By Simon Egbert, Matthias Leese

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices.

The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more
efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work.

Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing

By Gregory Cote

It is widely accepted that modern policing first came into existence with a bill passed in 1829, establishing the Metropolitan London Police under British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel. It is Peel after all, who has been labeled the founder of modern policing, an English institution that inspired North American police. I argue that it was Jeremy Bentham who developed an early model of modern policing and whose work on applying his utilitarian philosophy to institutional reform directly influenced Peel’s innovation. I intend to show how Bentham and reformer Patrick Colquhoun established the first modern police department when they
collaborated in drafting the Thames River Police Bill adopted by Parliament in 1800, almost thirty years before Peel’s legislation. It is the Thames River Police created by Bentham and Colquhoun that is the world’s oldest, not the Metropolitan London Police introduced by Peel. John Stuart Mill once wrote that Bentham was a great subversive. And as the great subversive whose years of work on improving police was often done in secret and whose efforts were largely ignored, it is Bentham not Peel, who should be considered the single most important figure in the development of modern policing.

Edited by Scott Jacques and Philip Schofield

Jeremy Bentham’s ideas on punishment are famous. Every criminology student learns about Bentham, and every criminologist contends with him, as advocate or opponent. This discourse concerns his ideas about punishment, namely with respect to legislation and the panopticon. Yet, scholars and students are generally ignorant of Bentham’s ideas on police. Hitherto, these ideas have been largely unknowable. Now, thanks to UCL’s Bentham Project, these ideas are public. Jeremy Bentham on Police celebrates this achievement by exploring the story of Bentham’s writings on police and considering their relevance to the past, present and future of criminology. After Scott Jacques introduces the book, the Director of the Bentham Project, Philip Schofield, describes and explains how it works. Then Michael Quinn, who brought together Bentham’s writings on police, delves into the personal and socio-historical background in which they were created. An extract follows, representing the most (criminologically-)relevant passages from Bentham’s police writings. Finally, a rich variety of scholars offer their thoughts on what those writings mean for criminology. These contributions come from Anthony A. Braga, Ronald Clarke, David J. Cox, Stephen Douglas, Stephen Engelmann, G. Geltner, Joel F. Harrington, Jonathan Jacobs, Paul Knepper, Gloria Laycock, Gary T. Marx, Daniel S. Nagin, Graeme R. Newman, Pat O’Malley, Eric L. Piza, Kim Rossmo, Lucia Summers and Dean Wilson.

By Helena Machado and Rafaela Granja

Genetic Surveillance and Crime Control presents a new empirical and conceptual framework for understanding trends of genetic surveillance in different countries in Europe and in other jurisdictions around the world. The use of DNA or genome for state-level surveillance for crime governance is becoming the norm in democratic societies. In the post-DNA, contemporary modes of criminal identification are gradually changing through the increasing expansion of transnational sharing of DNA data, along with the development of highly controversial genetic technologies that pose acute challenges to privacy and generate fears of discrimination, racism and stigmatization. Some questions that guide this book are: How is genetic surveillance in the governance of crime intertwined with society, ethics, culture, and politics? What are the views and expectations of diverse stakeholders –scientists, police agencies, and non-governmental organizations? How can social sciences research about genetic surveillance accommodate socio-cultural and historical differences, and be sensitive to specificities of post-authoritarian societies in Europe?　 Taking an interdisciplinary approach focused on challenges to genetic privacy, human rights and citizenship in contemporary societies , this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social studies of science and technology, sociology, criminology, law and policing, international relations and forensic sciences.

By Michael Sanders, Kate Bancroftb, Susannah Humea, Oliver Chetwyndc and Paul Quintonca

We aim to test the impact of a new national curriculum for public and personal safety training (PPST) developed by the College ofPolicing, which aims to reduce the use of force by police. We con-duct a large-scale Stepped Wedge Pragmatic Controlled Trial with a single police force and 1843 participating police officers.Officers were assigned to be trained during a particular week of the year. We find statistically significant reductions in the use of force by police officers as a result of the training. These effects are a reduction of between 8.0% and 10.9% in the propensity to use force in a given week compared to the counterfactual. The Effect is accompanied by a significant reduction in the likelihood of injury to civilians, and no rise in the risk of harm to officers.We conclude that the PPST curriculum appears effective at reduc-ing use of force by police in a large scale, robust trial

By American Civil Liberties Union

This ACLU research report, Agents of Chaos and Cruelty, documents widespread civil rights violations carried out by immigration agents during the first year of President Trump’s second term. The report examines immigration enforcement incidents in eight states – representing a cross-section of the country and reflecting varying degrees of federal law enforcement presence and personnel surges – and found that over 400 of the more than 1,200 immigration enforcement incidents examined involved misconduct by immigration agents. The report ends with detailed recommendations urging policymakers to call for transformative change to our immigration system, in recognition that it is broken and dangerous to human rights.

BY JASON JOHNSON AND SEAN KENNEDY

LELDF RESEARCH BRIEF | AUGUST 2023

Consent decrees are a blunt instrument for enacting police reform. The approach has proven ill-suited at enacting effective change in law enforcement agencies. These coercive reforms face institutional resistance from departments and their personnel and fall victim to mission creep from the unaccountable lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats who oversee the design and later the implementation of the reforms. The situation worsened significantly as the Obama Administration increased the use of consent decrees, a policy resumed under the Biden Department of Justice. Often built on limited and flimsy evidence, the Justice Department’s allegations against police agencies put local jurisdictions in a near impossible position to contest civil rights violations findings. Additionally, the Justice Department frequently injects its policy preferences into the required remedies that do not reflect urgent or even necessary changes, but policy agenda of the Civil Rights Division and the White House. Subject jurisdictions are often compelled to accept settlements with unachievable compliance goals and required to spend vast sums to remedy problems outside the scope of the statutory requirements.

Consent decrees are not a quick, easy, or inexpensive fix. And this type of settlement can have consequences – higher crime, lower police morale, ballooning costs, drifting timelines, and dissatisfied residents. In many cases, consent decrees prove to be damaging boondoggles rather than bolstering effective and constitutional policing. Federal intervention for some agencies may still be necessary but less onerous and more effective tools exist for enacting necessary reforms. Those alternatives should be preferred where possible. The Justice Department’s interventions in law enforcement agencies should be precise in their
methods and practicable in their goals.

By Riya Parashar

The shared border between Mexico and the United States plays a significant role in facilitating drug production, trafficking, and consumption. Most illicit drugs destined for the United States are either produced
in Mexico or transit through it, making the region a critical hub in the global drug trade. This strategic position
has long attracted various criminal organizations that exploit the border's extensive and often difficult-to monitor terrain to transport narcotics. In recent years, the growing involvement of organized
criminal groups in drug trafficking has emerged as one of the most pressing public concerns along the Mexico–U.S. border.

These groups have become increasingly sophisticated, employing advanced smuggling techniques and
corrupting officials to maintain their operations. While the majority of drug-related violence remains concentrated within Mexico, it has raised serious concerns among U.S. policymakers about the potential
“spillover” of violence into American border communities, threatening regional stability and public safety. This research aims to analyze drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States and to examine its impact on Mexican society. The paper begins with an overview of the Mexico–U.S. border, highlighting its geographical and political significance as a major point of transit and control. It then traces the historical development of drug trafficking in Mexico, exploring how shifts in policy, enforcement, and criminal networks have shaped the current landscape.

Following this, the study provides an examination of the current dynamics of the drug trade, including major sources, trafficking routes, and the roles of different cartels. The analysis extends to the evolving landscape of violence and organized crime in Mexico, emphasizing the social and human costs borne by Mexican citizens, such as displacement, insecurity, and economic disruption. In addition, the research explores governmental initiatives aimed at curbing drug trafficking, assessing their effectiveness and limitations amid complex political and social challenges. Finally, it examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on drug trafficking networks, production, and distribution in Mexico, considering how global disruptions have contributed to a deeper understanding of the politics of drug trafficking in Mexico and its broader implications for regional security and bilateral relations. altered trafficking patterns and law enforcement responses. By addressing these dimensions, the paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the politics of drug trafficking in Mexico and its broader implications for regional security and bilateral relations.

By Greg Midgette and Meredith L. Gore

Illegal wildlife markets comprise a complex global economy generating criminal profits while harming biodiversity and livelihoods. The negative externalities from biodiversity loss, ecosystem destabilization, and zoonotic disease risk may be orders of magnitude larger than the multibillion dollar annual total market value. Despite decades of international policy attention, fundamental economic characteristics of these markets remain poorly understood. We suggest distinguishing three categories of illegally traded wildlife products
based on product durability and intended use: luxury durable goods, nondurable products processed to be food or medicine, and live or perishable exotic pets and plants. Through case studies of elephant ivory, pangolin scales, and succulent plants, we characterize market organization, pricing structures, supply network architecture, and regulatory vulnerabilities across product types. Our analysis suggests illegal wildlife markets exhibit economic characteristics distinguishing them from other illegal markets, including biological production constraints creating absolute supply limits, opportunistic supply networks exploiting existing legal trade infrastructure, and extreme markup structures leaving harvesters with a fraction of final
retail value. We conclude by proposing the concept of Accelerating Demand for Novel or eXclusive Assets, or AD NOXA, which describes how scarcity may paradoxically increase rather than decrease the appeal of
consuming certain wildlife markets. This paradox creates feedback loops that may drive species toward extinction, despite—or because of—protective regulations and fundamentally limits the effectiveness
of supply-side interventions. Policy responses may be more effective when they integrate supply-side enforcement with demand reduction strategies tailored to the distinct characteristics of illegal wildlife markets.

By Samantha Weston, Clare Griffiths and Anne-Marie Day 

Louise Casey’s review revealed a series of concerns about London Metropolitan Police concluding that institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia pervades across the whole organisation. Acknowledging that police legitimacy is under threat, some have called for the police to be defunded. Drawing on data collected via a survey and focus groups with children and young people from traditionally unheard minoritised groups attending a community-based programme, this article reveals low levels of satisfaction with and trust of the police among this group. In contrast, activities based and created within young people’s own communities provided opportunities to be safe, protected and among people they trusted. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, we suggest that the call to ‘defund the police’ may not be the radical alternative that many would have us believe and instead call to ‘refund civil society’ by advocating for a ‘community first’ approach to resolve complex social problems.

By Jeremy M. Wilson and Clifford A. Grammich

This publication illustrates elements of the police staffing challenge and explores how they form a broader ecosystem that agencies should consider when assessing staffing issues, contemplating goals and strategies, and implementing solutions. It presents a six-step approach for police workforce planning and managing workload demand and addresses planning for three common staffing scenarios.

By Rashad James

For community advocates, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) interested in exploring alternatives, this document outlines how federal immigration authorities can—and cannot—compel state and local LEAs to cooperate. It also proposes four strategies that state and local jurisdictions can adopt to resist the growing push for a uniform law enforcement system under executive authority. Specifically, jurisdictions can 1) name the actions currently underway; 2) claim their moral vision through proactive legislation; 3) restrain the use of local funding for immigration enforcement; and 4) reframe these initiatives as measures that strengthen public safety. Community members and elected leaders are encouraged to share this document as a pathway toward a more just and equitable future. 

By Robin S. Engel, Nicholas Corsaro, Gabrielle T. Isaza, Hannah D. McManus, University of Cincinnati

In recent months, law enforcement officers have been faced with an unprecedented set of circumstances, navigating major social unrest in communities amid a pandemic and economic crisis. Acknowledging the dangers to both the community and officers, efforts have intensified to identify “solutions” to reduce the frequency and severity of violent encounters between police and the public. Calls for the adoption of “de-escalation” policies and training – widely endorsed by policy makers, policing experts, and the public – have been especially strong, and recent statistics on law enforcement practices suggest the field has responded (Engel et al., 2020b). For example, in a 2019 national survey of 155 large police departments in the United States, nearly all responding agencies indicated they offered some form of de-escalation training to officers in their agency (CBS, 2019). Although the implementation of de-escalation training is often encouraged, the effects of this training on police officers and their interactions with the public has not been systematically evaluated (Engel et al., 2020a). For this reason, the impact of de-escalation training on the frequency and severity of officers’ use of force and the subsequent injuries to citizens and officers is not well understood. It was within this context that the Louisville (KY) Metro Police Department (LMPD) stepped forward to both deliver and participate in the evaluation of a deescalation training. Specifically, the LMPD introduced the Police Executive Research Forum’s (PERF) Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) training program to instruct officers in de-escalation tactics and critical thinking skills for the management of potentially volatile police-citizen encounters. Seeking to understand the effectiveness of this training, the LMPD partnered with the International Association of Chiefs of Police/University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy (IACP/UC Center) to conduct an independent, external evaluation of the effects of the ICAT training on their agency. This report documents the methodology and findings of the evaluation of ICAT training implemented within the LMPD. This study represents one of the first large-scale, methodologically rigorous evaluations of a well-known de-escalation training for police. Specifically, this study uses a multi-method approach, relying upon two distinct survey designs (i.e., repeated measure survey design, cross-sectional survey design) to assess the impact of training on the perceptions and self-reported experiences of officers and first-line supervisors, and a stepped-wedge randomized control trial design to examine training effects on officers’ behaviors and changes in the outcomes of police-citizen encounters. This seminal study is the first randomized control trial to demonstrate a significant reduction in officer use of force following de-escalation training implementation.

By Corinne Worthington, et al.

In this report, S.T.O.P. details the NYPD Domain Awareness System’s unparalleled invasion of New Yorkers’ privacy rights. Formed through a public-private partnership with Microsoft, the DAS is an opaque surveillance command center that collects data from tens of thousands of camera feeds, license plate readers, radiological sensors, and other spyware for real-time, warrantless surveillance of New Yorkers across the city. The report uses the NYPD’s own public statements to detail the scope of surveillance systems that monitor New Yorkers every day.

Key Findings Include:

• The New York City Police Department’s Domain Awareness System (“DAS”) links citywide camera networks, license plate readers, drone and helicopter feeds, ShotSpotter gunshot alerts, 911 and 311 call records, and countless police records, law enforcement databases, and data streams into a single surveillance network.

•  Part sensor network, part search engine, the DAS is the backbone of the NYPD’s surveillance program. Every NYPD officer has unfettered access to DAS data on their smartphone, allowing them to use and misuse this information for nearly any purpose.

• DAS surveillance drives discriminatory stops and arrests of BIPOC and Muslim New Yorkers by giving officers access to illegal and prejudicial information.

•  The NYPD has expanded the DAS rapidly without oversight and ignored court-mandated reforms.

By The American Immigration Council

Across several presidential administrations, the federal government has used American businesses to enforce immigration law through worksite enforcement. Worksite-specific immigration enforcement encompasses a wide variety of activities, including criminal investigations, business audits, and administrative arrests.1 This includes high-profile operations primarily conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where the agency targets one or more businesses to both investigate employers and to arrest employees as a means to deter unauthorized employment. While there is not a common term used for this tactic, it is often referred to as worksite or workplace immigration “enforcement action” or “raid.”2 This factsheet provides a brief history of worksite raids, discusses the agencies involved and the legal authorities relied upon by these agencies to conduct them, reviews legal challenges and issues related to worksite raids, and briefly summarizes the economic and humanitarian consequences of these raids.

By The Council of State Governments Justice Center

Homelessness is a growing crisis in America, increasing by 12% between 2022 and 2023 alone. While there are a range of ideas about how to address this issue, in many places across the country, law enforcement officers are still typically the default first responders to these kinds of community concerns. This publication details how communities can strategically plan for and assess their law enforcement homelessness response efforts, using a shared vision, a logic model, and regular assessments to determine if the response is achieving its intended goals. It also discusses the importance of expanding the knowledge base of law enforcement practices and strategies to establish a set of national standards for effective and successful homelessness responses.

by Graeme R. Newman with the assistance of Claude.

Can you stop crime before it starts, without fully knowing what causes it? A reader's guide to the 1936 symposium that gathered twenty-four programs trying to find out.

Preventing Crime: A Symposium, edited by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, brought together the directors of coordinated community councils, school bureaus, police prevention units, residential homes, child guidance clinics, a parent school, and boys' clubs, and asked each the same questions: what evidence shows the need for your program, how does it work, and how do you know whether it succeeds? The editors were candid from the start. Their title, they admitted in the preface, was optimistic, and a more accurate one would have been "Promising Efforts to Prevent Delinquency and Criminality." Only time and real evaluation, they wrote, could say whether these programs actually prevented anything.

The book is a portrait of what serious people believed about crime prevention in the depths of the Depression, and a case study in the gap between good intentions and good evidence. This Reader's Guide makes it accessible without replacing it. It explains what each program did, sets out the twelve principles the Gluecks drew from the contributions, and shows exactly what counted as proof of success in 1936, and how little of it would count today.

INSIDE THIS GUIDE

• A reading plan and a chapter-by-chapter map of the original, with all twenty-five contributors

• The Gluecks' opening argument: can crime be prevented without knowing its causes?

• Twelve principles distilled from the programs, from starting early to using trained personnel

• Community councils, school programs, police prevention bureaus, residential homes, clinics, and boys' clubs, program by program

• A close look at "the audit problem": what each contributor offered as evidence, and what it actually showed

• A worked example that tests one program's before-and-after numbers against six hard questions

• What has changed since 1936, including the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study's sobering results and decades of research on what works, what doesn't, and what's promising

• Five common misreadings, a primer of evaluation terms, a glossary, an annotated reading list, an FAQ, 26 discussion questions and classroom activities

WHO IT'S FOR: Students of criminology, social work, education, public policy and program evaluation; practitioners designing youth programs; teachers and reading groups; and general readers curious about where crime prevention came from and why proving it works is so hard.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an independent guide, not an abridgment or edition of the original symposium. It does not reproduce the original's text and is not endorsed by the editors', or contributors', heirs. It is meant to be read alongside the original, which is in the public domain in the United States.

Written by Graeme R. Newman with the assistance of Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. The AI-generated content is disclosed in accordance with Read-Me.Org policy.

Download the original book here.

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bby Bernard Hollander (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

Why do people do what they know is wrong—and how much responsibility should they bear for their actions?

First published in 1922, Bernard Hollander’s The Psychology of Misconduct, Vice, and Crime: A Study of Conduct, Responsibility, and Moral Failing is a fascinating early attempt to understand wrongdoing through psychology rather than through moral condemnation alone. Drawing on twenty-five years of medical practice with patients suffering from nervous and mental disorders, Hollander examines the impulses, habits, emotions, circumstances, and failures of self-control that can lead ordinary people toward destructive or criminal behavior.

Moving across the emerging fields of psychology, psychiatry, and criminology, Hollander asks questions that remain strikingly familiar today. How do heredity and environment shape conduct? Why can one person resist temptation while another cannot? What roles do opportunity, habit, intoxication, anger, fear, acquisitiveness, and sexual desire play in misconduct? And at what point should psychological impairment affect our judgment of moral and legal responsibility?

Across twelve wide-ranging chapters, Hollander investigates the psychological foundations and causes of misconduct before turning to alcohol and drug habits, aggression and violence, suspicion and deceit, theft and crimes for gain, fear of consequences, sexual conduct, egotism and domination, moral weakness, responsibility, and treatment.

Of particular interest to readers of criminology is Hollander’s rejection of simplistic explanations based entirely upon free will. He sees behavior as emerging from the interaction of predisposition, upbringing, social environment, opportunity, competing motives, and the individual’s capacity for inhibition and self-control. His treatment of professional offenders also distinguishes calculated criminality from impulsive or psychologically troubled misconduct—an early recognition that there is no single psychological type called “the criminal.”

Hollander’s science is unmistakably that of his era. Some of his terminology, assumptions about heredity and mental deficiency, views of sexuality, and continuing interest in phrenology have long since been rejected or superseded. Yet this is precisely what makes the book valuable as a historical document: it captures a formative period when psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and criminology were struggling to replace simple categories of vice and wickedness with explanations based on individual differences and the causes of human behavior.

At the same time, Hollander frequently argues against indiscriminate punishment. He considers upbringing, poverty, physical and mental condition, temptation, and circumstance; questions whether fear and punishment genuinely reform offenders; and advocates individualized treatment rather than a single remedy for every form of misconduct.

This 2026 Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint, designed and edited with a new introduction by Graeme R. Newman, preserves Hollander’s historical arguments and period terminology while correcting obvious OCR and typographical defects, regularizing punctuation, and converting spelling to contemporary American English.

More than a century after its first appearance, The Psychology of Misconduct, Vice, and Crime offers historians, criminologists, psychologists, criminal-justice students, and general readers a provocative window into the origins of modern thinking about crime, deviance, self-control, treatment, and human responsibility.

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by Col. V. M. Masten (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

What did Americans believe caused crime a century ago—and what did they think should be done about it?

First published in 1921, Stop Thief is a forceful and revealing examination of crime, punishment, policing, prisons, and social disorder in Progressive-Era America. Written by Col. V. M. Masten, the book captures a nation deeply concerned about rising crime and fiercely debating whether criminals should be deterred, punished, rehabilitated, or reformed.

Across eight wide-ranging chapters, Masten addresses immigration and crime, criminal influence and “crime by suggestion,” the courts and judges, prison reform, correctional regimes, professional sport and gambling, and proposals for improving probation, sentencing, and prison administration.

Masten is an uncompromising writer. He challenges the growing rehabilitative philosophy of his period and argues instead for discipline, deterrence, personal responsibility, and the vigorous enforcement of law. Yet some of his observations—particularly his concern with gambling, criminal association, and the ways people learn criminal behavior from others—anticipate debates that remain remarkably current.

At the same time, Stop Thief is very much a document of 1921 America. Its discussions of immigration, race, heredity, and social fitness contain prejudices and pseudo-scientific assumptions characteristic of parts of Progressive-Era criminological writing. This edition preserves that language rather than disguising or rewriting it, allowing the book to be read critically as an important historical source.

This new Read-Me.Org edition reproduces the complete original text, corrected for scanning and transcription errors, and includes a new introduction by criminologist Graeme R. Newman, placing Masten and his arguments within the history of American crime, criminal justice, immigration, and penal reform.

Essential reading for students and readers interested in criminology, criminal justice, American social history, policing, prisons, immigration history, and the Progressive Era, Stop Thief offers something more valuable than a modernized account of the past: it allows us to encounter the American debate over crime as it was actually being conducted more than a century ago.

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by Graeme R. Newman

In 1862, Henry Mayhew and John Binny walked into eleven of London's most notorious institutions — Newgate, Millbank, Pentonville, Brixton, the prison hulks at Woolwich, Coldbath Fields, Tothill Fields, Wandsworth, Holloway, the House of Detention at Clerkenwell, and Horsemonger Lane — and wrote down exactly what they saw: the governors, the warders, the chaplains, and the prisoners themselves, in their own words.

This edition brings that record back to life. Each chapter has been fully rewritten in modern prose while preserving every fact, every interview, and every argument the original authors made — from their case against purposeless hard labour to their unflinching accounts of the convict nursery, the condemned cell, and the boy discharged from prison with no one waiting at the gate.

A new introduction and retrospective, written for this edition, follows these institutions into the present: which ones were demolished, which became galleries, cathedrals, and post offices — and which are still open today, cited in current inspection reports for the very same overcrowding and neglect that Victorian reformers were fighting a century and a half ago.

What you'll find inside: • Eleven Victorian prisons, reconstructed room by room, cell by cell • Real testimony from governors, chaplains, and prisoners — first offenders and lifelong professionals alike • A frank, often moving record of Victorian London's poorest and most desperate • A new historical retrospective connecting each institution to its fate today

Part social history, part true crime, part uncomfortable mirror — London Prisons: A Retrospective is a door-by-door tour of a city's conscience, then and now.

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