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MOST RECENT REVIEWS
Thieves of Book Row: New York’s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It,by Travis McDade, is about book thieves headquartered in New York City’s Book Row. Reviewer Patterson Smith, who identifies himself as an antiquarian bookseller for some sixty years, describes Thieves of Book Row as a “fully engaging account of larcenous activity that crosses the boundaries of commerce, academia, and connoisseurship.” Read On » |
Barry Feld is one of the foremost scholars of juvenile justice researching and writing today. His latest book, Kids, Cops, and Confessions, is reviewed here by Lisa S. Nored and Caitlin Carey. As the book’s title intimates, it is an examination of the unique issues and problems that arise when the subject of police interrogation is a juvenile. The reviewers consider the book to be important to all who “seek to better understand the unique plight of juveniles faced with the inherently coercive circumstances involved in police questioning.” Read On » |
Many (most) societies are faced with stark differences in how law and justice are experienced by the “haves” and the “have not’s” in their midst. In that latter category are the various Aboriginal peoples who live in a number of countries. It is Aboriginals in Canada who are the subject in To Right Historical Wrongs by Carmela Murdocca. Reviewer David Milward, while generally complimentary, criticizes the author for being diagnostically long but prescriptively short. He also points out the very fundamental question of “whether or not the social devastation faced by Aboriginal peoples can be addressed to any meaningful extent through the [criminal] sentencing process.” Read On » |
Jay Albanese concludes that Prohibition Gangsters by historian Marc Mappen is “an interesting effort to review a generation of gangsters, whose efforts to profit from crime were successful for short periods, but were usually interrupted by violence from competitors, prosecution by the government, or untimely death.” Focusing, not surprisingly, on mostly Italians and Jews and their real organization of crime during Prohibition and beyond, Mappen pays special attention to Chicago and Al Capone, and to some of the original figures in the Five Families of the New York/New Jersey area. Read On » |
Miriam Boeri’s Women on Ice: Methamphetamine Use Among Suburban Women gives an insider’s view of the largely hidden social problem of methamphetamine use by a seemingly unsuspected user population, namely suburban women. Reviewer Rashi Shukla concludes that readers will gain insight into “the challenges [these women face in] maintaining and sustaining contradictory social roles, [and the] barriers to services and programs, and policy changes that are needed to address this issue more effectively.” Women on Ice, Shukla believes, is important in part because it does target a largely hidden and difficult-to-access population. Read On » |
A difficult and complex issue is how best to attribute criminal liability to those who do not commit the criminal act but who participate indirectly—usually called the law of complicity. This collection of essays is an examination of the law and theory of complicity that is, according to Beatrice Krebs, “ambitious and very thorough in its scope and execution.” The book contains 12 chapters that focus on concepts and issues concerning the English law of complicity and 14 chapters providing an overview of the principles of complicity in other jurisdictions. Krebs concludes, “It cannot be overemphasised that the guiding hand of the editors is apparent throughout these chapters – this is not a loose collection of essays held together by a vague common theme, but a fantastic resource for academics, practitioners and students alike.” Read On » |
Criminal law scholars have long struggled with the difficult question of when individuals should be held liable for failing to perform acts they have a duty to perform. But what of the state itself? What duties should it be obligated to perform in a just system of criminal and civil law? It is the relationship between these two forms of duty that lies at the heart of Positive Obligations in the Criminal Law, the “timely and welcome collection of essays, both old and new, “ from Andrew Ashworth, “one of the common law’s most distinguished thinkers in the field of criminal law.” Read On » |
What is the proper relationship between medical ethics, bioethics, and the criminal law? In a new book on that subject by Margaret Brazier and Suzanne Ost, the authors imagine the relationship through the metaphor of the theater – dramatic, public, scripted, performative, narrational. Our reviewer, Joan Krause, finds the book “a thought-provoking, well-researched volume that demands serious reflection,” though the theatrical metaphor can at times seem “forced.” Read On » |
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