by Graeme Newman (Author), Sheldon Glueck (Author)

In 1925, a thirty-year-old Harvard instructor wrote a book that quietly reshaped how American law would treat defendants whose minds were diseased. Sheldon Glueck's Mental Disorder and the Criminal Law took direct aim at the M'Naghten "right-and-wrong" rule — the eighty-year-old English test still governing most American insanity trials — and showed, case by case and state by state, why it no longer matched what psychiatry actually knew about the human mind.

A century later, the debate Glueck defined is still very much alive. The M'Naghten rule remains the law in a majority of U.S. states. The Hinckley trial, the 1984 Insanity Defense Reform Act, and the more recent abolition of the insanity defense in several states are all chapters in an argument Glueck saw coming.

This Mini-Classic distills Glueck's dense, five-hundred-page original — footnoted case law, medical literature, and a state-by-state statutory appendix — into a single accessible guide:

• A biography of Glueck and the Harvard reform circle (Roscoe Pound, Felix Frankfurter, William Healy) that shaped his thinking

• The historical moment: M'Naghten's Case, the Leopold and Loeb trial, and the rise of modern psychiatry

• A chapter-by-chapter walk through Glueck's argument — from the "wild beast" test of 1724 through the clinical psychoses of the 1920s to his own proposed reforms

• A concluding chapter connecting Glueck's 1925 arguments to Hinckley, neurolaw, and today's insanity-defense debates

• Sixteen review questions for students and reading groups

Ideal for students of criminal law, criminology, and the history of psychiatry — and for anyone curious how the insanity defense got the shape it has today.

Direct quotation from the original is limited to brief, fair-use excerpts. Read-Me.Org discloses the use of AI assistance in preparing this edition.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.69.

By Bernard Glueck. Designed and Edited with an Introduction by Graeme R. Newman and Claude.

In 1916, psychiatrist Bernard Glueck made a case that was still radical for its time: that prisons and asylums needed trained psychiatrists on staff, not as outside consultants, but as clinicians embedded in the institution itself. Writing from the criminal department of the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C., Glueck laid out five detailed case studies that argued, one patient at a time, for a new way of understanding the criminal mind.

Inside, you'll find:

• A clinical study of psychogenic psychosis in prisoners — the theory that mental breakdown behind bars is often a meaningful reaction to arrest, trial, and confinement, not simply organic illness

• An extended case-by-case analysis of malingering, and the difficult problem of separating feigned symptoms from genuine mental illness

• A study of "litigious paranoia" — the compulsive, self-representing plaintiff who turns the courtroom into an extension of his delusion

• A landmark early psychoanalytic case history of kleptomania

Glueck went on to found the first psychiatric clinic ever established inside an American prison, at Sing Sing, and later served as a psychiatric expert in the Leopold and Loeb trial. He was also the elder brother of criminologist Sheldon Glueck — making this book a companion volume to Read-Me.Org's editions of War Criminals and Probation and Criminal Justice.

This new edition includes a substantial original introduction by Graeme R. Newman, assessing Glueck's century-old argument against the present day: what holds up in modern correctional psychiatry, what doesn't, and a hard look at whether American prisons have actually delivered on the promise Glueck was making in 1916 — including current data on the ongoing shortage of psychiatric staffing across U.S. correctional systems.

A Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint. This is a corrected and reformatted edition of the 1916 first edition (Little, Brown, and Company), prepared from a public domain source text under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. AI-assisted tools were used in the production of this edition, as disclosed on our website.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.165.

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.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.339.

by Nettly Lucas (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

Step into the hidden London of the 1920s—a city of fashionable hotels and crowded streets, respectable suburbs and shadowy back rooms, Scotland Yard detectives and professional criminals who made deception, burglary, fraud and blackmail their trade.

First published in 1926, London and Its Criminals is Netley Lucas’s remarkable journey through the criminal underworld of interwar London. Rather than simply recounting celebrated crimes, Lucas sets out to describe criminals themselves: how they lived, where they gathered, the methods they used, the slang they spoke, and the elaborate machinery of policing that pursued them.

The result is an extraordinary period portrait of crime and criminal justice.

Lucas takes his readers inside Scotland Yard and its Criminal Record Office, explaining the growing importance of fingerprints, criminal records and systematic detection. From there he ventures into a very different London—the world of professional burglars, pickpockets, confidence tricksters, jewel thieves, forgers, blackmailers and criminal gangs. He introduces his readers to figures he describes as the “Kings” and “Queens” of the Underworld: men and women who move between cheap public houses, prosperous suburban homes, exclusive restaurants and fashionable hotels while living secret criminal lives.

Among the book’s most striking chapters are Lucas’s accounts of “master criminals” and “crooked women.” His characters include expert burglars, ingenious forgers, sophisticated jewel thieves and accomplished confidence tricksters. Some are frightening, some ingenious, some surprisingly ordinary. Again and again Lucas emphasizes the unsettling proximity of the criminal world to respectable society.

Yet London and Its Criminals is more than a gallery of rogues. Lucas was writing at a moment when attitudes toward crime and punishment were beginning to change. He opens the book by discussing the emerging scientific study of crime, criminal psychology, rehabilitation and the limitations of imprisonment—questions that remain central to debates about criminal justice a century later.

Lucas is also an unusually provocative guide. He claims familiarity with criminals themselves and repeatedly describes conversations, meals and encounters with people operating on the wrong side of the law. His London is consequently not the London of official police reports alone. It is a city observed from its restaurants, streets, clubs, pubs, courtrooms and criminal meeting places.

Modern readers should approach some of Lucas’s language, assumptions and sweeping judgments as products of their time. That is also part of the historical importance of the book. It provides a vivid primary-source window into how crime, policing, punishment, class and the urban underworld were represented during the 1920s.

This new Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint presents Lucas’s fascinating account to a new generation of readers, accompanied by a detailed new Introduction by Graeme Newman that places the work in its historical and criminological context.

For readers interested in true crime, criminology, Scotland Yard, policing, criminal history, London history, organized crime and the social history of the 1920s, London and Its Criminals offers a fascinating journey into a vanished—but sometimes surprisingly familiar—criminal world

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.194.

By Chris Whitty,

he aim of this report is to explore the health and healthcare of people in prison and on probation in England and make recommendations to improve these. It combines insights from, and individual chapters authored by: front line professionals working in prisons and the secure estate and in probation; public health professionals; commissioners and policy makers in health and justice; third sector organisations; academics and lived experience experts. These insights were gathered by extensive evidence gathering and stakeholder engagement, albeit by a small team within a defined time frame from September 2024 to July 2025. Regional health and justice teams across prison and probation were invited to share their written experiences and attend roundtables. Additional roundtables and workshops were conducted to explore specific themes such as the health needs and healthcare challenges of people on probation, health workforce and long-term conditions. We are very grateful for the time, enthusiasm and knowledgeable response from prison, probation, NHS and public health staff. Building on previous CMO visits looking at health to the secure estate (including secure mental health hospitals) we visited a further: 15 male and female prisons; 1 young offenders’ institution, 1 secure school and 1 secure children’s home; 1 secure NHS hospital and 4 probation delivery units. These covered all regions of England. During visits we discussed with frontline clinical and operational staff as well as people in prison, prison and probation officers, governors and healthcare leaders and we are very grateful for their time and expertise. In addition to lived experience identified by chapter authors and from group discussions during visits, we worked with the NHS Health and Justice Lived Experience Network and Empowering People: Inspiring Change (EP:IC) lived experience consultancy to bring together themes from existing lived experience engagement relevant to the chapters of this report, including engagement held for the 10 Year Health Plan. This was supplemented with additional lived experience focus groups held with pregnant women currently in prison, with people on probation and recently in prison on topics including the health and care needs of older adults in prison and health improvement in prison. One person with lived experience of the criminal justice system was a member of our steering group and contributed and reviewed all chapters. Lived experience contributions are incorporated throughout chapters in blue panels, practice examples (orange) and case studies (lilac) gathered from engagement are also included to illustrate findings.The development of the report was guided by 2 groups: ■ a stakeholder steering group with representation from UK Health Security Agency, Department of Health and Social Care, HM Prison and Probation Service, Ministry of Justice, NHS England and EP:IC lived experience consultancy ■ a clinical task and finish group chaired by the Royal College of General Practitioners: Secure Environments Group. Attended by front line clinicians and clinical leaders (GPs, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, psychiatrists, midwives, obstetricians and peer support workers) working in, or with recent experience of, prisons, probation and the secure estateThe ‘children and young people’ chapter was guided by its own steering group with representation from NHS England, Youth Justice Board, Youth Custody Service and clinical advisers. The important challenges of substance misuse in prisons have been extensively explored in the recent independent review by Dame Carol Black published in 2024. For this reason we have not concentrated on this issue in this report and would point people to Dame Carol’s recommendations . Sentencing policy is obviously outside the remit of this report on health, although the implications of long and short sentences on health and healthcare is considered. Any response to the Sentencing Review by the Rt Hon David Gauke 2025 is likely to have an effect on prison and probation health and healthcare2 . While important to this population, it was outside the scope of this review to do an in depth review of social care in prisons. The ongoing independent commission into adult social care should consider the justice population.