I’m a law professor at Boston University who has studied and written about constitutional law, democracy, and inequality for over 20 years. I’m troubled by America’s rise to become the world’s leader in imprisoning its own citizens and the continued use of inhumane policing and punishment practices. These trends must be better understood before we can come up with a form of politics that can overcome our slide into a darker version of ourselves.
Forman’s book is a must-read to learn why the War on Crime was not merely the work of one party or one racial group in society. Indeed, a number of people of color, including black mayors and black chiefs of police, strongly supported tough-on-crime measures.
The book raises the question of what it will take to reverse the trends of mass incarceration, given these realities.
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
Longlisted for the National Book AwardOne of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of colour. In LOCKING UP OWN OWN, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation's urban centres.Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges and police chiefs took office amid…
As a writer and journalist in Iran, I knew many activists and journalists who spent time in solitary confinement. I noticed that this part of their prison experience was the hardest one for them to put to words, even those keen on sharing their experiences have a much easier time talking about the interrogation room but remain strangely reticent about the solitary cell. When I set out to write a novel about a bus driver who ends up in jail, I decided to dedicate several chapters of the book to his time in solitary confinement. That research sent me down the rabbit hole of interviewing former prisoners and reading widely about the solitary experience.
My list would not be complete without a work of scholarship. Of the texts I encountered during my research, this one stayed with me. It helped me develop a deeper, more philosophical insight into solitary experience. This book begins in the early days of the penitentiary system in the US, analyzing the inmates' experiences through a phenomenological approach. It discusses sensory deprivation, the way the disorienting experience of time in solitary interferes with basic sensory perception, and what this type of confinement does to the human mind. The author shows that all the justifications about the redemptive, corrective or reformative potential of this form of punishment are weak attempts at concealing what it is: an effective tool for the annihilation of human subjectivity.
Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons-even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today's supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners' sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years.
I was frustrated by stories of gilded-age women who floundered around and were pitied because of the limitations society put on them. I thought the heroine of House of Mirth was not heroine but a loser. It seemed to me there must be other women out there who weren’t just sitting around bemoaning their predicament. Since I’m a mystery writer I was especially pleased to find some women who were out there doing things, even in criminology. Finding Frances Glessner Lee was the icing on the cake when I learned that she is known as the Mother of Forensic Science. Had to be great stories there.
The Nutshell Studies are now located in Maryland at the medical examiner’s office.
Goldfarb worked there and his book provides information on how Frances Glessner Lee became involved in the work of her brother’s old friend Dr. George Meredith Magrath who was medical examiner in Boston (Suffolk County).
His work demonstrated the need for a technically proficient medical examiner system to replace the old coroner system and for police detectives to be trained to deal with a crime scene. Called Legal Medicine at the time, this was the beginning of forensics as we know it now.
It’s fascinating how one woman used her money and influence to establish training for law enforcement officials even after her mentor Dr. Magrath died.
A captivating blend of history, women in science, and true crime, 18 Tiny Deaths tells the story of how one woman changed the face of forensics forever.
Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity.
Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes, and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming―until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned…
Kundnani writes about racial capitalism and Islamophobia, surveillance and political violence, and Black radical movements. He is the author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror and The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept. Born in London, he moved to New York in 2010. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, and holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. He has been an Open Society fellow and a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
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.
This special 35th anniversary edition contains the original, unchanged text that inspired a generation, alongside two new chapters that explore the book's continued significance for today's readers. The Preface provides a brief retrospective account of the book's original structure, the rich ethnographic, intellectual and theoretical work that informed it, and the historical context in which it appeared. In the new Afterword, each of the authors takes up a specific theme from the original book and interrogates it in the light of current crises, perspectives and contexts.
I have been involved with teaching in prison for the last 22 years, and have taught everything from creative writing to meditation to college classes across carceral facilities in New York, California, and Massachusetts. As the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College’s campus at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, I constantly work with faculty and students who are navigating the teaching and learning environment under some of the most adverse circumstances. These books have helped me feel less alone in this work.
In Daniel Karpowitz’s book, he takes readers behind the scenes in college-in-prison classrooms to explore what a liberal arts education can offer people who are incarcerated, and the educators who facilitate them. Karpowitz was a mentor and a guide as I was building my own college-in-prison program. His steadfast belief in the human capacity for transformative learning shines through in these accessible, riveting pages of what it means to read the canon from a position of marginalization.
The nationally renowned Bard Prison Initiative demonstrates how the liberal arts can alter the landscape inside prisons by expanding access to the transformative power of American higher education. American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outreach programs presume that incarcerated men and women can rise to the challenge of a truly rigorous college curriculum. The Bard Prison Initiative, however, is different. As this compelling new book reveals, BPI has fostered a remarkable transformation in the lives of thousands of prisoners. College in Prison chronicles how, since 2001, Bard…
Back in 2006, a New York Times Magazine feature article about me announced that I had essentially founded the field of the study of art crime, while still a postgraduate student. I’m often mentioned as the world’s leading authority on the history of art crime and I’ve been a professor teaching the subject for more than a decade (I’m not actually that old). I also founded ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, the world’s first think tank and research group on art crime. We launched the first academic journal on the subject, The Journal of Art Crime, as well as the first academic study program, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, which runs every summer in Italy. I’m also the author of more than a dozen books, many best-sellers, and one a Pulitzer finalist. I write on art crime for TED Ed videos, I host TV programs on the subject, and I recently curated a virtual exhibit of lost art called Missing Masterpieces.
When I first started out, there were very few books ever written about the study of art crime. Tijhuis was one of the few authorities, approaching it from a criminological perspective. This is a really strong academic survey of the phenomenon, perfect for those interested in the intersection of criminology and art.
How does transnational crime interact with legal companies andgovernments? Are legal actors primarily victimized by transnationalcriminals or are the two connected by collaborative relationships? Andhow are these crimes often transformed into legitimate activities?This book seeks to answer these and related questions. Its main topicis the translational illicit art and antiquities trade, based on a thoroughempirical study of data gathered in France, Italy, the Netherlands andother places around the world. The reader will encounter a large numberof case studies, from auction houses selling looted antiquities to violentrobberies of museums and castles, and much more.Added to this is an analysis of the…
Throughout my academic career, my chief scholarly interest has been to assess public policy using coherent theory and rigorous empirical method.The economics of crime and justice offers a powerful framework for achieving these ends.
This book applies economic theory and econometric methods to problems in criminology.
It is divided into three parts. Part I discusses models of criminal recidivism. Part II describes the economic model of crime. Part III estimates cost functions for prisons.
Specific chapters cover statistical analysis of qualitative outcomes; analysis of two measures of criminal activity – the arrest rate and the conviction rate; and long-run estimates of cost functions for a group of Federal Correctional Institutions.
I wrote on the mob early in my career as a newspaper reporter, investigating organized crime’s infiltration of politics, unions, and the toxic-waste industry in New Jersey in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, then covering some of the major mob trials in New York during the 1980s (starting with the case depicted in the movie Donnie Brasco). In more recent years, I’ve returned to the subject in two books: The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia and An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians. I like work that is careful, specific, and presented in a smoothly written narrative.
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.
A realistic understanding of the mafia must avoid depictions both of a monolithic organization and of localized, isolated groups. Here, renowned historian Salvatore Lupo analyzes the mafia as a network of varied relationships and institutions, the result of a complex cultural and social encounter that was shaped by multiple, diverse environments.
I was frustrated by stories of gilded-age women who floundered around and were pitied because of the limitations society put on them. I thought the heroine of House of Mirth was not heroine but a loser. It seemed to me there must be other women out there who weren’t just sitting around bemoaning their predicament. Since I’m a mystery writer I was especially pleased to find some women who were out there doing things, even in criminology. Finding Frances Glessner Lee was the icing on the cake when I learned that she is known as the Mother of Forensic Science. Had to be great stories there.
Hull House was the famous settlement house on the West Side of Chicago where a group of mostly women attempted to change the lives of their immigrant neighbors by living among them.
Although the work brought cultural and artistic opportunities to the poor, the women also began to work on political and legal issues. Changes to juvenile justice and occupational health laws as well as labor laws came out of the work of women who couldn’t even vote at the time.
That they were able to have such influence is intriguing.
Twenty Years at Hull House, the acclaimed memoir of social reformer Jane Addams, is presented here complete with all sixty-three of the original illustrations and the biographical notes.
A landmark autobiography in terms of opening the eyes of Americans to the plight of the industrial revolution, Twenty Years at Hull House has been applauded for its unflinching descriptions of the poverty and degradation of the era. Jane Addams also details the grave ill-health she suffered during and after her childhood, giving the reader insight into the adversity which she would re-purpose into a drive to alleviate the suffering of others.…
I love history. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid, listening to my dad’s history lectures. And in my history classes, I always tucked away stories about women. There weren’t many; most were trailblazers like Amelia Earhart or Susan B. Anthony. They were completely admirable, but I wanted to know about the women who had strayed from the straight and narrow: the murderers, the liars, and the thieves. Now, I write about women committing crimes throughout history. As a reader, I can never resist a story about a woman from the past doing things she shouldn’t. These books were endlessly entertaining and sometimes downright chilling to read.
Everyone knows who Lizzie Borden is, and everyone thinks they know whether or not she did it. But what few people know about is her trial. I have always been pretty obsessed with the Lizzie Borden story (hint: she’s totally guilty). But this book put a whole new spin on the country’s original true crime.
I loved reading about the legal proceedings that put Lizzie front and center of a violent crime (not a common place for a woman to be in Gilded Age America). It painted Lizzie in a more vulnerable light than the axe-wielding murderess I had always pictured her as. It also helped explain why she was acquitted.
In Cara Robertson’s “enthralling new book,” The Trial of Lizzie Borden, “the reader is to serve as judge and jury” (The New York Times). Based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence, this true crime and legal history is the “definitive account to date of one of America’s most notorious and enduring murder mysteries” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and…
