By Stan Baker.
Republished, by permission, from the American Magazine for April, 1907, the first of a series called “Following the Color Line,” now being published in that magazine.
American Magazine. (1907) 31 pages.
By Philip Berge Benny.
According to the Talmud.
London, Smith Elder (1880) 156 pages.
By George S. Dougherty.
George S. Dougherty, former deputy commissioner and chief of detectives New YorkPolice department. “It began with the discovery that I am a human being and regard the criminal as human.”
Appleton. (1924) 294 pages.
By August Drahms.
His personnel and environment. Introduction by Cesare Lombroso. All you need to know and more, of the born criminal and the criminal classes.
Macmillan Co. (1900) 419 pages.
By pages
The Mystery of the Unborn, by pages. “Dr. Wilson believed that criminals are born unfinished. The die is cast at birth. The lack of finish at birth explains the incompetent, the born tired, the unemployed. Then what is the use? Why not painless extinction of those who commit great crimes, and the sterilization of the feebleminded….” Albert Wilson.
John Bale et al., (1928) 477.
By the Vice Commission of Chicago.
A Study of Existing Conditions with Recommendations by the Vice Commission of Chicago (a Municipal Body Appointed by the Mayor and the City Council of the City of Chicago) and Submitted as Its Report.
Gunthorp-Warren. (1911) 375 pages.
By the Rev. J.L.A. Kayla.
The Rev. J.L.A. Kayla, member of the Howard Association. Being a reply to Dr. Chapple’s work: “The Fertility of the Unfit,” and An Attempt to explain the leading principles of criminological & reformatory science.
Invercargill W. Smith (1905) 189 pages.
By Prince Emmanuel of Jerusalem.
“ History shows that hanging did not prevent petit larceny. So we have abandoned the policy of frightfulness in punishment and cannot revert to it even though it still has some few supporters. And yet we feel that the theory of punishment being deterrent is philosophically sound. …The first news from the Laboratory revealed the prevalence of feeble-mindedness among delinquents. “
Rosburgh Publishing (1921) 247 pages.
By D. R. Miller.
“A law demanding only a refrain from violence or abstinence from all that may injure others contains but the negative, while it is lacking in the more important, the positive elements. If men, by closing their eyes to the existence of evil, could thereby banish it, then might it be best for all to close their eyes….it is quite certain that we can never hope to discover, through ignorance, what are the various types of criminal abnormality, nor know the many causes or cures for such estrangements. An intelligent and thorough study of the criminal problem will eliminate from our creed that fatalistic formula which asserts that ‘Evil is good not understood’…”
United Brethren Publishing House (1903) 224 pages.
By V. M. Masten.
If a thief will have it no other way than to be a thief, then control of him, and not his social rehabilitation, must be the desideratum.”
Boston Gorham Press (ca. 1922) 238 pages.
By Carl Murchison.
“This material is offered for the special consideration of lawyers, psychologists, siociologists, social workers, and all those who have to do with the formulation of criminal law, the treatment of criminals, and the molding of public opinion concerning the enemies of organized society…”
A Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint (1926) 483 pages.
By Arthur Train.
by Arthur Train (Author), Colin Heston (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition
Arthur Train’s Courts, Criminals and the Camorra (1912) arrives from a moment when the American courtroom was transforming from a dusty forum of local justice into a national spectacle. Crime reporting surged, public fascination with underworld societies ripened, and the newly consolidated profession of the district attorney—Train’s own calling—stood at the intersection of drama and civic responsibility. Few chroniclers were better positioned to capture this world than Train himself: lawyer, storyteller, and one of the most influential interpreters of everyday justice in the early twentieth century.
This book offers a vivid, almost cinematic tour through the people and pressures that shaped the criminal courts of Train’s New York. With a wit sharpened by long service in the district attorney’s office, Train narrates cases, misadventures, and courtroom characters with the briskness of a magazine correspondent and the subtle insight of someone who has lived the system from the inside. He makes the courthouse feel less like a bureaucratic maze and more like a bustling social laboratory—part theater, part battleground, part human comedy.
The title’s reference to the Camorra, the Neapolitan criminal society that briefly dominated headlines in the years preceding publication, allows Train to broaden his canvas. The Camorra trials in Europe—particularly the sensational proceedings in Viterbo (1911–12)—were international news, and Americans consumed tales of conspiracy, vendetta, and secret brotherhoods with a mixture of horror and fascination. Train uses these stories not merely to thrill, but to show how crime everywhere reflects its environment: local culture shapes criminal enterprise just as surely as it shapes courts, policing, and political life.
What makes this volume enduring is Train’s tone—bright, conversational, humane. His criminals are rarely monsters; they are people caught in pressures of poverty, opportunity, folly, or ambition. His courts, for all their flaws, are animated by men and women doing their best under imperfect circumstances. The result is a portrait of justice as a living organism, not an abstract ideal.
More than a century later, these essays feel surprisingly fresh. They remind us that the tensions surrounding criminal justice—media sensationalism, public fear, the allure of organized crime, the frustrations of overburdened courts—are not uniquely modern. The debates that animate today’s legal and political discussions echo those Arthur Train captured with humor and clarity in 1912.
To read Courts, Criminals and the Camorra now is to eavesdrop on the origins of our contemporary legal culture. It is also simply to enjoy a gifted storyteller at work, illuminating the world he knew best with charm, color, and a sharp eye for the human quirks that make justice both necessary and endlessly fascinating.
New York Scribner’s (1912) 256 pages. Read-Me.Org Inc. 2025. 173p.
By Robert J. Ingersoll.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. Connected with the court of justice was the chamber of torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in that would surely the construction the most reach of instruments sensitive nerve. All this was in the interest protection of virtue, and done of civilization — for the states. the well-being of how Curiously enough, the fact is that, no matter severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.
NY. Farrell (1892) 49 pages.
By Filson Young.
With notes and introduction by Filson Young. “Most of the interest and part of the terror of great crime are due not to what is abnormal, but to what is normal in it; what we have in common with the criminal, rather than that subtle insanity which differentiates him from us, is what makes us view with so lively an interest a fellow-being who has wandered into these tragic and fatal fields.”
William Hodge (1910) 266 pages.
By Clarence Darrow.
“The physical origin of such abnormalities of the mind as are called ‘criminal’ is a comparatively new idea….It has not been long since insanity was treated as a moral defect….”My main effort is to show that the laws that control human behavior are as fixed and certain as those that control the physical world…”
Thomas Crowell Pubs. (1922) 225 pages.
By Ida Well-Barnett.
“Immediately after the awful barbarism which disgraced the State of Georgia in April of last year, during which time more than a dozen colored people were put to death with unspeakable barbarity, I published a full report showing that Sam Hose, who was burned to death during that time, never committed a criminal assault, and that he killed his employer in self- defense.”
Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint (1892) 63 pages.
By Alexander Dumas.
“The Crimes were published in Paris, in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen titles…. The success of the original work was instantaneous. Dumas laughingly said that he thought he had exhausted the subject of famous crimes, until he became deluged with letters from every province in France, supplying him with material upon other deeds of violence! The subjects which he has chosen, however, are of both historic and dramatic importance.
Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1910) 1,565 pages.
By Horace M. Kallen.
A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students, by Hans Gross. Translated from the 4th German edition . Introduction By Joseph Jastrow,. “ In short, the individualization of disease, in cause and in treatment, is the dominant truth of modern medical science. The same truth is now known about crime…” Published under the Auspices of The American institute of criminal law and criminologyBoston,
Little Brown and Co. (1911) 567 pages.
Translated by Gina Lombroso.
This is the classic work of the “father of criminology” Cesare Lombroso translated from the Italian by his daughter Gina Lombroso. Here was the idea of the “born criminal” and a detailed classification system according to body types and other physiological and physical features. The major work was “L’Uomo delinquente” that emphasized the atavistic origins of criminality.
NY. Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1876) 251 pages.
By Raffaele Garofalo.
Garofalo, a student of Lombroso, attempted to formulate a sociological definition of crime that would designate those acts which can be repressed by punishment. These constituted "Natural Crime" and were considered offenses violating the two basic altruistic sentiments common to all people, namely, probity and piety.
A Read-Me.org Classic Reprint. 1885. 510 pages.