Criminality and the Modern
Criminality and the Modern

Author: Stephen Brauer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-01-28

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1793608458

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The emergence of the social sciences, established in the mid to late nineteenth-century, had a substantial bearing on how researchers, academics, and eventually the general public thought about criminal behavior. Using Modernism as a lens, Stephen Brauer, examines how these disciplines shaped Americans’ understanding of criminality in the twentieth-century and how it provides a new way to think about culture, social norms, and ultimately, laws. In theory, laws act as articulations and codifications of a community’s beliefs, values, and principles. By breaking laws, criminals help us reinforce social norms by providing the opportunity to affirm what is believed to be right. By operating outside the bounds of acceptable behavior, the criminal serves as a useful figure to understand what is at stake in the culture, what the central issues of that culture might be, and what the fears and anxieties are. Criminality serves as a lens through which we can read ourselves and how the criminal operates as a cultural figure signifies the things we are negotiating in our lives and in our communities. Brauer focuses on two main concepts, central to the very concept of Modernism, to explore criminality: contingency, the idea that the individual might not be in control of their own deviance, and agency, the notion that the criminal makes a conscious choice to use crime as a means of economic success. The figure of the criminal is a powerful one and is key to exploring American twentieth-century culture. This book would be of interest to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, history, and many others.

The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America

Author: Wilbur R. Miller

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2012-07-20

Total Pages: 4161

ISBN-13: 1483305937

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Several encyclopedias overview the contemporary system of criminal justice in America, but full understanding of current social problems and contemporary strategies to deal with them can come only with clear appreciation of the historical underpinnings of those problems. Thus, this five-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present. It covers the whole of the criminal justice system, from crimes, law enforcement and policing, to courts, corrections and human services. Among other things, this encyclopedia: explicates philosophical foundations underpinning our system of justice; charts changing patterns in criminal activity and subsequent effects on legal responses; identifies major periods in the development of our system of criminal justice; and explores in the first four volumes - supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents - evolving debates and conflicts on how best to address issues of crime and punishment. Its signed entries in the first four volumes--supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents--provide the historical context for students to better understand contemporary criminological debates and the contemporary shape of the U.S. system of law and justice.

Violence in America
Violence in America

Author: Ted Robert Gurr

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1989-06

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780803932289

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Violence in America: The History of Crime presents a wealth of new research on the long-term dynamics of murder and other crimes of violence. The contributors clearly identify and diagnose the painful circumstances of recurring epidemics of violent crime that have swept the American society over the past 150 years. Among the possible causes discussed are waves of immigration, the social dislocations of war, and growing concentrations of urban poverty. In addition, this engaging volume offers an evaluation of the traits of political assassins and an assessment of the pros and cons of gun control--and whether or not it will help to reduce crimes of violence. Surprisingly, the contributors to this compelling volume present the idea that the past and present dynamics of violent crime, projected into the future, suggest grounds for cautious optimism. This outlook is based on recent increases in effective criminal justice policies and the widespread efforts to remedy the social disintegration that breeds violent crime. Students and professionals in history, criminology, victimology, political science, and other related fields will find this volume to be essential reading. (For both volumes) "This is a major, timely, and immensely welcome addition to the literature on violence in American society. With fresh scholarship and new insights, it updates a classic study of violence first published in 1969. It would make a valuable addition to courses on American social history as well as classes specifically addressing violence and crime in this society." --John J. Broesamle, California State University, Northridge

The Roots of Violent Crime in America
The Roots of Violent Crime in America

Author: Barry Latzer

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 0807174831

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The Roots of Violent Crime in America is criminologist Barry Latzer’s comprehensive analysis of crimes of violence—including murder, assault, and rape—in the United States from the 1880s through the 1930s. Combining the theoretical perspectives and methodological rigor of criminology with a synthesis of historical scholarship as well as original research and analysis, Latzer challenges conventional thinking about violent crime of this era. While scholars have traditionally cast American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as dreadful places, Latzer suggests that despite overcrowding and poverty, U.S. cities enjoyed low rates of violent crime, especially when compared to rural areas. The rural South and the thinly populated West both suffered much higher levels of brutal crime than the metropolises of the East and Midwest. Latzer deemphasizes racism and bigotry as causes of violence during this period, noting that while many social groups confronted significant levels of discrimination and abuse, only some engaged in high levels of violent crime. Cultural predispositions and subcultures of violence, he posits, led some groups to participate more frequently in violent activity than others. He also argues that the prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s did not drive up rates of violent crime. Though the bootlegger wars contributed considerably to the murder rate in some of America’s largest municipalities, Prohibition also eliminated saloons, which served as hubs of vice, corruption, and lawlessness. The Roots of Violent Crime in America stands as a sweeping reevaluation of the causes of crimes of violence in the United States between the Gilded Age and World War II, compelling readers to rethink enduring assumptions on this contentious topic.

The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America
The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America

Author: Barry Latzer

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781594039294

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"Starting in the late 1960s, the United States suffered the biggest rise in violent crime in its history. Aside from the movement for black civil rights, it is difficult to think of a phenomenon that had a more profound effect on American life in the last third of the 20th century. Fear of murder, rape, robbery and assault influenced decisions on where to live and where to school one's children, how to commute to work and where to spend one's leisure time. In some locales, people dreaded leaving their homes at any time, day or night, and many Americans spent part of each day literally looking over their shoulders. [This books is a] synthesis of criminology and social history that...explains how and why violent crime exploded across the United States in the late 60s--and what ultimately drove it down decades later. It is the first book of its kind to analyze criminal violence in the U.S. from World War II to the 21st century. It examines crime in the context of all of the major social trends since the World War, including the postwar economic boom and suburbanization, the Baby Boom and the turmoil of the 60s, the urbanization of minorities, the advent of crack cocaine, the hardening of the criminal justice system and current efforts to contract it."--

The Lineaments of Wrath
The Lineaments of Wrath

Author: James W. Clarke

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-16

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 1351303589

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Violence has marked relations between blacks and whites in America for nearly four hundred years. In The Lineaments of Wrath, James W. Clarke draws upon behavioral science theory and primary historical evidence to examine and explain its causes and enduring consequences. Beginning with slavery and concluding with the present, Clarke describes how the combined effects of state-sanctioned mob violence and the discriminatory administration of "race-blind" criminal and contract labor laws terrorized and immobilized the black population in the post-emancipation South. In this fashion an agricultural system, based on debt peonage and convict labor, quickly replaced slavery and remained the back-bone of the region's economy well into the twentieth century. Quoting the actual words of victims and witnesses from former slaves to "gangsta" rappers Clarke documents the erosion of black confidence in American criminal justice. In so doing, he also traces the evolution, across many generations, of a black subculture of violence, in which disputes are settled personally, and without recourse to the legal system. That subculture, the author concludes, accounts for historically high rates of black-on-black violence which now threatens to destroy the black inner city from within. The Lineaments of Wrath puts America's race issues into a completely original historical perspective. Those in the fields of political science, sociology, history, psychology, public policy, race relations, and law will find Clarke's work of profound importance.