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 Halle Marchetta

In the United States of America, the federal government and many state governments have statutes that have banned all convicted felons from “ship[ping], transfer[ing], possess[ing], or receiv[ing]” firearms or ammunition.1 The statute applies equally to felons convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses like forgery or tax fraud as it does to highlevel, violent offenses like aggravated murder or rape. Treating every felon the same, without any consideration of their underlying charge, unconstitutionally infringes on their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms without significant justification. Convicted felons do not lose their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech or freedom of religion, so why do they lose their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms? They retain their Fourth Amendment right to be secure from warrantless search and seizure in their own homes, so why do they lose their Second Amendment right to self-defense of their home? Felons still retain their Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel when faced with criminal charges, so why should they lose their Second Amendment rights when convicted of those criminal charges? The blanket ban on all felons possessing and using firearms is a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

By: Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., Director of Research, Bobby Boxerman, Ph.D., former Extreme Sentencing Research Fellow, and Celeste Barry, former Program Associate at The Sentencing Project.

Although it is a widespread practice in the United States to increase criminal penalties for people with prior convictions, there is little evidence that this practice advances public safety.1 Research by the Robina Institute has shown that state and federal sentencing guidelines dramatically increase sentence lengths based on individuals’ prior criminal records. This effect is even more pronounced for African Americans. Given the limited public safety benefits from criminal record “enhancements” and the accompanying harms to incarcerated individuals, their families, and communities — and the steep financial costs — this further lengthening of sentences should be reconfigured.

By Arthur MacDonald.

The narrative in Volume 1 asks many pointed questions: What does it mean to be “abnormal”? Who decides? And how have these judgments shaped modern science, education, and criminal justice?

First published in 1893, Arthur MacDonald’s Abnormal Man is one of the earliest American attempts to systematically study human difference through the emerging tools of psychology, anthropology, and criminology. Drawing on international research—from European criminal anthropology to American child-study movements—MacDonald sought to classify the physical, mental, and moral traits considered “aberrant” in his era. His work reflects the hopes and anxieties of a society confronting rapid industrialization, immigration, social change, and new scientific approaches to crime and mental health.

To the modern reader, Abnormal Man reveals both the ambition and the pitfalls of nineteenth-century science. Its pages contain pioneering observations about child development, deviance, and social responsibility, alongside early theories—now discredited—about heredity, physiognomy, and race. What emerges is a vivid and sometimes unsettling portrait of a culture striving to understand human variation without the benefit of modern psychology or ethical safeguards.

The Read-Me.org edition Volume 1 presents Abnormal Man as both a historical artifact and a gateway to critical reflection. It illustrates how scientific thought evolves, how cultural bias can shape research, and how early debates about abnormality laid the groundwork for contemporary approaches to mental health, special education, criminology, and social policy. To make such work, much of it controversial then as it is today, minimally believable, requires extensive documentation. The voluminous Bibliography of Abnormal Man reproduced here in Volume 2, contains all that Macdnald referred to within his detailed exposition. To some, his arguments may seem unsupported, or lacking in evidence. But he left no stone untuned as this amazing bibliographical documentation of all relative contemporary research

A foundational text at the crossroads of science and society, Abnormal Man invites readers to explore the origins of modern debates about deviance, diversity, and the boundaries of the “normal.”

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 240p.

By Arthur MacDonald. Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

What does it mean to be “abnormal”? Who decides? And how have these judgments shaped modern science, education, and criminal justice?

First published in 1893, Arthur MacDonald’s Abnormal Man is one of the earliest American attempts to systematically study human difference through the emerging tools of psychology, anthropology, and criminology. Drawing on international research—from European criminal anthropology to American child-study movements—MacDonald sought to classify the physical, mental, and moral traits considered “aberrant” in his era. His work reflects the hopes and anxieties of a society confronting rapid industrialization, immigration, social change, and new scientific approaches to crime and mental health.

To the modern reader, Abnormal Man reveals both the ambition and the pitfalls of nineteenth-century science. Its pages contain pioneering observations about child development, deviance, and social responsibility, alongside early theories—now discredited—about heredity, physiognomy, and race. What emerges is a vivid and sometimes unsettling portrait of a culture striving to understand human variation without the benefit of modern psychology or ethical safeguards.

This new Read-Me.org edition presents Abnormal Man as both a historical artifact and a gateway to critical reflection. It illustrates how scientific thought evolves, how cultural bias can shape research, and how early debates about abnormality laid the groundwork for contemporary approaches to mental health, special education, criminology, and social policy.

A foundational text at the crossroads of science and society, Abnormal Man invites readers to explore the origins of modern debates about deviance, diversity, and the boundaries of the “normal.”

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.193.

BY Richard Grelling.. Translated By Alexander Gray. Introduction by Colin Heston.

Richard Grelling’s The Crime (Das Verbrechen), translated into English by Alexander Gray and published in London and New York between 1917 and 1919, is conceived as both a moral successor and completion to his earlier pacifist landmark, J’Accuse!, written between August 1915 and November 1916. In creating this extended work, Grelling sought to underscore the causes of World War I and dissect the self-justifying rhetoric that sustained the conflict long after its outbreak. Volumes I and II lay foundational groundwork, tracing the immediate antecedents of the war: imperialist tendencies within Germany and, on the part of the opposing Entente powers, ostensibly defensive motives followed by trait protectionism.

Never before in the annals of humankind has a crime of such sweeping magnitude been committed—and seldom has its perpetration been met with denial so unashamed. Within the very citadels of reason and culture, a proud civilization unleashed catastrophe under the guise of necessity—only to scramble afterward in self-exculpation. It is in this spirit of moral defiance—standing firm against voices of dissent, even from one’s own kin—that The Crime is offered to you. In the trilogy’s third volume, Grelling moves beyond the origins of war into the heart of wartime rationalization, exposing the “war-aims” that enabled aggression to persist under the cloak of purpose. May this work cast a clear light upon the structures of self-deception that allowed the world’s descent, and may it stir an unyielding clarity in us to recognize—and reject—such patterns again.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 261p.

By The Interrnational Organization for Migration

The Regional Counter-Trafficking Learning Note aims to enhance the emulation of good practices and cross-border coordination on victims of trafficking assistance across North Africa, West and Central Africa key migratory routes. The learning note explores some of the promising practices in counter-trafficking interventions currently occurring in North Africa (Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), the Niger and Mauritania. It also explores promising practices across four key areas of counter-trafficking programming: (1) safe and preliminary victim identification, (2) safe referral and formal identification, (3) assistance and protection; and (4) long-term and sustainable solutions. Alongside the discussion of promising practices in each of these four sections, the note explores associated lessons learned and provides recommendations to counter-trafficking actors for strengthening the response to trafficking in persons.

Geneva, SWIT: International Organization for Migration, 2025. 76p.

By Stephen Koppel, Min Xie, Michael Rempel, Olive Lu, Jeremy Travis, & Preeti Chauhan

New York City’s response to crime and violence stands at a pivotal moment. After decades of declining crime and a shrinking criminal legal system, recent years have brought major criminal legal reforms, a global pandemic, and renewed debate about safety, fairness, and enforcement.

To help move the conversation forward, the goal of the Crossroads Project was to ground essential policy discussions in objective data concerning the pendulum swings that describe New York City’s trajectory from the 1990s to the present.

Introduction to the Crossroads Project The premise of this project is simple: In determining its response to crime and violence, New York City stands at a crossroads. After years of declining rates of crime, enforcement activities, and incarceration, New York City has experienced volatility in many of these same criminal justice measures. New realities have prompted calls for a more punitive response to crime which, in turn, are countered by advocates urging continued support for a reform agenda. Today’s choices on the path forward will have long-term consequences for the well-being of the City’s residents and communities, and for New Yorkers’ aspirations for safety, justice, and equity. To inform current policies, this report, along with another focusing on victimization, seeks to widen our perspective by drawing attention to the pendulum swings that describe the City’s longer history. These swings feature a multi-decade pattern of declining crime, enforcement activities, and incarceration from the 1990s until 2020, followed by upticks and reversals in the vacillating 2020s. The juxtaposition of this more extended view of history against present-day debates about the best path forward underscores the power of the metaphor: We are at a crossroads. The driving premise of the Crossroads project is that we have an opportunity to learn from past responses to crime—including disproportionate harm experienced by communities of color—to craft more effective policies in the future. To help move the conversation forward, our immediate purpose is to ground discussions in objective data concerning New York City’s history up to the present. We expand on two earlier analyses, 1 adding more metrics and extending the tracking period through at least 2023. In addition, an accompanying report draws on the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to document victimization trends in the City, the proportion of victimization reported to the police, and changes in victims’ confidence in police and use of services.2 Notably, that report finds that during the study period (1996 to 2022), more than half of all crimes were never reported to the police, with reporting rates declining over time—particularly for household property crime— and finds an increasing perception that police would not help if called. By contrast, the present report focuses solely on criminal complaints that are reported to the police and processed by the criminal legal system and thus may offer a more limited view of overall victimization. An executive summary available at the project landing page integrates key findings from both reports. The full report on crime victimization trends is available at this same landing page. Tied to this research, the Crossroads Convening, a two-day public event held at John Jay College in May of 2025, provides New Yorkers with an opportunity to look both backward and forward, reflecting on past trends and advancing a much-needed dialogue about the future steps New York City’s criminal legal system might take We seek to answer seven questions about the changing criminal legal landscape since 1990. 1. Crime: How have crime rates changed, encompassing the most serious violent crimes and shooting incidents, and misdemeanor crime complaints (Chapter 2)? 2. Law Enforcement: How have police enforcement activities changed, encompassing pedestrian street stops, minor summonses, felony and misdemeanor arrests, and drug arrests (Chapter 3)? 3. Decision-Making in the Courts: How have key decisions and case outcomes changed, encompassing prosecutors’ decision of whether to file arrests with the court in the first place, judges’ bail decisions, case dispositions (e.g., conviction rates), and the use of alternatives to incarceration (Chapter 4)? 4. Incarceration and Community Corrections: How have local jail, state prison, probation, and parole admissions and daily population numbers changed (Chapter 5)? 5. Recidivism After Disposition: How have recidivism rates changed for people immediately released into the community following a non-carceral case disposition (Chapter 6)? 6. Racial Disparities: Amid the overall trends, to what extent (if at all) have racial and ethnic disparities in people’s criminal legal system involvement declined (Chapter 7)? 7. The Early 2020s: Zooming in from this report’s longer-term analysis, what trends or fluctuations have taken place specifically in the early 2020s (covered in all chapters)? Answers to this last question will set the stage for a discussion of the criminal legal system we want, moving forward. Finally, Chapter 8 summarizes major themes and takeaways

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice, at John Jay College, 2025. 40p.

By Robin Joy

This report explores the utility of using Vermont criminal histories to understand probation and parole violations. We conclude that criminal histories alone are not sufficient to understand the dynamics of probation and parole violations. Intensive Department of Corrections (DOC) resources would be needed to better understand the when, where, and what of violations. Methods We used two data sources to identify who was released on probation or parole. For parole releases we used the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) report that is generated by the Vermont Department of Corrections and submitted to the federal government. This report is an offender-level report that captures entries and releases from correctional facilities. We used the reports that captured Federal Fiscal Year data from 2016, 2017, and 2018. We used this dataset to identify people who were released from facilities and therefore might have been placed on parole. We requested their Vermont criminal histories and identified if/when they were released on parole. They became our parole cohort. The probation cohort was generated from the Court Adjudication Database maintained by Crime Research Group (CRG). We selected people who were sentenced to probation or deferred sentences (which is also a probationary sentence) for the probation cohort. We had to exclude people sentenced to a split sentence. A split sentence is a type of sentence that is split between incarceration in a facility and then a subsequent period of time on probation. We did not include these people because we could not accurately identify when someone was released from a correctional facility to probation. In the NCRP data, the release could be the initial release or release from an incarceration due to a probation violation. The criminal histories no longer capture when someone is released on probation. The final cohort for probation, deferred, and parole are described below in Table 1. As is often the case with criminal justice data in Vermont, there were too few people of Asian, Indigenous, and Hispanic descent to provide detailed numbers without the possibility of someone being identified

Montpelier, VT: Crime Research Group, 2022. 9p.