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

In 1962, a Harvard criminologist stood before an audience of lawyers and psychiatrists and asked whether their two professions were fighting a cold war — or could finally reach an entente cordiale.

Sheldon Glueck had spent nearly four decades studying what happens when the law and the mind collide. When the American Psychiatric Association awarded him its Isaac Ray Award in 1962, he used the honor to revisit a question he'd first raised in 1925: can a courtroom ever fairly judge a defendant whose mind wasn't entirely his own?

Law and Psychiatry: Cold War or Entente Cordiale? is Glueck's answer — four lectures that trace the law's century-long struggle to define legal insanity, from the rigid "right-and-wrong" test born in the trial of a Victorian assassin, through the sweeping 1954 Durham rule that tried to replace it, to Glueck's own proposal for resolving the deadlock. Along the way, he tackles the oldest dilemma in criminal justice — does anyone really choose freely, or are we all, to some degree, prisoners of forces we don't control? — with the wit and clarity of a scholar who has spent a career refusing easy answers.

This Read-Me.Org Mini-Classic edition condenses and lightly modernizes Glueck's original lectures for today's reader, and adds a new closing chapter, "Law and Psychiatry Today," tracing what actually happened next: the rise and fall of the Durham rule, the Hinckley verdict that reshaped the insanity defense overnight, the states that abolished it outright, and the neuroscience now reopening questions Glueck could only pose in the language of his own era.

What's inside:

• An editor's introduction placing Glueck and the Isaac Ray Lectures in context

• A biographical sketch of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck and their landmark criminology research

• All four of Glueck's original 1962 lectures, condensed and modernized

• A new chapter tracing the insanity defense from 1962 to the present day

• Review questions for classroom or book-group discussion

• A further reading list for readers who want to go deeper

Whether you're a law or psychology student, a true-crime reader curious where the insanity defense actually came from, or simply someone who has ever wondered where blame ends and illness begins, this short, sharp classic still has something to say — six decades on, the cold war Glueck diagnosed has never entirely thawed.

A Read-Me.Org Mini-Classic — condensed, modernized editions of significant but hard-to-find works of criminology, law, and social science.

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.43.

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.

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.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 153p.

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.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 189p.

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.

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.

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 The International Drug Policy Consortium

The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs was a watershed moment in global drug policy. It created a rare opportunity to reconsider the prevailing international paradigm on drugs and to chart a new direction.

The UNGASS process was notable for the unprecedented involvement of civil society, affected communities, UN entities and human rights experts. It helped place public health, human rights and communities closer to the centre of drug policy-making, and paved the way for better alignment between the UN drug control regime and the wider UN system. The process also generated valuable momentum for new debates and advocacy at the national level.

However, the UNGASS ultimately fell short of introducing genuine reform of the norms and institutions underpinning the international drug control system.

This report examines progress made since the 2016 UNGASS to assess the role of the global drug control regime in shaping change. It draws on UN data and reporting, academic research, contributions from civil society and community organisations, and a dedicated civil society survey conducted among IDPC members and partners.

Key conclusions

The report concludes with four forward-looking findings:

• Civil society and community organisations play a critical role in drug policy, yet continue to be sidelined, underfunded, and increasingly exposed to threats and attacks.

• The UN drug control treaties require urgent modernisation in order to respond to new realities and remain fit for purpose.

• A drug control system oriented towards human rights, health and development requires a thorough reconfiguration of the existing architecture, including strong and systematic inter-agency cooperation across the UN system.

• Regular discussion of drug policy at the UN is essential, but the agenda and working methods of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) must change to enable meaningful progress.

By Michael Rempel, Krystal Rodriguez, and Kellyann Bock

As New York City works toward its mandate to close Rikers Island, addressing the mental health needs of people detained in the jail system remains a central challenge—and a defining opportunity for reform. Developed by the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College and the Katal Center for Equity, Health, & Justice, this report brings together the latest mental health data for people held at Rikers, lived-experience insights from directly impacted people, and a 15-point plan to create a more effective and humane path forward.

Grounded in evidence, the report aims to:

1. Present updated data on the nature and scale of mental health needs among people held in the NYC jails.

2. Give a voice to the people behind the numbers through select first-person accounts that highlight systemic gaps and unmet needs.

3. Identify a continuum of safe and effective jail diversion strategies that can reduce the jail population while strengthening care, stability, and long-term public safety.

Taken together, this report offers a roadmap to reduce the number of people with serious mental health needs detained at Rikers and to strengthen NYC’s continuum of care.

By Stephen Koppel & René Ropac

The current study isolates the effect of what is arguably the most consequential bail reform provision: eliminating the option to set bail or detain people for most misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges. The study uses what is known as a “difference-in-differences” causal design—comparing the change in re-arrest rates from before to after initial bail reform implementation among charges seeing the elimination of bail versus charges remaining legally eligible for bail.

What Did We Find?

• Pretrial Recidivism: During the brief pretrial period (capped at 6 months for all cases), eliminating bail had no overall effect on recidivism. However, recidivism increased among a small high-risk group with a pending case.

• Two-Year Recidivism: Over a longer two-year follow-up—including the period both before and after a case disposition—results grew more favorable to bail reform. Charges seeing the elimination of bail had significantly lower felony re-arrest rates than charges still exposed to bail and detention. In addition, there was no longer evidence of a recidivism increase for the “high-risk” subgroup (or any other subgroup).

What's the Upshot?

Our latest study adds to a growing body of research analyzing the effects of New York’s bail reform on public safety. Short-term recidivism increases appear limited to a small high-risk subgroup, with the current study indicating that such increases were no longer present when extending the follow-up period to two years. 

Meanwhile, considering all five of DCJ’s recidivism studies, a pattern emerges that, overall, expanding pretrial release under bail reform reduced recidivism in New York City—especially over a long-term 50-month tracking period—while having no clear effect in suburban and upstate regions. Each prior DCJ study (two in New York City, one outside the City, and a statewide study released last month) reported these overall effects, while adding more nuanced results for key subgroups of interest.

By Falcon Correctional & Community Services, Inc

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections (WIDOC) Division of Adult Institutions (DAI) has long served the Wisconsin community with its three stated goals: • WIDOC works to protect the public through the constructive management of those placed in its charge. • WIDOC offers education, programming, and treatment to persons in WIDOC’s care that enables them to be successful upon returning to the community. • WIDOC’s mission is to achieve excellence in correctional practices while fostering safety for victims and communities. The WIDOC Executive Leadership Team sought outside assistance to conduct a comprehensive system-wide assessment of correctional, mental health, and physical health operations and practices, with a particular focus on restrictive housing and organizational culture. The project, initiated through discussions with Secretary Jared Hoy and his executive team, was designed to build upon recent reform efforts and respond to persistent staffing and operational challenges. The study used a multi-method approach that included data requests and analyses, staff interviews, workshops with DAI staff and other key stakeholders, site visits, interviews with incarcerated individuals, and policy reviews. The central objectives of the study were to (1) identify areas of strength that could be expanded upon throughout the department, (2) identify areas requiring improvements, and (3) provide actionable, evidence-based, and sustainable recommendations to achieve both short-term and long-term success. This independent assessment was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of Falcon Correctional and Community Services, Inc. (“Falcon, Inc.” or “Falcon”) experts with expertise in the administration of state prison operations, correctional medical and behavioral health practices, the assessment of criminogenic risk, large-scale system studies, and restrictive housing reform. The purpose of this independent evaluation was to serve as a tool to collectively understand, navigate, and prioritize recommendations for system improvements. Falcon would like to thank everyone at WIDOC for their assistance throughout this study. The time commitment was significant, from responding to data requests, organizing and facilitating site visits, and participating in workshops to providing the information necessary to complete this important project. We also thank you for the important work you do for the individuals in your care, your staff, and the Wisconsin community.Inc. 

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.

By Suleman Lazarus  · Peter Tickner  · Michael R. McGuire1

 We discuss cybercrimes against senior citizens from three standpoints: (a) online fraudsters often target senior citizens because of their age, which results in the propagation of ageism. Thus, we explicitly defne ageism in the context of cybercrime, characterising it as the intentional targeting or prioritisation of senior citizens as potential victims of online fraud. (b) Senior citizens are vulnerable to online fraud schemes for physiological (e.g., cognitive decline), psychological (e.g., elevated fear of cybercrime), familial (e.g., insider fraud), and sociocultural (e.g., isolation) reasons. (c) Cybercrimes against older adults predominantly fall under the socioeconomic category driven by a common fnancial motive. We argue that ageism serves as a weapon used by online offenders to target older adults, whilst the concept of the ideal victim acts as society’s shield in response to these reprehensible actions. This framework invites closer attention to how age-based targeting in cyberspace reproduces broader social, economic, and moral asymmetries.  Future empirical studies are warranted to substantiate these claims beyond the theoretical realm.

Security Journal (2025) 38:42 

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 Colette Ashton

Strengthening existing institutions, prioritising prevention and engaging the private sector are needed to end corruption.

This report analyses South Africa’s anti-corruption institutions in relation to international good practice. It highlights problems with their functional independence and organisational culture. It identifies a serious gap in the area of prevention. Among the recommendations are that South Africa undertake feasible, incremental improvements to existing institutions and engage the private sector to help prevent and detect corruption.

Key findings There is insufficient empirical research on corruption in South Africa to inform context sensitive policy reform. Anti-corruption institutions are governed by a parallel informal system of social norms held in place by incentives such as promotion and disincentives such as bullying. This organisational culture prioritises obedience to authority over ethics, eroding integrity. A culture of mistrust and competition exists between law enforcement agencies, hampering collaboration. Feasible, incremental reforms of anti-corruption institutions are needed in the short term, focusing on organisational culture. Recommendations Strengthen existing agencies Amend the National Prosecuting Authority Act so that: the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) is the accounting officer; the budget is allocated by Parliament; there are merit-based appointment processes and security of tenure for senior leaders; and the NDPP has control over human resources. Develop context-sensitive prosecutorial prioritisation policy that focuses on the criteria of redress for economic harm and is mindful of the need for political stability. Revise performance targets of law enforcement agencies to incentivise cooperation, not competition. Build cultures of integrity, trust and cooperation in and among anti-corruption agencies. Prioritise prevention Work towards an independent anti-corruption prevention agency. Urgently provide the Public Administration Ethics Integrity and Disciplinary Technical Assistance Unit in the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation with increased funding and independence. 2 The NPA should be given control over its own budget and human resources, which are currently controlled by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. Effective anti-corruption agencies in developing countries may trigger political instability. Political stability is a precondition for economic growth, which in the long term creates conditions for more effective anti-corruption institutions. Equitable economic development is a precondition for the transformation of more economically harmful types of corruption, e.g. plunder, into less harmful types, e.g. lobbying. The private sector is a key partner for government in the prevention and detection of corruption. Prioritise integrity in government by promoting ethical employees. Prioritise corruption prevention in the South African Police Service. Change the incentive structure for the private sector Introduce a statute providing for non-trial resolutions of corporate corruption cases to incentivise companies to self-police corruption. Develop capacity in the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission to support companies to develop effective anti corruption compliance programmes. Partner with the private sector to run collective action programmes in key sectors such as health, construction and shipping. Research Conduct a risk analysis for a proposed Chapter 9 anti-corruption super-agency with investigative and prosecutorial powers. Conduct research into a two-track criminal and administrative anti-corruption enforcement system. Conduct more empirical, sector-specific research into corruption

Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2024. 28p,