Reviews in Brief
2022

This part of the site is intended to broaden the scope of our coverage, and to encourage contributions from students and practitioners. Reviews in brief will be approximately 500 words in length.  Books to be considered for review should have been published in the past two years.  For further guidance or to prepare a review for publication, please contact one of the co-editors:

Colleen Berryessa (Criminal Justice)

Robin Charlow (Hofstra Law School)

Brenner M. Fissell (Villanova Law School))

Previous Editions

December

Twenty-One Mental Models that can Change Policing

Author: Renée J. Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge, 2021. 228 pages.
Reviewer: Valerie Boyer | December 2022

Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court

Author: Orville Vernon Burton & Armand Derfner
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2021. 464 pages.
Reviewer: Jeffrey Adler | December 2022

Fundamentals of Criminal Law

Author: Andrew Simester
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2021. 544 pages.
Reviewer: Penny Crofts | December 2022

Criminology and Public Theology: On Hope, Mercy and Restoration

Author: Andrew Millie
Publisher: Bristol University Press, 2020. 342 pages.
Reviewer: Rick Sarre | December 2022

Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television

Author: Daniel LaChance & Paul Kaplan
Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2022. 180 pages.
Reviewer: Andrew Baranauskas | December 2022

Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Family Murders

Author: Debi Marshall
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia, 2022. 448 pages.
Reviewer: Frederick T. Martins | December 2022

A Prison in the Woods: Environment and Incarceration in New York’s North Country

Author: Clarence Jefferson Hall Jr.
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020. 288 pages.
Reviewer: Angela S. Murolo | December 2022

September

Who Killed Cock Robin: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment

Authors: Stephen Sedley and Martin Carthy
Publishers: Reaktion Books and the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2021. 216 pages.
Reviewer: Lars Ole Sauerberg | September 2022

Vagrant Figures: Law, Literature, and the Origins of the Police

Author: Sal Nicolazzo
Publisher: Yale University Press, 2020. 310 pages.
Reviewer: Jeffrey S. Adler | September 2022

The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776

Author: Kristin A. Olbertson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 258 pages.
Reviewer: Lyndsay Campbell | September 2022

Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture 1975-2001

Author: Kyle Riismandel
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. 240 pages.
Reviewer: David Schultz | September 2022

Gangsters Vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America

Author: Michael Benson
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2022. 304 pages.
Reviewer: Frederick T. Martens | September 2022

Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance

Author: Terry Green Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block. 432 pages.
Publisher: University of California Press, 2021.
Reviewer: Frank R. Baumgartner | September 2022

June

Transnational Criminology: Trafficking and Global Criminal Markets

Author: Simon Mackenzie
Publisher: Bristol University Press, 2020. 173 pages.
Reviewer: Jay S. Albanese ǀ June 2022

Monsters, Law, Crime: Explorations in Gothic Criminology

Editor: Caroline Joan “Kay” S. Picart
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021
Reviewer: Jeffrey A. Tolbert ǀ June 2022

Of One-Eyed and Toothless Miscreants: Making the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Author: Michael Tonry
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2020. 249 pages.
Reviewer: David Schultz ǀ June 2022

Criminal Contagion: How Mafias, Gangsters and Scammers Profit from a Pandemic

Authors: Tuesday Reitano and Mark Shaw
Publisher: Hurst and Company, 2021. 320 pages.
Reviewer: Vesna Markovic ǀ June 2022

Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry

Author: Angela Jones
Publisher: NYU Press, 2020. 320 pages.
Reviewer: David Schultz ǀ June 2022

March

MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang

Author: Steven Dudley
Publisher: Hanover Square Press, 2020. 352 pages.
Reviewer: Jonathan D. Rosen ǀ March 2022

Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy

Author: Talia Lavin
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2021. 288 pages.
Reviewer: Matthew Valasik ǀ March 2022

Conflict and Transnational Crime: Borders, Bullets and Business in Southeast Asia

Author: Florian Weigand
Publisher: Edward Elgar, 2020. 176 pages.
Reviewer: Neil Boister ǀ March 2022

Women, Film, and Law: Cinematic Representations of Female Incarceration

Author: Suzanne Bouclin
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press, 2021. 226 pages.
Reviewer: Mark Bernhardt ǀ March 2022

Drug Smuggler Nation: Narcotics and the Netherlands, 1920-1995

Author: Stephen Snelders
Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2021. 304 pages.
Reviewer: Paul Gootenberg ǀ March 2022

Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism

Author: Heather Berg
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 256 pages.
Reviewer: Dean Fido ǀ March 2022

The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, And the Phoenix Park Murders that Stunned Victorian England

Author: Julie Kavanagh
Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2021. 416 pages.
Reviewer: Brian Griffin ǀ March 2022

Autopsy of a Crime Lab: Exposing the Flaws in Forensics

Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Publisher: University of California Press, 2021. 264 pages.
Reviewer: Colleen M. Berryessa ǀ March 2022

January

Separated: Family And Community In The Aftermath Of An Immigration Raid

Author: William D. Lopez
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. 232 pages.
Reviewer: Charles Oberg ǀ January 2022

Police-Related Deaths In The United States

Author: David Baker
Publisher: Lexington Books, 2021. 154 pages.
Reviewer: Kevin Cassidy ǀ January 2022

Disruptive Prisoners: Resistance, Reform, And The New Deal

Authors: Chris Clarkson and Melissa Munn
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 320 pages.
Reviewer: James Gacek ǀ January 2022

Debauched, Desperate, Deranged: Women Who Killed, London 1674–1913

Author: Carolyn A. Conley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2020. 240p.
Reviewer: Katherine D. Watson ǀ January 2022

Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels The Right

Author: Brendan O’Connor
Publisher: Haymarket Books, 2021. 323 pages.
Reviewer: David Schultz ǀ January 2022

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