By Todd Foglesong, Ron Levi, Léo Henry, Enrique Bouchot, Emma Wildeman

This report analyzes data on crime and violence across hundreds of cities and counties in the United States between 2014 and 2023 to appraise the relationship between violent crime and prosecutors deemed “progressive.” We find no evidence to support the claim that prosecutors of any type were responsible for the increase in homicide or other violent crimes before, during, or after the pandemic. Instead, we infer that fluctuations in violence and crime during this period are likely rooted in the changing social ecology of urban centers and rural areas. We recommend that further analyses of violent crime be supplemented by quantitative research on social inequality and qualitative research into the documented practices of prosecutors in cities and counties that record divergent patterns in violent crime.

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, 2024. 70p.

By David J. Rothman

From the cover: This book makes a unique and significant Contribution to American social history and so­cial policy. It explores, as no other work has done, the origins and consequences of the pro­grams that have dominated criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health in the twen­tieth century. David Rothman combines his skills as a historian with his knowledge of con­temporary social problems to interpret the practices of probation, parole, and indetermi- late sentences; the juvenile courts; the outpa­tient clinics; and the contemporary design of the penitentiary, the reformatory, and the men­tal hospital. Conscience and Convenience is a worthy suc- jessor to David Rothman’s prizewinning and uglily influential book. The Discovery of the \syhnn. Just as that volume analyzed the ori­gins of institutions for* the deviant and the de­pendent, so this study casts new light on the modern effort to reform the asylum and devise ilternatives for it. And once again, his appraisal urthers our understanding of the fundamental character of social order and disorder in the Jnited States.

The title points to the dynamic that is at the core of the book. Progressive-Era men and ,vomen of good conscience introduced the mea­sures mentioned above with the intention of iroviding individualized cure and treatment or the deviants and thereby solving the prob- ems of crime and mental illness. But to appre­ciate the fate of these reforms, one must reckon .vith convenience. Administrators, from war- lens to judges to mental hospital superin- endents, turned these procedures to their pwn advantage. The result was a hybrid pro­gram whose flaws we are only beginning to Imderstand.

Boston. Little, Brown and Co. 1980. 459p.