Travis Hirschi is widely recognized as one of the principal founders of modern criminology.  The book Fifty Years of Causes of Delinquency: The Criminology of Travis Hirschi, edited by James C. Oleson and Barbara J. Costello, and reviewed here by Michael R. Gottfredson certainly attests to Hirschi’s influence.  Gottfredson, who as a colleague of Travis Hirschi collaborated with him in the development of the enormously influential A general theory of crime, says of the current book: “…. these essays and empirical studies illustrate both the historical and the contemporary relevance of the ideas Travis first presented half a century ago…. These papers themselves will very likely stimulate considerable interesting and diverse scholarship in the field.”  Gottfredson calls this book remarkably illustrative of the contemporary impact of Hirschi’s work.

The year 1965 was smack in the middle of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.  This was a decade of major achievements in the civil rights arena, but also one of setbacks and some horrific side effects of those efforts.  One of those occurred on the night of March 25, 1965.  Following a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Viola Liuzzo, a forty-three-year-old white Detroit homemaker and mother of five who had come to Alabama to drive marchers from Montgomery back to Selma, was shot and killed by a group of Klu Klux Klansmen.  In Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials, reviewed here by Robert Pratt, James P. Turner, who is a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, “provides a compelling first-person account of the federal government’s quest to secure justice for Viola Liuzzo, ultimately leading to the first modern civil rights convictions.”

One of the conundrums facing prison administrators is what to do with prison inmates who act out violently.  One common, perhaps the most common, response has been to place such inmates in solitary confinement.  In his review of Solitary Confinement: Effects, Practices, and Pathways toward Reform, edited by Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith, Terry Kupers says that “applying a risk/benefit analysis to solitary confinement, it becomes obvious that there is huge risk in terms of the pain and human damage solitary causes, but there really are no benefits as violence and gang activity continue unabated in the prisons.” The authors here, who come from varied backgrounds, not only conclude that it is past time to end solitary confinement, but most importantly, they recommend plans for doing so.  Kupers finds their arguments eloquent and convincing.   

“Corruption kills.  Corruption destroys.”  So begins David Friedrich’s review of Sarah Chayes’s On Corruption in America – And what is at stake!  Friedrich says that anyone “approaching a book entitled ‘On Corruption in America’ anticipating either a systematic, impersonal survey of corruption in America or a full-fledged review of the case of [President] Trump and his [in Friedrich’s view] corrupt administration will not here find either.”  Instead, he says, the book “takes the form of mixing up expository sections with deep dives into ancient and not-so-ancient history along with accounts of [the author’s] personal experiences and encounters.” Arguing that criminology should be devoting far more attention to the crime of corruption, the reviewer concludes that “Sarah Chayes’ book should be one core resource for a criminology of corruption.”

Reviewer Clay Calvert calls Rodney Smolla’s Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer: Charlottesville and the Politics of Hate, “a timely, informative, and oftentimes first-person examination of … thorny free-speech issues.” “[I]n a nutshell,” Calvert says, “this book uses Charlottesville and the University of Virginia – their complex histories intertwined with their noble forward-thinking ambitions, as well as the individuals, movements, and events that engulfed them during the summer of 2017 – as springboards for launching into a lively, vignette-packed analysis of the contentious nexus between racism and free expression.” Calvert calls Smolla’s book “an exceedingly valuable – even essential – book about racism, hate speech, and the First Amendment precisely at the moment that it is most needed.”

Among the pressing issues facing the world today is the controversy over climate change and global warming.  This controversy revolves around whether these are real problems, and if so, what to do about them.  In his review of Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes, by Ronald C. Kramer, our reviewer Gregg Barak refers to the causes of a panoply of environmental destructive activities as “ecocide, or…the extensive damage to, destruction of, or loss of ecosystems by human activity.” Kramer describes his book’s focus to be green criminology, and he and the reviewer agree that “because the crimes of global ecocide are so ominous and so preventable,” in Barak’s words, “these crimes against Earth’s ecosystem should be of concern to all criminologists.”  

Ever wonder about what the life of a prostitute is like? Or what prostitutes might do in “retirement”? Sex and Stigma: Stories of Everyday Life in Nevada’s Legal Brothels by Sarah Jane Blithe, Anna Wiederhold Wolfe, and Breanna Mohr, published by NYU Press, will give you some answers to those questions. Reviewer Steven Block points out that what he calls “complicated questions” arise from the prostitute’s relationships with customers, with co-workers, and with the people in the worker’s personal life, such as family and friends. One of the strengths of the book, Block says, is that the authors show how these women are not the only examples of what are referred to as “dirty workers” — that is those who must find ways to manage their lives while working in hidden organizations.

“Does organized crime exploit politicians and the political system, or is it the other way around?” This question is posed by our reviewer Jay Albanese in his review of Felia Allum and Stan Gilmour’s latest examination of organized crime, Handbook of Organised Crime and Politics. In trying to answer that question, says Albanese, “studies and policies addressing organized crime cannot overlook the political environment in which they exist.” This, he concludes, is because although “history and culture play large roles … politics can either enhance or doom even the best efforts to reduce the influence of organized crime.” Allum and Gilmour’s book explores these issues in literally dozens of countries and regions around the world.

This year – 2020 – is not only the year of a global pandemic that has killed people by the thousands, it is also a year bringing focus on the killing of black victims by the police in the United States. The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago by Flint Taylor, is a case study of the kind of police culture and police mentality that can account for how and why these police killings might be happening. Reviewer Bocar Ba writes “[f]rom 1972 to 1991, Chicago police officers—often, but not always, under the supervision of Commander Jon Burge—tortured and abused more than one hundred Black men in their custody in order to extract confessions. The tactics used ranged from mock executions and racialized psychological abuse, to beatings with telephone books, flashlights, batons, and baseball bats.” It is perhaps not a stretch to imagine that if this happens in the precinct, its apparent acceptance might help account for what can happen on the street.

One of the perhaps unanticipated consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic was its effect on jails and prisons. At a minimum these are often overcrowded institutions with relatively poor health care systems. Thus, one of the issues that has arisen is what to do with the inmates who might otherwise be subjected to a form of cruel and unusual punishment if they remain incarcerated. One of the answers, at least in some jurisdictions, is early release. Holding On: Family and Fatherhood during Incarceration and Reentry by Tasseli McKay, Megan Comfort, Christine Lindquist, and Anupa Bir describe some promising ways in which release and reentry can be successfully accomplished. Reviewer Anne Nurse describes the book as an invaluable resource for policymakers, prison administrators and academics interested in the complex ways that incarceration and reentry impact our nation’s families.

Our reviewer Clay Calvert calls Justice in Plain Sight a well-written and meticulously researched book. Written by a journalist, Dan Bernstein, it tells the story behind two United States Supreme Court decisions from the 1980s that established the so-called Press-Enterprise test. This test “initially determines whether there is a presumptive right of access to attend a specific aspect or phase of a criminal proceeding.” The book sheds new light on the inner workings of the Supreme Court and of the Justices at that time, as they worked to define and interpret what the First Amendment and freedom of the press means in practice.

Lest one think that conspiracy theories and dark rumors are unique to the present day, a new book by Edward Berenson, reviewed here by Mark W. Podvia, will surely disabuse you of that notion. The Accusation: Blood Libel in An American Town, tells a story of blood libel believed to be committed by Jews – in this case involving the alleged kidnapping, murder and bloodletting of a four-year old girl in Massena, New York in 1928. It turns out the girl was never kidnapped, but simply became lost near her home for less than a day. Notwithstanding the actual facts of the matter, much of the community and the authorities were willing to accept a conspiratorial explanation that resonated with a culture of anti- Semitism. Blood libel associated with anti-Semitism has, as the book points out, a history that extends back to the 12th century in Europe and Russia. It was also obviously alive and well in 1920s America.

Guns, shootings and gun control are perennial and controversial topics in the U.S.  In Gun Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice, editorsJennifer Carlson, et. al. bring together an interdisciplinary collaboration of authors from various subject matter fields that have some relationship to guns.  These include Criminology, Marketing, Political Science, Law, and Sociology.  Reviewer Joshua Behl concludes that the book does a good job of providing a wide overview from this variety of disciplines, although it is, in his judgment, “long on theory but short on data.”  The book is, nevertheless, “ripe with research questions for those who are interested in the study of guns.”

This book, written by journalist Johnny Dwyer, tells stories about how people caught up in the federal criminal justice system are affected by the experience. Its stories focus on prosecutions of organized crime, drug offenses, white collar crime, terrorism, and public corruption. All the cases come from the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn) and the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), where prosecutors are viewed as among the most powerful and prestigious prosecutors in the country. Reviewer Jack Call gives examples of the stories that the book contains and concludes that the book “is well-written and tells engaging stories. Nevertheless, it has its flaws.” For example, while Dwyer “succeeds admirably in his description of how persons accused of federal crimes are impacted by that experience; he is less successful in explaining how the people who work in the federal courts are impacted.” The detail in the stories, however, provides a useful window into what federal criminal prosecutions look like.

Among the more vulnerable populations in the current virus pandemic are the inmates (and staff) in jails and prisons.  In what can only be termed a most prescient and timely analysis of the health issues presented by mass incarceration, Dr. Homer Venters, MD describes his experiences as the chief health officer responsible for, among other things, overseeing New York City’s notorious Rikers Island prison complex.  Our reviewer, Judith Ryder, offers this observation of Life and Death in Rikers Island: “This book is about Rikers, and is in many ways a New York-specific story.  Yet, by detailing the dysfunctional health system of one particular jail, Venters reveals the human rights concerns of mass incarceration in the United States and speaks to the difficulties and precariousness of providing decent health care in jails and prisons everywhere.”

The murder of 14-year old Emmet Till by white racists in Mississippi in 1955 stands as one of the more despicable acts in the history of race relations in the United States.  Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till, by Elliot J. Gorn, is one of several important recent books about that case.  Reviewer Michael J. Pfeifer says about what he calls this well-written monograph, “[w]hat is most valuable about Gorn’s book about the life, death, and legacy of the Chicago fourteen-year-old …is its comprehensive approach, and its melding of an accessible narrative with an analytical approach.”

Those who are familiar with the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, will know about Brendan Dassey, the sixteen-year-old with a cognitive disability who is prominently featured in the series. Attorney Michael D. Cicchini has crafted what our reviewer, William Douglas Woody, calls “a strong and detailed legal review of the interrogation and confession” of Dassey. Cicchini’s book, Anatomy of a False Confession: The Interrogation and Conviction of Brendan Dassey, concludes that the manner in which the Dassey case has been handled constitutes “one of the greatest injustices in the history of American criminal law.”

Yet another topic very much in the headlines at the moment is policing and the role of the police in society – what is it, and what should it be? Given this spotlighted attention, it may be helpful to step back and perhaps take a longer view, and to think about what is happening with policing in other countries and societies. This is what Monica den Boer’s edited book, Comparative Policing from a Legal perspective, is intended to do. As just one example of the timeliness of this discussion, reviewer Peter Neyroud points to the book’s chapters on training, research and leadership. He says the authors “make an important observation that traditional patterns of recruitment and training are ill adapted to prepare new officers for the new challenges of policing in the 21st century.” Among the needs of recruitment is to attract individuals who have the “legal and professional education to perform the role well.” Seems like a good idea!

Mass incarceration has moved, in recent years, to the forefront of criminal justice problems needing reform.  This focus makes Brett Story’s Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America especially timely.  Reviewer Doris Schartmueller says Story expands one’s view of prisons from being simply isolated institutions that incarcerate and hide away the criminally convicted, to one that looks much more broadly at society at large — a society that, Story believes, is permeated by systems of punishment.  The key question being addressed in this book is whether the so-called reforms have truly dismantled the punitive state or have they merely redesigned it?

Tony Platt, long time scholar of race, inequality and social justice in American history, takes a new look at contemporary criminal justice in America in his book, Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States.  It is reviewed for us by Sam Bieler.  Bieler concludes that Platt delivers on the book’s first promise to provide “an ambitious and far-ranging” review of abuses in the U.S. justice system. On the second promise, however, which is to provide a “bold” and “strategic” vision on how to remake what Platt calls a brutally flawed system, Bieler sees a stumble – just a quick list of ideas rather than a bold new vision.   Nevertheless, the reviewer concludes that Beyond These Walls offers an excellent history and genealogy even though it “falls short as a radical reform manifesto.”

Ethnographic research into organized crime is quite rare.  This is so because not only is it difficult, but it can be dangerous.  Thus, as our reviewer James Windle points out, “most any ethnography of organised crime deserves to be read, reviewed and respected.” Mafia Raj: The Rule of Bosses in South Asia, by Lucia Michelutti and six co-authors, falls into that category.  Mafia Raj, meaning rule by the mafia, is a collection of seven individual ethnographic studies that addresses three questions about organized crime bosses:  how do they command, what do they actually do, and in what contexts do they operate.  Windle calls this book a fascinating joy to read.

Beyond Punishment? by Zachary Hoskins is reviewed by Ambrose Y. K. Lee.  The book’s focus is on the collateral consequences of criminal convictions and, in the reviewer’s words “whether the imposition of formal legal collateral consequences can be morally justifiable, and if so, under what conditions.” Lee says that Hoskins’ book is “the most comprehensive and systematic attempt at tackling this philosophical question head on” of which he is aware.  Although it addresses a philosophical question, it is, according to the reviewer, written with a wider audience in mind.

Antonin Scalia is generally regarded as one of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court justices of his generation.  In The Justice of Contradictions:  Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption, Richard L. Hasen examines Scalia’s judicial efforts in three substantive areas:  the so-called culture wars; cases bearing on democracy, such as campaign financing; and, cases in criminal law.  Hasen considers these efforts through the lens of Scalia’s judicial philosophy of textualism and originalism.  Our reviewer, Jack Call, concludes that only time will tell whether Scalia will be the justice who is considered to have had the greatest influence on future law.

What is it that drives someone to be and remain a death penalty lawyer? What kind of moral commitment, temperament, and stamina make it possible to endure the long hours, grim case outcome, and emotional toll that DP lawyers regularly endure while others might give up, and what kind of toll does it take on their mental and physical health? In researching their new book, John Gould and Magna Barak spoke to some sixty DP lawyers to try to answer these questions. Our reviewer, David Dow, found their work "worthwhile and well-written," though he takes issue with some of their methodology.