By Sally C. Curtin,  Betzaida Tejada-Vera, and Brigham A. Bastian

Objectives—This report presents final 2020 data on the 10 leading causes of death in the United States by age, race and Hispanic origin, and sex. Leading causes of infant, neonatal, and post-neonatal death are also presented. This report supplements “Deaths: Final Data for 2020,” the National Center for Health Statistics’ annual report of final mortality statistics. Methods—Data in this report are based on information from all death certificates filed in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2020. Causes of death classified by the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD–10) are ranked according to the number of deaths. Cause-of-death statistics are based on the underlying cause of death. Race and Hispanic-origin data are based on the Office of Management and Budget’s 1997 standards for reporting race and Hispanic origin. Results—In 2020, many of the 10 leading causes of death changed rank order due to the emergence of COVID-19 as a leading cause of death in the United States. The 10 leading causes of death in 2020 were, in rank order: Diseases of heart; Malignant neoplasms; COVID-19; Accidents (unintentional injuries); Cerebrovascular diseases; Chronic lower respiratory diseases; Alzheimer disease; Diabetes mellitus; Influenza and pneumonia; and Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis. They accounted for 74.1% of all deaths occurring in the United States. Differences in the rankings are evident by age, race and Hispanic origin, and sex. Leading causes of infant death for 2020 were, in rank order: Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities; Disorders related to short gestation and low birth weight, not elsewhere classified; Sudden infant death syndrome; Accidents (unintentional injuries); Newborn affected by maternal complications of pregnancy; Newborn affected by complications of placenta, cord and membranes; Bacterial sepsis of newborn; Respiratory distress of newborn; Diseases of the circulatory system; and Neonatal hemorrhage.   

Hyattsville, MD: National Vital Statistics Reports; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2023, 115pg

By Cordelia Heß

This book is the first study of the development of antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, based on an analysis of 150 books and pamphlets. The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic – the Swedish case provides new insights into this debate. Relying on medieval models, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews

Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. 194p.

Edited by Jessica Goodman and Olivier Ferret

"In 1760, the French playwright Charles Palissot de Montenoy wrote Les Philosophes – a scandalous farcical comedy about a group of opportunistic self-styled philosophers. Les Philosophes emerged in the charged historical context of the pamphlet wars surrounding the publication of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and delivered an oblique but acerbic criticism of the intellectuals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, including the likes of Diderot and Rousseau. This book presents the first high-quality English translation of the play, including critical apparatus. The translation is based on Olivier Ferret’s edition, and renders the text into iambic pentameter to preserve the character of the original. Adaptations are further provided of Ferret’s introduction and notes. This masterful and highly accessible translation of Les Philosophes opens up this polemical text to a non-specialist audience. It will be a valuable resource to non-Francophone scholars and students working on the philosophical exchanges of the Enlightenment. Moreover, this translation – the result of a year-long project undertaken by Jessica Goodman with six of her undergraduate French students – expounds the value of collaboration between scholar and student, and, as such, provides a model for other language tutors embarking on translation projects with their students."

Open Book Publishers, 2021. 234p.

By Dominick LaCapra

In 1857, following the publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert was charged with having committed an "outrage to public morality and religion." Dominick LaCapra, an intellectual historian with wide-ranging literary interests, here examines this remarkable trial. LaCapra draws on material from Flaubert’s correspondence, the work of literary critics, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of Flaubert. LaCapra maintains that Madame Bovary is at the intersection of the traditional and the modern novel, simultaneously invoking conventional expectations and subverting them.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. 224p.

By Barry Hough and Howard Davis

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known as a great poet and literary theorist, but for one, quite short, period of his life he held real political power — acting as Public Secretary to the British Civil Commissioner in Malta in 1805. This was a formative experience for Coleridge which he later identified as being one of the most instructive in his entire life. In this book, Barry Hough and Howard Davis show how Coleridge's actions whilst in a position of power differ markedly from the idealism he had advocated before taking office — shedding new light on Coleridge's sense of political and legal morality. Meticulously researched and including newly discovered archival materials, Coleridge's Laws provides detailed analysis of the laws and public notices drafted by Coleridge, together with the first published translations of them. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Hough and Davis identify the political challenges facing Coleridge and reveal that, in attempting to win over the Maltese public to support Britain's strategic interests, Coleridge was complicit in acts of government which were both inconsistent with the rule of law and contrary to his professed beliefs. Coleridge's willingness to overlook accepted legal processes and personal misgivings for political expediency is disturbing and, as explained by Michael John Kooy in his extensive introduction, necessarily alters our understanding of the author and his writing. Coleridge's Laws contributes in new ways to the current debates about Coleridge's achievements, British colonialism and its engagement with the rule of law, nationhood and the effectiveness of the British administration of Malta. It provides essential reading for anybody interested in Coleridge specifically and the Romantics more generally, for political and legal historians and for students of colonial government.

Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2010. 405p.

By Robert J. Sampson and L. Ash Smith

The social transformations of crime and punishment in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries challenge traditional conceptions of criminal propensity and character. A life-course framework on cohort differences in growing up during these times of social change highlights large-scale inequalities in life experiences. Entire cohorts of children have come of age in such different historical contexts that typical markers of a crime-prone character, such as being a chronic offender or having an arrest record, are as much a function of societal change as of an individual’s early life propensities or background characteristics, including classic risk factors emphasized in criminology. When we are thus matters as much as, and perhaps more than, who we are—despite law, practice, and theory privileging the latter. Because crime over the life course is shaped by changing socio-historical conditions, it must be studied as such. Multi-cohort studies provide a key strategy for doing so, inspiring a reconsideration of criminal propensity and policies premised on unchanging predictors of future criminality. Developmental and life-course criminology should elevate the study of cohort differences in social change and, ultimately, societal character.

Crime and Justice, Volume 50, 2021

By Mary Holper

This article examines evidence that the government presents in deportation proceedings against young men of color to prove that they are gang members. The gang evidence results in detention, deportation, adverse credibility decisions, and denial of discretionary relief. This article examines the gang evidence through the lens of the law’s use of presumptions and the corresponding burdens of proof at play in immigration proceedings. The immigration burden allocations allow adjudicators to readily accept the harmful presumption contained in the gang evidence—that urban youth of color are criminals and likely to engage in violent crime associated with gangs. The article seeks to explain how this racist assumption led to the creation of a gang database and proposes an evidentiary presumption that the gang evidence is not reliable, in order to specifically instruct the immigration adjudicator to reject the presumption society has put in place about urban youth of color and criminality. In this way, the article tracks common interests of critical race theory, by explaining how US society has subordinated people of color in the creation of gang databases, and seeking not only to understand, but to change this bond between law and racial power.

9 Brook. L. Rev. 119 (2023).

By Sjoukje van Deuren, Robby Roks & Teun van Ruitenburg

Outlaw biker clubs have drawn considerable attention of law enforcement agencies across European countries. Despite law enforcement efforts, the popularity of the outlaw biker subculture has been on the rise recently. There is, however, still little understanding of how individuals become engaged in the outlaw biker subculture. Using unique data from interviews with current members of the Dutch Hells Angels (N = 24), this article addresses the entry mechanisms into the club and how individuals become full-patched members. The results show that active recruitment by the Hells Angels MC and gradually growing into the club’s membership are common entering mechanisms. Pre-existing social ties, both on the club and the individual level, play a significant role for involvement in Dutch Hells Angels membership. Moreover, the Dutch Hells Angels apply various mechanisms to establish the trustworthiness, loyalty, and suitability of a person before becoming a full-patched member of the club.

Trends in Organized Crime, 2024.

By Gordon C. Chang

Ideas influence people. In particular, extremely well-developed sets of ideas shape individuals, groups, and societies in far-reaching ways. This book establishes these “idea systems” as an academic concept. Through three intense episodes of manipulation and mayhem connected to idea systems—Europe’s witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era “revolutions,” and the early campaign of the U.S. War on Terror—this book charts the cognitive and informational matrices that seize control of people’s mentalities and behaviors across societies. Through these, the author reaches two conclusions. The first, that we are all vulnerable to the dominating influence of our own matrices of ideas and to those woven by others in the social system. The second, that even the most masterful manipulators of idea programs may lose control of the outcomes of programmatic manipulation. Amongst this analysis, sixty-plus central conceptual terminologies are provided for readers to analyze multiform idea systems that exist across space, time, and cultural contexts.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. 415p.

By Richard Baxstrom, Todd Meyers

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female “hysterics” and the mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of “documentary” and “fiction.”

New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. 

By Chielozona Eze

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination is an interdisciplinary reading of justice in literary texts and memoirs, films, and social anthropological texts in postcolonial Africa.  Inspired by Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s robust achievements in human rights, this book argues that the notion of restorative justice is integral to the proper functioning of participatory democracy and belongs to the moral architecture of any decent society. Focusing on the efforts by African writers, scholars, artists, and activists to build flourishing communities, the author discusses various quests for justice such as environmental justice, social justice, intimate justice, and restorative justice. It discusses in particular ecological violence, human rights abuses such as witchcraft accusations, the plight of people affected by disability, homophobia, misogyny, and sex trafficking, and forgiveness.  This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature and films, literature and human rights, and literature and the environment.

Abington, Oxon, UK: New York: Routledge,    185p.

By Jonathan B. Durrant

Using the example of Eichstätt, this book challenges current witchcraft historiography by arguing that the gender of the witch-suspect was a product of the interrogation process and that the stable communities affected by persecution did not collude in its escalation. Readership: All those interested in the history of witch persecution, gender history, the history of the Catholic Reformation, and the history of early modern Germany.

Leiden; Boston: Brill,  2007.  317p.

By Alison Rowlands

Given the widespread belief in witchcraft and the existence of laws against such practices, why did witch-trials fail to gain momentum and escalate into 'witch-crazes' in certain parts of early modern Europe? This book answers this question by examining the rich legal records of the German city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a city which experienced a very restrained pattern of witch-trials and just one execution for witchcraft between 1561 and 1652. The author explores the factors that explain the absence of a 'witch-craze' in Rothenburg, placing particular emphasis on the interaction of elite and popular priorities in the pursuit (and non-pursuit) of alleged witches at law. By making the witchcraft narratives told by the peasants and townspeople of Rothenburg central to its analysis, the book also explores the social and psychological conflicts that lay behind the making of accusations and confessions of witchcraft. Furthermore, it challenges existing explanations for the gender-bias of witch-trials, and also offers insights into other areas of early modern life, such as experiences of and beliefs about communal conflict, magic, motherhood, childhood and illness. Written in a lively narrative style, this innovative study invites a wide readership to share in the compelling drama of early modern witch trials. It will be essential reading for researchers working in witchcraft studies, as well as those in the wider field of early modern European history.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003. 257p.

 By Lara Apps and Andrew Gow  

Gender at stake critiques historians' assumptions about witch-hunting as well as their explanations for this complex and perplexing phenomenon. The authors insist on the centrality of gender, tradition and ideas about witches in the construction of the witch as a dangerous figure. They challenge the marginalisation of male witches by feminist and other historians. The book shows that large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own right, in some regions, more men were accused than women. The authors analyse ideas about witches and witch prosecution as gendered artefacts of patriarchal societies under which both women and men suffered. They challenge recent arguments and current orthodoxies by applying crucial insights from feminist scholarship on gender to a selection of statistical arguments, social-historical explanations, traditional feminist history and primary sources, including trial records and demonological literature. The authors assessment of current orthodoxies concerning the causes and origins of witch-hunting will be of particular interest to scholars and students in undergraduate and graduate courses in early modern history, religion, culture, gender studies and methodology.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003. 201p

By Justyna Sempruch

In Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Justyna Sempruch analyzes contemporary representations of the “witch” as a locus for the cultural negotiation of genders. Sempruch revisits some of the most prominent traits in past and current perceptions in feminist scholarship of exclusion and difference. She examines a selection of twentieth-century US American, Canadian, and European narratives to reveal the continued political relevance of metaphors sustained in the archetype of the “witch” widely thought to belong to pop-cultural or folkloristic formulations of the past. Through a critical rereading of the feminist texts engaging with these metaphors, Sempruch develops a new concept of the witch, one that challenges traditional gender-biased theories linking it either to a malevolent “hag” on the margins of culture or to unrestrained “feminine” sexual desire. Sempruch turns, instead, to the causes for radical feminist critique of “feminine” sexuality as a fabrication of logocentric thinking and shows that the problematic conversion of the “hag” into a “superwoman” can be interpreted today as a therapeutic performance translating fixed identity into a site of continuous negotiation of the subject in process. Tracing the development of feminist constructs of the witch from 1970s radical texts to the present, Sempruch explores the early psycho-analytical writings of Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray, and feminist reformulations of identity by Butler and Braidotti, with fictional texts from different political and cultural contexts.

West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008. 198p.

By Esther Eidinow 

At the heart of this book are some trials conducted in Athens in the fourth century BCE. In each case, the charges involved a combination of supernatural activities, including potion-brewing and cult activity; the defendants were all women. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources, and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear; the reasons for taking these women to court, even condemning some of them to die, remain mysterious. This book takes the complexity and confusion of the evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social dynamics. It explores the changing factors—material, ideological, and psychological—that may have provoked these events. It focuses in particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes by which communities identified people and activities that were dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual, dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a time of perceived hardship. At first sight so puzzling, these trials come to provide a vivid glimpse of the sociopolitical environment of Athens during the early to mid-fourth century BCE, including responses to changes in women’s status and behaviour, and attitudes to particular supernatural/religious activities within the city. This study reveals some of the characters, events, and local social processes that shaped an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the legal boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the legal arena, but also with the active involvement of society beyond the courts.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. 440p.

Edited by Jude Browne and Maeve McKeown

What is Structural Injustice? is the first edited collection to bring together the voices of leading structural injustice scholars from politics, philosophy and law to explore the concept of structural injustice which has now become a central feature of all three disciplines and is considered by many to be a ‘field of study.’ The volume features specially selected original and essential works on structural injustice. The volume provides a range of disciplinary, ontological and epistemological perspectives on what structural injustice is and includes feminist and post-colonial theories to interrogate how structural injustice exacerbates and reproduces existing inequalities and relations of power. This book aims to become a touchstone text for those interested in the different ways we can understand structural injustice, how it manifests, how it relates to other forms of injustice, who is responsible for its redress and the different ways we might go about it. This book will appeal to a wide audience of students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, as well as the general academic population, experts on structural injustice, interested practitioners in politics and members of the public.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2024. 305p.

By Matt DeLisi, John Paul Wright, Rafael A. Mangual

Among many criminologists, advocates, and policymakers, it is an article of faith that the socioeconomic “root causes” of serious crime must be addressed in order to reduce lawbreaking. However, the enormous crime declines over the course of the late 1990s and early 2000s occurred without significant improvements in socioeconomic conditions. Even so, academics, policymakers, and criminal-justice advocates continue to insist that poverty drives offending rates and that it is thus essential for society to target poverty through increased social and capital investments. This paper explores a phenomenon that contradicts that claim—and, in fact, indicates that creating a system with enforced rules and consequences for lawbreaking is key to reducing crime. We call this: “crime as entitlement.” In the psychological literature, “entitlement” is a term that essentially refers to a frame of mind that prioritizes the whims, wants, and needs of the individual above the rights, desires, and needs of others. Entitlement thinking goes beyond normal selfishness because it elevates the belief that one is deserving of special treatment, unearned privileges, and respect—independent of effort. The consequences of entitlement thinking are devastating. Entitlement thinking divorces individuals from personal responsibility; it impedes recognition of the consequences that stem from the individual’s behavior; and it leads the individual to view wants and desires as rights whose pursuit is beyond reproach. The manifestation of entitlement in individual behavior is common—indeed, nearly universal— across humanity in early childhood. This is something to which anyone who has witnessed a toddler’s temper tantrum can attest. For most of us, entitlement is resolved early on in life, as the result of parenting, discipline, and the internalization of behavioral consequences. But for those whose self-absorption and self-centeredness remain unchecked, entitlement metastasizes, which can lead to imprudent and antisocial behavior. Over time, unchecked entitlement can breed arrogant self-indulgence and become foundational to conduct and personality disorders. The psychiatric and psychological science of entitlement is well established and far-reaching in its application. In the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, entitlement is defined as “unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations” and is one of the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder—a condition involving pervasive grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. Entitlement is an active ingredient in personality pathology where the exploitation and victimization of others are as essential to one’s daily needs as food and shelter. While entitlement does not always present itself in the form of criminal conduct, many criminal offenders—whose offending behavior ranges from disorderly conduct and confidence scheming to sexual predation and homicide—share commonalities in their mind-sets, their behavioral expectations, and their preferred responses to their own behavior. Those mind-sets and expectations, which are expounded on below, reveal entitlement as an important, yet underexplored, driver of a significant amount of criminal behavior. In his book Inside the Criminal Mind, Dr. Stanton Samenow argues: “Behavior is a product of thinking, and so it is incumbent upon anyone formulating policy or working with offenders to understand how criminals think.” To that end, we first explain the role of entitlement in criminal thinking patterns and, by extension, criminal behavior; and, second, we explore the policy implications of crime as entitlement.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022.  9p.

By Max Gallien

Researching illegal activities, while an object of increasing interest, generates a range of methodological challenges for political scientists. Rather than an exhaustive discussion, this article provides a simple framework that structures these challenges. It highlights that illegality itself is an insufficient guide to method development and needs to be supplemented by an analysis of three further dimensions: enforcement, normalisation and ethics. The article notes that beyond providing insights into the feasibility and challenges of different methodologies, examining these dimensions also directly point researchers to key political science questions about illegal activities themselves.

 Political Science & Politics, 1-5. doi:10.1017/S1049096521000317

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Celeste Barry and Luke Trinka

The United States experienced a 25% decline in its prison population between 2009, its peak year, and 2021. While all major racial and ethnic groups experienced decarceration, the Black prison population has downsized the most. But with the prison population in 2021 nearly six times as large as 50 years ago and Black Americans still imprisoned at five times the rate of whites, the crisis of mass incarceration and its racial injustice remain undeniable. What’s more, the progress made so far is at risk of stalling or being reversed.

Washington, DC, Sentencing Project. 2023, 34pg