites in investigative technology? Try another book. Want to see human eyelashes magnified by 50x in order to understand skin and hair samples?… show more.

We are brought up to think of racism as a matter of individual attitudes and biases. If only it were that simple. Stuart Hall and his colleagues taught me that understanding how racism worked required much deeper thinking. First published in 1978, Policing the Crisis argued that race is a key constituent of Britain’s social and economic structures. It presented a picture of Britain in the 1970s as caught in a crisis of authority. Society was fracturing, giving rise to new authoritarianism in response. A moral panic about black crime was the surface justification for new “law and order” policies. But in a strange way, the country was using black people to work through its own anxieties. This was Thatcherism in embryo. The same processes continue to shape our lives today. There is no better book on how politics in Britain has functioned in the last fifty years.

Unlike so many heroines of historical mysteries who had dangerous jobs in the Great War—usually a spy, courier, or battlefield nurse—I found Iris Cooper refreshingly average, but not boring. She’s sailing from England to America after a round-the-world tour with her aunt. When a man dies in a deck chair, Iris searches for answers about his identity. I especially liked the fact that Iris used her shorthand and typing skills to become part of the ship-board inquiry into the death and holds her own with the panel, which is basically an old boy’s club. The parade of suspects is catnip for a mystery reader like me and includes a voluptuous film star, a mysterious professor studying criminology, a handsome musician, and an enthusiastic newspaper reporter. I enjoyed watching Iris come into her own as a sleuth and find a little romance along the way.

The 1892 ax murder of Andrew and Abby Borden has become a staple of American popular culture. Everyone familiar with the case has a firmly held opinion on the guilt or innocence of their daughter Lizzie. There are many theories on what may have happened that day, but we have no way of knowing the whole truth. Then, as today, the best we can do is a trial by jury. The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a detailed and well-researched book presenting evidence, testimony, and events surrounding that momentous trial, leaving the reader with the same question that faced the jury—did Lizzie do it? Though unlikely to change many opinions, it gives the reader a greater understanding of why that jury found Lizzie Borden not guilty.

This is another book that cuts through the hype, helping to define the often sensationalized connections between mafiosi in Italy and the United States.

Historian Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian, brings a perspective often missing in American books on the Mafia. His meticulous research knocks down the idea that the American Mafia was ever some giant “alien conspiracy” with Sicilian overlords, but it does examine whatever interconnections and parallels exist in real life between the two Mafias.

Much like the Critchley book, this is for those who want the facts, facts, facts. And Italian experts have a lot to contribute to the story of the American Mafia.

Hari’s Chasing the Scream is not an exhaustively researched book but it still merits listing given how viscerally the author addresses the history of the global war on drugs in the light of his own personal addiction. Hari shines in his depiction of circa 1930s U.S. Drug Cop #1, Henry J. Anslinger, who, among other dubious endeavors, sought to throw the book at jazz singer Billie Holiday, who also happened to be a heroin addict.  

The baseball writer and analyst Bill James sets out to trace the path of a serial ax murderer who left a bloody trail across the US in the early 20th century. Starting with the well-chronicled deaths of eight people in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912, he reveals the signature connections between this crime and dozens of others committed over a period of 15 years from Washington State to Florida, crimes for which innocent people were put to death. A mind-boggling feat of research.