By the President’s Commission of Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.
“This report is about crime in America — about those who commit it, about those who are its victims, and about what can be done to reduce it….The existence of crime, the talk about crime, the reports of crime, and the fear of crime have eroded the basic quality of life of many Americans.” From the Summary.
Harrow and Heston Classic reprint. (1967) 342 pages.
By Enrico Ferri.
The positive school of criminology was b born of the three lectures Ferri gave at the University of Naples in 1901. In these essays he makes the case for the importance, possibly supremacy, of social and economics causes of crime, in contrast to the then dominant theories of biological determinism, the idea of the “born criminal.” In much of his professional life he was driven by one cause that strikes a bell today in the 21st century: the cause of social justice.
Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1902.
By Enrico Ferri.
In this great Italian classic in criminology, its famed author Enrico Ferri describes it as “a work of propaganda and an elementary guide for anyone who intends to dedicate himself to the scientific study of offenders and of the means of prevention and social defense against them.” Published in 1892 and in English in 1896. The book emphasizes the link between crime causation and social justice, setting him apart from his criminal anthropologist forebears.
Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1896.
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 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 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.
“The pleasant fiction of the innocence.”
New York Scribner’s (1912) 256 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 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 Rebecca Stern.
In Home Economics: Domestic Fraud in Victorian England, Rebecca Stern establishes fraud as a basic component of the Victorian popular imagination, key to its intimate, as well as corporate, systems of exchange. Although Victorian England is famous for revering the domestic realm as a sphere separate from the market and its concerns, actual households were hardly isolated havens of fiscal safety and innocence. Rather, the Victorian home was inevitably a marketplace, a site of purchase, exchange, and employment in which men and women hired or worked as servants, contracted marriages, managed children, and obtained furniture, clothing, food, and labor. Alongside the multiplication of joint-stock corporations and the rise of a credit-based economy, which dramatically increased fraud in the Victorian money market, the threat of swindling affected both actual household commerce and popular conceptions of ostensibly private, more emotive forms of exchange. Working with diverse primary material, including literature, legal cases, newspaper columns, illustrations, ballads, and pamphlets, Stern argues that the climate of fraud permeated Victorian popular ideologies about social transactions. Beyond providing a history of cases and categories of domestic deceit, Home Economics illustrates the diverse means by which Victorian culture engaged with, refuted, celebrated, represented, and consumed swindling in familial and other household relationships.
Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2008. 207p.
Edited by CALS (Coalition of African Lesbians) and AMSHeR.
Violence against sexual minorities in Africa is rife. Persons belonging to or perceived to be members of the broad grouping ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI)’ are often victim of violence in African states. This violence is sometimes perpetrated by state actors, such as the members of the Police force, and more often by ordinary persons (non-state actors). By condoning violence by state actors, and by failing to diligently investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of these acts, states fail to respect the basic right to security of some of its citizens. By condoning these actions, or by failing to act effectively, the state also violates its human rights obligations. The argument of this report is not that sexual minorities deserve special protection, but that they are entitled to the rights all other citizens have – the right to security, liberty, life, dignity, and a fair trial.
As members of the African Union, states are party to and should abide by their obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter). Like several other regional and international human rights instruments, the African Charter guarantees freedom from discrimination, and equal protection and equality of individuals and peoples’ before the law (articles 2, 3 and 19). The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission), the body monitoring compliance with the African Charter, has in various communications presented to it denounced acts of discrimination on several of the listed grounds of discrimination and has clearly established that ‘other status’ (in article 2 of the Charter) can be broadly interpreted to include grounds other than those explicitly listed under that provision of the African Charter. The Commission made its first pronouncement on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues in its Concluding Observations on Cameroon’s periodic report of 2005 by expressing concern about the upsurge in intolerance towards sexual minorities. Most recently, the Chairperson of the Commission issued a statement on in April 2013 stating that the he Commission ‘equally denounces violence committed against individuals based on their sexual orientation as part of its mandate to protect individuals from all forms of violence’.
Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2013. 57p.
