By  The Halving Global Violence (HGV) Task Force

  Violence is a universal challenge. Although commonly associated with conflict zones or marginalized sectors of society, violence is present in all regions, and its effects impact people of all demographics. 80 to 90% of all violence happens outside of armed conflicts, and has a direct impact on the daily lives of people around the world. Communities everywhere expect their leaders—local, national, and international—to reduce violence and create conditions for peaceful co-existence. Too often, however, these leaders fail to deliver on the promise of creating peaceful societies. Violence impacts people in a variety of ways and poses a challenge to development goals in communities worldwide. It is not only an issue of men killing men. For each homicide, there are thousands of instances of assault; up to 1 billion children will experience violence in their lives, and one third of all women will suffer violence at the hands of an intimate partner. In fact, by some estimates, the share of women who are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) is higher than the share of the total population that is a victim of assault or homicides. In addition to the loss of human lives and physical suffering, violence manifests itself by making people feel unsafe in their homes, fearful on their streets, vigilant in schools and public spaces, and unable to access markets, the workforce, economic development opportunities, or social services and healthcare:The impacts of violent crime and interpersonal violence have intergenerational dimensions and victimization as a child can lead to consequences throughout a lifetime. Against this backdrop, violence reduction is a cornerstone of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.1 directly calls for the reduction of all forms of violence, and thirteen other targets also refer to it—recognizing that violence must be prevented and reduced wherever it exists. The SDG targets are an acknowledgment that violence—especially against women, children, and marginalized groups—is not inevitable and that achieving substantial and measurable progress is possible. Imbued with this confidence, the Halving Global Violence Task Force was set up to outline the ways leaders across the world can achieve significant reductions in the most serious forms of violence. While armed conflict understandably receives a substantial amount of the world’s attention and investment, the work of the Task Force is focused on interpersonal violence—violence between people in the home and on the streets—which is too often overlooked. More than its prevalence, what makes interpersonal violence a compelling focus and target for the work of the Task Force is its amenability to change. Cities like Palmira in Colombia, Pelotas in Brazil, and many others around the world have achieved upwards of a 60 percent reduction in violence rates by combining localized action, targeted investments, and the smart use of data. Experts have suggested it is like a disease that can be controlled, managed, and eventually eradicated. This report reflects the Task Force’s substantial efforts over the past three years to better understand the costly nature of interpersonal violence and develop concrete recommendations to address it, and to prove that Halving Global Violence is more than an aspiration or a talking point. It is achievable and an imperative that leaders and policymakers at every level of governance and across sectors can advance. Failing to act on the evidence makes us complicit in the deaths and suffering that occur and the damage that violence causes both present and future generations. We have the knowledge and tools to achieve radical reductions in violence globally  

New York: New York University Center on International Cooperation, July 2024, 108p.

By Yulia Krylova

Abstract

Criminal networks engaged in the illicit cigarette trade exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of external threats and the evolving landscape brought about by the Russia-Ukraine war. They adeptly navigate these challenges by swiftly altering smuggling routes, modifying their methods of operation, broadening their array of activities, collaborating with other criminal enterprises, and implementing innovative tactics. The financial recession and inflation in Europe provide additional incentives for smugglers to predate on increasing demand for cheap illicit goods due to the worsened economic conditions experienced by many households. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had a significant impact on cigarette smuggling activities both in Eastern Europe and the European Union, disrupting some of the previously popular routes, including land routes for smuggling illicit cigarettes from Belarus and sea routes for smuggling tobacco products from the United Arab Emirates, China, Turkey, and other countries through Ukraine’s seaports to the European Union. Similarly, the war has affected cigarette production capacities in Ukraine. With internal production sites under pressure, illicit cigarette manufacturing has been moving to other European countries beyond Ukraine’s borders, with criminal groups trying to overtake its market share. The current trend related to an increase in the number of illicit tobacco factories in the European Union demonstrates how fast criminal networks adjust their modus operandi to a new environment.

  Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 6(2): pp. 1–18..   2024.

Edited by Sareta Ashraph, Carmen Cheung Ka-Man, and Joana Cook

  Beginning in 2013 and accelerating throughout 2014, the armed group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym, Da’esh), seized large swathes of territory in a relentless campaign across Iraq and Syria. By August 2014, the Islamic State had declared its caliphate, with an estimated ten million people living under its control. Between 2013 and its territorial defeat in Syria in March 2019, ISIL committed numerous atrocity crimes, including genocide, murder, enslavement, sexual violence, torture, and forced displacement. Thousands of men, women, and children from more than 80 countries travelled to join ISIL during its reign. Many did so willingly, others were trafficked. Since the collapse of the self-declared caliphate, tens of thousands of suspected ISIL members or individuals linked to ISIL remain in custody in eastern Syria. Many are held without charge in makeshift prisons or camps notorious for substandard living conditions and precarious security. The vast majority of the detainees are women and children. Though ISIL is no longer considered capable of large-scale attacks within Iraq and Syria, its influence remains through its approximately 2,500 to 3,500 members and the risk of radicalization and recruitment within the camps is high. To address this difficult and dangerous situation and to advance accountability for IS crimes, some NGOs, the UN and some countries have urged the rapid repatriation of foreign detainees to their home countries. Many countries remain reluctant, however, to bring individuals back. For those countries that have repatriated and, in some cases, prosecuted ISIL-linked individuals, criminal charges have largely focused on terrorism-related offences without addressing the core international crimes–including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes–committed by the group. Thus, such prosecutions fall short of accountability for the full breadth and depth of ISIL’s crimes. Despite significant information relating to ISIL’s commission of crimes, investigators and prosecutors seeking to build criminal cases against individuals face multiple challenges, including linking crimes to specific individuals and understanding the why and how of ISIL operations, and the ideologies and systems that made these atrocities possible. It is only by developing a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding, that prosecutions of ISIL-linked individuals will render into the evidential and historical records the full dimensions of ISIL crimes. Recognizing this challenge, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) engaged in consultations with UN mechanisms, national prosecution units, and other stakeholders to identify specific knowledge gaps, particularly when it comes to proving elements of core international crimes committed by ISIL. From these conversations, CJA put out a call for papers, ultimately engaging eight experts on ISIL across various research disciplines to produce research addressing some of these evidentiary gaps. Each chapter is self-contained and may be read on its own. The resulting papers, now presented here as a book, examine many aspects of ISIL structure, ideologies, policies, and operations, ranging from its approach to the treatment of religious minorities, women, and children to an analysis of how its sophisticated and complex propaganda machine was used to incite violence. A resource for investigators and prosecutors, the papers aim to support the building of cases that reflect the full scope of the crimes committed by ISIL, beyond terrorism offences, and in so doing, carve a path to justice for victims, survivors, and their families.  

The Hague: ICCT Press 2024. 212p.

Edited by Véronique Boillet Sophie Weerts Andreas R. Ziegler 

Based on a series of themes and case studies, this book aims to illustrate the impact of sports policies and practices on individuals and their identities, and to analyze the potential solutions offered by International human rights law (IHRL) for these infringements. It bridges the gap between IHRL and sports studies, and will be useful to scholars in both fields, especially those unfamiliar with each other’s work. Furthermore, by investigating the context of sport and its governance, this collection offers a series of valuable insights, enabling the development of an interpretation of ‘law in context’ for legal scholars in the field of human rights. As the governance and regulation of sport are seen as illustrations of other forms of normativity, this book also contributes to the conversation about the transnational dimension of law and legal orders. In this respect, it illustrates that normative autonomy in the field of sport, associated with the idea of lex sportiva, tends to be relative regarding IHRL. The sporting environment is not disconnected from major contemporary social issues: it constitutes a public space in which injustices can be denounced, but also the theater in which prejudices are perpetuated against various parties, such as athletes or workers. IHRL commonly addresses attacks on individual dignity and social justice issues by guaranteeing rights to individuals and offering them protection mechanisms. In this context, can IHRL solve the problems encountered in the sporting environment? This is the question that animates this volume. 

Cham: Springer Nature.2024....355p..  

Editors: Susanna Johansson, Kari Stefansen, Elisiv Bakketeig, Anna Kaldal

This open access book contributes to ongoing discussions about how societies should respond to children who have experienced violence and abuse by delving into the Barnahus model: a multidisciplinary and co-located model whose aim is to provide both justice and recovery to victimised children. The promising model was first implemented in the Nordic region and is currently being diffused across Europe, although scientific knowledge about the model remains scarce: the Barnahus model’s potential for delivering holistic services, the various tensions and dilemmas involved in the model, and how dual mandate of Barnahus can be managed all require further research. Continuing from the volume Collaborating Against Child Abuse (2017) which examined the process of Barnahus’ diffusion in the Nordic countries, the current book digs deeper into the intrinsic institutional tensions of the model, as well as those that might arise during collaboration, in order to advance our understanding of what can be achieved through the model and thus improve the situation of child victims of violence and abuse. An institutional perspective is used in the book which is structured in four parts. The first three parts explore different types of institutional tensions –legal, organisational, and professional-ethical, while the fourth focuses on how these tensions may be balanced. The book’s authors chart this new phase in the diffusion and translation of the Barnahus model. Their analyses will provide valuable guidance to countries that are currently considering or are already implementing the model.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024. 

By Katrin Hohl and Elizabeth A. Stanko

The policing of rape is in permacrisis. This book addresses the question of why police investigations continue to fail most rape victim-survivors and puts forward a framework for what policing can do to change this. Low conviction rates and poor victim-survivor experiences are the hallmarks of the rape justice gap. Three decades of research, policy, and legal changes have tweaked rape investigations to alleviate some of their ills; however, for the majority of victim-survivors, the process remains gruelling. Police forces are notoriously resistant to reform, even in the face of rapidly declining public trust. The starting point of this book is the recognition that if we want profound change in policing, we must try something new. To do so, the authors move from asking "What is it about rape that makes it so difficult for police to investigate it well?" to asking "What is it about the police that makes it so difficult for police to investigate rape well?". Policing Rape sets out a practice-oriented theoretical framework for radically and sustainably transforming rape investigations, rape prevention, and the quality of officer engagement with victim-survivors. The authors reflect on the journey of putting this framework into practice within Operation Soteria Bluestone as a step on the path towards a radical transformation of rape policing. This book is essential reading for all those looking to understand and improve the policing of rape.

London; New York: Routledge, 2024. 196p.

By Christian Canu Højgaard 

Leviticus 17–26, an ancient law text known as the Holiness Code, prescribes how particular persons are to behave in concrete, everyday situations. The addressees of the law text must revere their parents, respect the elderly, fear God, take care of their fellow, provide for the sojourner, and so on. The sojourner has his own obligations, as do the priests. Even God is said to behave in various ways towards various persons. Thus, the law text forms an intricate web of persons and interactions. There is a growing awareness that ancient law texts were not arbitrary collections of legal paragraphs but articulations of certain world views. The laws were rational in their own respect and were based on the lawgiver’s ethos. However, since the ethical values of the lawgiver rarely—if ever—surface in the text itself, it has proven difficult to grasp with traditional, exegetical methods. This study offers a novel approach to mapping out the ethos of an ancient law text like Leviticus 17–26. By employing social network analysis, the participants and their interactions are mapped to scrutinize the ethical roles embodied by the persons of the law. To accomplish this, the study undertakes meticulous research into both the participants and the interactions of Leviticus 17–26. The book investigates a semi-automatic approach to extracting participant information from a text and offers new methods for analysing Hebrew interactions (realised as verbal predicates) in terms of dynamicity, causation, and agency. 

Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024. 464p.

By ARMIN VON BOGDANDY Translated by NAOMI SHULMAN Revised by THEODOR SHULMAN  

Many Europeans struggle to understand where European Union-centred Europeanization has led them. The standard response—that their situation is sui generis, one of a kind—no longer holds. Brexit, conflicts over European financial transfers, immigration, or dubious judicial reforms in some Member States demand a more substantial answer. Against that background, this book frames European integration by reconstructing European public law in the light of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). According to Article 2 TEU, all Europeans are today part of one society. European integration may not have produced a European state or people, but it has helped to create a European society. This society is interwoven with European public law as the Treaty characterizes it with 12 constitutional principles. The book interprets this statement as the manifesto, identity, and constitutional core of a democratic society. Thus, Europeans should understand that European integration has ushered in a European democratic society. This approach takes the bull by the horns because democracy represents the key concept in the struggle to understand and develop our society. On that basis, the book goes through many of the great debates of European public law and presents them in a new and forward-looking light.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2024. 337p.

Edited by Viljam Engström, Maija Mustaniemi‑Laakso and Laura Stark

Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book discusses the potential of social innovation in the pursuit of social justice in Africa. In the twenty-first century, social innovation and entrepreneurship have attracted renewed attention as a way of promoting social justice and addressing challenges of poverty and inequality. Drawing on perspectives from human rights, economics, business, development studies and anthropology, this book illustrates the entangled relationship between societal areas and activities, as well as different actors (individuals, communities, business actors, non-governmental organisations and public authorities) in social innovation. It identifies various models of social innovation, ranging from grassroots initiatives to public policymaking, and discusses their impact on socio-economic welfare. It analyses a broad range of original research data and incorporates localised understandings of social innovation, highlighting both the empowering potential of social innovation and the possibility that it could sustain or create inequalities. As such, this book deepens an understanding of what makes social innovation ‘social’ and ‘just’. Arguing that social justice innovation can only be understood in context, this book will be of interest for researchers and policy makers across the fields of human rights, economics, business, development studies, anthropology and African studies.

Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, Routledge, 2024. 247p.

By Joanna Kurowska-Pysz Eduardo Medeiros Hynek Böhm

The authors of this monograph were driven to delve into the challenges facing cross-border cooperation amidst crises and disruptions spurred by the adverse impacts witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included challenges to the implementation of cross-border projects, the activities of Euroregions, and the development of partnerships based on INTERREG programs, as well as other issues related to territorial cooperation.The confluence of the pandemic crisis and broader international geopolitical issues, such as illegal migration to the EU and geopolitical tensions like Russian aggression against Ukraine, underscores the imperative to explore new research avenues focused on bolstering the resilience of cross-border cooperation within the EU.With a focus on identifying key factors shaping the management of cross-border projects co-financed by INTERREG programs, as well as factors influencing partner cooperation, this study aims to fortify cross-border cooperation in the face of future crises and disruptions.The monograph offers valuable insights for institutions and organizations operating in border regions, catering specifically to theoreticians and practitioners engaged in cross-border cooperation. By distilling lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic period, it provides a roadmap for integrating resilience into future cross-border activities and endeavours.

Logos Verlag Berlin, 2024. 258p.

By William M. Wiecek

This ambitious book examines the constitutional and legal doctrines of the antislavery movement from the eve of the American Revolution to the Wilmot Proviso and the 1848 national elections. Relating political activity to constitutional thought, William M. Wiecek surveys the antislavery societies, the ideas of their individual members, and the actions of those opposed to slavery and its expansion into the territories. He shows that the idea of constitutionalism has popular origins and was not the exclusive creation of a caste of lawyers. In offering a sophisticated examination of both sides of the argument about slavery, he not only discusses court cases and statutes, but also considers a broad range of "extrajudicial" thought—political speeches and pamphlets, legislative debates and arguments.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

By Angela Lindt

Peru's industrial mining sector is highly conflictual and characterized by social disputes. Many of these conflicts are fought not only in politics but also in the courts, as activists attempt to hold corporate and state actors liable for human rights violations. At the same time, they face an increasing criminalization of their protests. Law is thus both an emancipatory tool for activists to access justice and an instrument for political and economic elites to prevent social change. Based on ethnographic field work, Angela Lindt sheds light on various mining disputes in Cajamarca and Piura and examines the role of law in resolving these conflicts.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023. 261p.

July 1828 to June 1832

Edited by Philip Schofield, Tim Causer, and Chris Riley

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 13 contains authoritative and fully annotated texts of all known and publishable letters sent both to and from Bentham between 1 July 1828 and his death on 6 June 1832. In addition to 474 letters, the volume contains three memorandums concerning Bentham’s health shortly before his death, his Last Will and Testament, and extracts from both the Autobiography and the manuscript diaries of Bentham’s nephew George. Of the letters that have been previously published, most are drawn from the edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham, prepared under the superintendence of Bentham’s literary executor John Bowring. A small number of letters have been reproduced from newspapers and periodicals. This volume publishes for the first time all the extant correspondence between Bentham and Daniel O’Connell, the Irish Liberator. Other new acquaintances included Charles Sinclair Cullen, barrister and law reformer, and John Tyrrell, the Real Property Commissioner. Throughout the period, Bentham maintained regular contact with old friends and connections, but he also entered into sporadic correspondence with such leading figures in government as the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel and Henry Brougham. Further afield, Bentham corresponded, amongst others, with the Marquis de La Fayette in France, Edward Livingston in the United States of America and José del Valle in Guatemala.

London: UCL Press, 2024. 712p.

By Paul McGorrery

In sentencing an offender, courts take many factors into account, such as the seriousness of the offence, the offender’s prior record, their age, whether they pleaded guilty and many others. In Australia, courts do this through an approach known as instinctive synthesis, meaning they consider all the factors that can justify a sentence being more or less severe and then arrive at a final outcome. One of the factors that courts may take into account is whether the offender has already been punished in some fashion outside the criminal justice process. Known as extra-curial punishment3 (or extra judicial or natural5 punishment) this can take various forms such as visa cancellation,6 loss of chosen career, injury to the offender8 and hardship to the offender’s family. This report is concerned with just one form of extra-curial punishment: adverse media coverage, in particular, of people. The media and the courts have an important and symbiotic relationship, but sometimes their interests can diverge. The media have an interest in reporting on criminal justice matters because they are often stories of considerable interest to their audiences. In reporting on those stories, the media often concentrate their attentions ‘on the exceptional and unusual among serious crimes’, which can lead to ‘intense and often emotive media reporting’ about sentencing. This can run the risk of undermining, rather than promoting, confidence in the justice system.

Courts in turn have an interest in having their decisions reported. Confidence in the judicial arm of the criminal justice system relies on a combination of community awareness about what courts do, the transparency of their work, and the apparent fairness of their decisions, which can only be scrutinised if there is transparency and community awareness. Moreover, the sentencing purpose of general deterrence – whereby the sentencing of one offender is thought to deter other people from engaging in similar behaviour – is realistically only achievable (if at all) if the media and/or government operate as the conduit between the courts and the community. While some courts have taken the very laudable step of making most of their sentencing remarks publicly available, many people do not even have time to read media summaries, let alone original source material like sentencing remarks, especially in the social media age. So the community realistically only becomes aware of sentencing decisions through the media. The difficulty is balancing the need for fair coverage (the courts’ priority) with the need for interesting coverage (the media’s priority). Justice Harper has described the relationship as like a ‘Greek tragedy’ because ‘[e]ach is forced by its circumstances to face the other off, with neither having the flexibility necessary to reach a satisfactory working compromise’.

Malbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2022. 24p.

By David de Boer

For victims of persecution, attracting international awareness of their plight is often a matter of life and death. This book uncovers how in seventeenth-century Europe, persecuted minorities first learned how to use the press as a weapon to combat religious persecution. To mobilize foreign audiences, they faced an acute dilemma: how to make people care about distant suffering? This study argues that by answering this question, they laid the foundations of a humanitarian culture in Europe. The book reveals how, as consuming news became an everyday practice for many Europeans, the Dutch Republic emerged as an international hub of printed protest against religious violence. It traces how a diverse group of people, including Waldensian refugees, Huguenot ministers, Savoyard officeholders, and many others, all sought access to the Dutch printing presses to raise transnational solidarity for their cause. By examining their publicity strategies, this study deepens our understanding of how people tried to confront the specter of religious violence that had haunted them for generations.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023. 225p.

By Hsuan L. Hsu

Perhaps the most popular of all canonical American authors, Mark Twain is famous for creating works that satirize American formations of race and empire. While many scholars have explored Twain’s work in African Americanist contexts, his writing on Asia and Asian Americans remains largely in the shadows. In Sitting in Darkness, Hsuan Hsu examines Twain’s career-long archive of writings about United States relations with China and the Philippines. Comparing Twain’s early writings about Chinese immigrants in California and Nevada with his later fictions of slavery and anti-imperialist essays, he demonstrates that Twain’s ideas about race were not limited to white and black, but profoundly comparative as he carefully crafted assessments of racialization that drew connections between groups, including African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and a range of colonial populations. Drawing on recent legal scholarship, comparative ethnic studies, and transnational and American studies, Sitting in Darkness engages Twain’s best-known novels such as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as well as his lesser-known Chinese and trans-Pacific inflected writings, such as the allegorical tale “A Fable of the Yellow Terror” and the yellow face play Ah Sin. Sitting in Darkness reveals how within intersectional contexts of Chinese Exclusion and Jim Crow, these writings registered fluctuating connections between immigration policy, imperialist ventures, and racism.

New York: NYU Press.2015.

By Markus Nehl

Markus Nehl focuses on black authors who, from a 21st-century perspective, revisit slavery in the U.S., Ghana, South Africa, Canada and Jamaica. Nehl’s provocative readings of Toni Morrison’s »A Mercy«, Saidiya Hartman’s »Lose Your Mother«, Yvette Christiansë’s »Unconfessed«, Lawrence Hill’s »The Book of Negroes« and Marlon James’ »The Book of Night Women« delineate how these texts engage in a fruitful dialogue with African diaspora theory about the complex relation between the local and transnational and the enduring effects of slavery. Reflecting on the ethics of narration, this study is particularly attentive to the risks of representing anti-black violence and to the intricacies involved in (re-)appropriating slavery's archive.

Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, 2016. 213p.

By Dimitri A. Bogazianos

In 2010, President Barack Obama signed a law repealing one of the most controversial policies in American criminal justice history: the one hundred to one sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder whereby someone convicted of “simply” possessing five grams of crack—the equivalent of a few sugar packets—had been required by law to serve no less than five years in prison. In this highly original work, Dimitri A. Bogazianos draws on various sources to examine the profound symbolic consequences of America’s reliance on this punishment structure, tracing the rich cultural linkages between America’s War on Drugs, and the creative contributions of those directly affected by its destructive effects.

Focusing primarily on lyrics that emerged in 1990s New York rap, which critiqued the music industry for being corrupt, unjust, and criminal, Bogazianos shows how many rappers began drawing parallels between the “rap game” and the “crack game." He argues that the symbolism of crack in rap’s stance towards its own commercialization represents a moral debate that is far bigger than hip hop culture, highlighting the degree to which crack cocaine—although a drug long in decline—has come to represent the entire paradoxical predicament of punishment in the U.S. today.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 216p.

by Gregory Forter

Though American crime novels are often derided for containing misogynistic attitudes and limiting ideas of masculinity, Greg Forter maintains that they are instead psychologically complex and sophisticated works that demand closer attention. Eschewing the synthetic methodologies of earlier work on crime fiction, Murdering Masculinities argues that the crime novel does not provide a consolidated and stable notion of masculinity. Rather, it demands that male readers take responsibility for the desires they project on to these novels.
Forter examines the narrative strategies of five novels--Hammett's The Glass Key, Cain's Serenade, Faulkner's Sanctuary, Thompson's Pop. 1280, and Himes's Blind Man with a Pistol--in conjunction with their treatment of bodily metaphors of smell, vision, and voice. In the process, Forter unearths a "generic unconscious" that reveals things Freud both discovered and sought to repress.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2000. 278p.

By Martha Grace Duncan

An ex-convict struggles with his addictive yearning for prison. A law-abiding citizen broods over his pleasure in violent, illegal acts. A prison warden loses his job because he is so successful in rehabilitating criminals. These are but a few of the intriguing stories Martha Grace Duncan examines in her bold, interdisciplinary book Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons.
Duncan writes: "This is a book about paradoxes and mingled yarns - about the bright sides of dark events, the silver linings of sable clouds." She portrays upright citizens who harbor a strange liking for criminal deeds, and criminals who conceive of prison in positive terms: as a nurturing mother, an academy, a matrix of spiritual rebirth, or a refuge from life's trivia. In developing her unique vision, Duncan draws on literature, history, psychoanalysis, and law. Her work reveals a nonutopian world in which criminals and non-criminals--while injuring each other in obvious ways--nonetheless live together in a symbiotic as well as an adversarial relationship, needing each other, serving each other, enriching each other's lives in profound and surprising fashion.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1996. 284p.