by Graeme Newman (Editor), Charles Mercier (Author)

Why do people commit crime? When does mental illness diminish responsibility? Should punishment always follow wrongdoing?

More than a century before modern debates about criminal responsibility, forensic psychiatry, and the treatment of mentally ill offenders, the distinguished British physician Charles Mercier confronted these enduring questions with remarkable clarity and originality.

In Crime, Insanity and Affliction, Mercier explores the complex relationship between criminal behaviour, mental disorder, and human suffering. Rejecting simplistic explanations, he argues that crime cannot be understood apart from the biological, psychological, and social forces that shape human conduct. His examination ranges from drunkenness, epilepsy, intellectual disability, and mental illness to questions of moral responsibility, punishment, and the proper role of the criminal law.

Although written in the early twentieth century, many of Mercier's observations anticipate debates that continue today. His discussion of diminished responsibility, the treatment of mentally ill offenders, addiction, and the limits of punishment remains surprisingly relevant in an era still struggling to balance justice, compassion, and public safety.

This new Read-Me edition presents Mercier's influential work with a new editorial introduction that places his ideas within the development of modern criminology, forensic psychiatry, and criminal justice. It also examines where Mercier's conclusions have been confirmed, where later research has challenged them, and why his work continues to deserve the attention of students, scholars, and general readers alike.

More than a historical curiosity, Crime, Insanity and Affliction is a thoughtful exploration of one of society's oldest and most difficult questions: how should we judge those whose minds, circumstances, or afflictions place them beyond the ordinary boundaries of responsibility?

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 182p.

A Forgotten Classic of Criminological Thought—Reintroduced for the Twenty-First Century

Originally published in 1918 and now carefully edited and introduced by Graeme R. Newman, The Criminology of Crime and Criminals: Medical, Biological and Psychological restores Charles Mercier’s groundbreaking exploration of crime, punishment, criminal behavior, and social order.

Long before modern criminology embraced concepts such as situational crime prevention, environmental opportunity, offender decision-making, and restorative justice, Mercier argued that crime cannot be explained by biology, psychology, or environment alone. Instead, criminal behavior emerges from the interaction between human nature and circumstance, between personal disposition and criminal opportunity.

Rejecting the popular theories of his day, Mercier challenges the notion of the “born criminal” and dismisses simplistic environmental explanations of lawbreaking. His provocative and highly original analysis examines:

• The psychological foundations of criminal conduct

• The roles of instinct, reason, desire, self-control, and will

• How opportunity and temptation shape criminal action

• The classification of crimes and criminals

• The relationship between crime, morality, and society

• The purposes of punishment: deterrence, retaliation, reform, and reparation

• The prevention, detection, and punishment of crime

Mercier’s central insight—that criminals are not a separate species but ordinary human beings responding differently to circumstances—remains strikingly relevant more than a century later.

Graeme R. Newman’s contemporary introduction places Mercier within the broader history of criminological thought and connects his ideas to modern developments in crime prevention and criminal justice. Together, Mercier and Newman illuminate enduring questions that continue to shape public policy and scholarly debate:

Why do people commit crimes? How should society respond? Is prevention more effective than punishment?

Part intellectual history, part criminological theory, and part social philosophy, this edition offers a fascinating window into the origins of modern criminology and the continuing struggle to understand crime and criminals.

Essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, psychology, legal history, and anyone interested in the causes of crime and the future of punishment.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 195p.

The book that criminology forgot — and urgently needs to remember.
Arthur M<ercier (Author). Graeme Newman (Editor and Introduction).

First published in 1918 by the University of London Press, Charles Arthur Mercier's Conduct and Its Disorders, Biologically Considered, published by Macmillan in 1911 is one of the most rigorous, most readable, and most unjustly neglected works in the history of criminological thought. Now reissued as The Biology of Conduct Disorders, with a major critical introduction by Graeme R. Newman, it arrives at a moment when the questions it raises — about criminal intent, biological disposition, the limits of punishment, and the poverty of criminological theory — are more pressing than ever.
Mercier was no armchair theorist. As medical officer of lunatic asylums, consulting physician at criminal trials, and the only systematic student of conduct as a science, he brought to the study of crime a combination of clinical experience and biological rigour that the field had not seen before and has rarely matched since. His target was the prevailing chaos of criminological thought — above all the Continental school of Lombroso, which he dismantled with surgical precision — and his method was the application of praxiology, his own science of conduct, to the specific problem of criminal action.

What Mercier argued — and why it still matters:

• Every criminal act is the product of two factors: an internal factor (the biological constitution of the offender) and an external factor (circumstance and opportunity). Ignoring either produces not criminology but ideology.

• The turpitude of the criminal and the gravity of the crime are entirely separate questions — and confusing them has produced centuries of unjust punishment.

• Punishment should be calibrated to intention, not outcome: the man who intends murder and fails is more culpable than the man who kills by accident, whatever the body count.

• Statistical criminology — mass data gathered from convicted prisoners — cannot produce a science of crime. Only the study of individual criminal action, grounded in biology, psychology, and jurisprudence together, can do that.

• Certain acts currently outside the law (stealing the use of a thing; deliberate breach of contract) deserve criminal status; certain acts currently criminalised do not.

This new edition includes a critical introduction by Graeme R. Newman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, and one of the most provocative and original voices in the study of crime, deviance, and punishment. Author of Comparative Deviance: Perception and Law in Six Cultures, The Punishment Response, Just and Painful: A Case for the Corporal Punishment of Criminals, and Civilization and Barbarism: Punishing Criminals in the Twenty-First Century — and, as Colin Heston, of darkly satirical fiction including The Tommie Felon Show, Miscarriages, and Holy Water — Newman brings a unique authority to this text. Writing with the unflinching directness that earned him national television appearances and a reputation as the most uncomfortable conscience in American criminology, he traces the connections between Mercier's 1918 arguments and the debates that have defined — and divided — the field ever since.
"With the exception of logic, there is no subject on which so much nonsense has been written as this of criminality and the criminal." — Charles Arthur Mercier, 1918
Essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, the history of psychiatry, legal theory, and the philosophy of punishment — and for anyone who has ever wondered why, after two centuries of criminal science, we understand so little about why people commit crimes and what we should do about it.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 208p.

By Ben Senator, Michelle Priest, Beau Kilmer

Nearly one in four U.S. adults think psilocybin “magic” mushrooms should be legal, according to a new RAND study. This level of support mirrors attitudes toward cannabis in the mid‑1990s—just before states began allowing medical use.

The study, which draws on data from the 2025 RAND Psychedelics Survey, finds that public attitudes vary greatly depending on the substance: While 23 percent of respondents support legal use of psilocybin mushrooms, only about 10 percent said the same about LSD and MDMA.

Among those who support making psilocybin use legal, 56 percent favor its use for treating mental or physical health conditions, but just 42 percent believe adults should be free to use it for any reason. And among those opposed to legalizing psilocybin, 62 percent believe it should be illegal for any reason.

The survey also asked about how legal psilocybin should be obtained: 49 percent of respondents favor supervised use in a medical facility, 28 percent support dispensary sales, and 23 percent endorse allowing adults to grow or forage for personal use.

These findings highlight the complexity of Americans' views on psychedelics, particularly psilocybin. And although it remains to be seen whether public opinion—and public policy—on psilocybin will follow a similar path as cannabis, such insights can help inform policy discussions.

By : Lienke Hutten, Lars Merkus, Joeri Vig

To effectively counter organised crime and high-risk criminal networks, criminal law alone often
falls short. Across the European Union, the administrative approach is increasingly recognised as
a crucial strategy to disrupt the infiltration of criminal networks in the legal economy. This study
maps both the legislative framework and practical initiatives that support the administrative approach
on organised crime drawing on contributions from six member states: Sweden, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria, and Italy. This study maps both the legislative framework and
practical initiatives that support administrative interventions. A structured template was used to
collect country-specific information on relevant laws, the policy framework, and national and local
initiatives. In addition, EU-level strategies and directives were reviewed to assess the broader
policy context and identify shared priorities.

Findings reveal considerable diversity in the design of the legislative frameworks and initiatives.
Countries such as Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands have developed robust and proactive
frameworks, blending preventive and repressive instruments with administrative possibilities
on the local level. Others, like Sweden, demonstrate how general administrative laws can be
creatively adapted to serve crime prevention goals. Spain and Bulgaria show more centrally arranged
administrative bodies and sector-driven efforts. These differences make it apparent that
there is no one-size-fits-all model for the administrative approach. Gaining insight into the diverse
legal and institutional frameworks across countries enables mutual learning and the identification
of promising initiatives for all member states.

Legislation and initiatives at the European level such as AML directives, procurement rules and
asset recovery reforms can serve as important enablers, though their impact heavily depends
on coordinated implementation. Overall, the administrative approach is gaining attention as an
essential component of internal security, offering flexible and preventive tools with local possibilities
to reduce the infiltration and influence of high-risk criminal networks.

By Ali Malik

The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events in the UK, such as storms, flooding, heatwaves, and severe cold spells, recognised as consequences of the climate crisis, have placed significant operational and organisational pressures on police, emergency responders and local authorities. This research adopts an in-depth qualitative case study design and a temporal analogues approach, which draws on past experiences and events to develop an understanding of the present and inform future learning. Doing this provides insights into the role of the police and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) in preparing for and responding to extreme weather eventsThe findings highlight that LRFs are essential for locally led emergency planning. However, due to resource constraints, these partnerships often rely on relational capital, negotiated agreement and goodwill. Decisive leadership, situational awareness, experience from past events and routine work were also described as key factors for effective emergency response. LRFs cannot mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis without national support. Local preparedness depends on safe homes, green spaces, reliable transport networks and affordable clean energy. The research also points to the need for greater professional, analytical, and specialist support for LRFs, along with targeted funding to resource localised efforts for preparedness, recovery, and long-term climate adaptation.

By Devon W. Carbado 

This Article employs the Law Review’s Discourse symposium on my book, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment, as a starting point to foreground and elaborate on an idea that I reference in that text: police power abolition. The Article begins by describing the central insight that motivates Unreasonable—namely, that simply limiting the frequency with which the police interact with Black people could save Black lives. If the police have fewer opportunities to stop and question Black people, they have fewer opportunities to kill us. That observation led me to think about the range of structural forces that facilitate contact between Black people and the police. Fourth Amendment law is one such force. From pedestrian checks, to traffic stops, to stops and frisks, to searches and seizures at the border, Fourth Amendment law permits the police to interact with and enact violence against Black people on the thinnest, most unreasonable of suspicions. The Article does not reprise precisely how Fourth Amendment law performs that racially subordinating work. For that, you will have to read Unreasonable and the broader body of work on which the book is based. Instead, the Article summarizes the core arguments Unreasonable propounds, links them to what I call “police power abolition,” and explains how police power abolition can provide an entry into and render more legible broader discourses about abolition. Throughout the Article, I draw on and react to the generous and generative review essays that participants in this symposium have written about the book. In the context of doing so, I explain why, notwithstanding the limitations of law as space for antiracist interventions, the legal terrain should remain a critical (though not the only or most important) site for advancing

racial justice.

UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper Forthcoming

69 Pages Posted: 20 Nov 2025

By William Downs

Police disciplinary proceedings are brought in cases where it is agreed, following an investigation, that a police officer has a case to answer for: • misconduct (meaning a breach of the standards of professional behaviour that justifies disciplinary action of at least written), or • gross misconduct (meaning a breach of the standards of professional behaviour that is so serious to justify dismissal) A decision on whether there is a case to answer is based on whether there is sufficient evidence upon which a misconduct panel “could make a finding on the balance of probabilities” that an officer’s behaviour amounted to misconduct or gross misconduct. The Commons Library briefings Police standards: Complaints and Police Standards: Conduct explain in more detail how allegations of police wrongdoing are investigated.

London: UK Parliament. House of commons Library.. 2025. 19p.