A Lombroso Mini-Classic by Graeme R. Newman and Claude

Cesare Lombroso was one of the founders of modern criminology—and one of its most controversial figures. Best remembered for his theory of the “born criminal,” Lombroso also devoted enormous attention to the social, economic, environmental, and institutional forces that shape criminal behavior.

First published in English in 1911, Crime: Its Causes and Remedies ranges remarkably widely. Lombroso examines climate, poverty and wealth, alcohol, education, family background, heredity, age, sex, immigration, urbanization, prisons, political conditions, and criminal associations. He then turns from explanation to prevention, asking what governments and criminal justice systems can actually do about crime.

This Read-Me.Org Modernize Classic makes Lombroso’s sprawling original accessible to a new generation. The abridged and adapted edition follows the three-part structure of the original—the causes of crime, its prevention and treatment, and the application of criminal anthropology to punishment—while providing historical context and critical commentary.

Lombroso’s work contains ideas that now seem strikingly modern alongside others—including his racial theories and biological determinism—that have long been rejected. The result is not merely a historical curiosity, but a fascinating case study in the possibilities and dangers of attempting to make crime a subject of scientific measurement. The volume also considers Lombroso’s continuing relevance to contemporary questions about imprisonment, alcohol and violence, environmental influences on crime, risk prediction, and the relationship between biology and behavior.

A compact introduction to a foundational—and deeply controversial—work in the history of criminology. Download the original book here.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.72.

by Graeme R. Newman with the assistance of Claude.

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

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

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

INSIDE THIS GUIDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download the original book here.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.54p.

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.

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 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 Mary Louise Frampton, Ian Haney Lopez, and Jonathan Simon

Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed a pyrrhic war on crime, with sobering numbers at once chilling and cautionary. Our imprisoned population has increased five-fold, with a commensurate spike in fiscal costs that many now see as unsupportable into the future. As American society confronts a multitude of new challenges ranging from terrorism to the disappearance of middle-class jobs to global warming, the war on crime may be up for reconsideration for the first time in a generation or more. Relatively low crime rates indicate that the public mood may be swinging toward declaring victory and moving on.
However, to declare that the war is over is dangerous and inaccurate, and After the War on Crime reveals that the impact of this war reaches far beyond statistics; simply moving on is impossible. The war has been most devastating to those affected by increased rates and longer terms of incarceration, but its reach has also reshaped a sweeping range of social institutions, including law enforcement, politics, schooling, healthcare, and social welfare. The war has also profoundly altered conceptions of race and community.
It is time to consider the tasks reconstruction must tackle. To do so requires first a critical assessment of how this war has remade our society, and then creative thinking about how government, foundations, communities, and activists should respond. After the War on Crime accelerates this reassessment with original essays by a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars as well as policy professionals and community activists. The volume's immediate goal is to spark a fresh conversation about the war on crime and its consequences; its long-term aspiration is to develop a clear understanding of how we got here and of where we should go.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008.256p