By Graeme R. Newman and Claude AI.

LIs probation mercy, or is it a serious way of changing lives?

In 1933 probation was in use in every state, and no one could say what it accomplished. Probation and Criminal Justice, edited by Sheldon Glueck of the Harvard Law School, brought together judges, social workers, a psychiatrist, a criminologist, the builder of the new federal system, and four foreign authorities to ask how it should be done. Their answer: probation succeeds or fails according to the people who run it, and a community that wants its benefits must pay for good officers and be honest about how little it knows.

This Reader's Guide explains the arguments in plain language, supplies the history and law, and shows what has changed since. Inside are a chapter map, a worked example that turns the book's own numbers into caseloads and costs, common misreadings, and discussion questions.

A companion to the original, for students, practitioners and curious readers.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.64.

By Trevor J. Saunders

This book assesses Plato's penal code within the tradition of Greek penology. Saunders provides a detailed exposition of the emergence of the concept of publicly controlled, rationally calculated, and socially directed punishment in the period between Homer and Plato. He outlines the serious debate that ensued in the fifth century over the opposition by philosophers to popular judicial assumptions, and shows how the philosophical arguments gradually gained ground. He demonstrates that Plato advanced the most radical of the philosophical formulations of the concept of punishment in his Laws, arguing that punishment is or should be utilitarian and strictly reformative. This first comprehensive and detailed study of Plato's penology gives deserved attention to the works of a most important political and legal thinker.

Oxford, UK; New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford, 1991. 438p.

By Alfred Trumble, editor of “the collector”.

“…Charles Dickens had a deep and abiding interest in that grim accessory to civilization, the prison. He not only went jail hunting whenever opportunity offered, but made a profound study of the rules, practices and abuses of these institutions. Penology was, in fact, one of his hobbies…These papers, therefore, consist of personal knowledge, as a voluntary visitor, be it understood, of Newgate.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. London Suckling & Galloway (1896) 107 pages.