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PUNISHMENT

Hanging in Chains

By Albert Hartshorne.

‘And humanity would recoil to-day with abhorrence from the actual gibbet, sensation itself would be stunned at the punishment for High Treason, the drawing and quartering of patriots, whose names may shine in history " through their tears like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream." It will be borne in mind that the gallows and the gibbet are the most ancient instruments of capital punishment in the world.’ NY. Cassell Publishing (1893) 160p.

Executing Magic in the Modern Era

By Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni.

Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine. This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lacerated bodies of Roman gladiators were used as a source of curative blood, for instance. In early modern Europe, a great trade opened up in ancient Egyptian mummies and the fat of executed criminals, plundered as medicinal cure-alls. However, this is the first book to consider the demand for the blood of the executed, the desire for human fat, the resort to the hanged man’s hand, and the trade in hanging rope in the modern era. It ends by look at the spiritual afterlife of dead criminals.

Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife. (2017) 122 pages.

In Russian and French Prisons

By Pëtr Kropotkin.

“My first acquaintance with prisons and exile was made in Siberia, in connection with a com- mittee for the reform of the Russian penal system. There I had the opportunity of learning the state of things with regard both to exile in Siberia and to prisons in Russia, and then my attention was attracted first to the great question of crime and punishment. Later on, in 1874 to 1876, 1 was kept, awaiting trial, nearly two years in the fortress of Peter and Paul at St. Petersburg, and could appreciate the terrible effects of protracted cellular confinement upon my fellow-prisoners.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1887) 123 pages.

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Southern Horrors

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Lynch Law in All Its Phases. “The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1892, 1893, 1894) 33 pages.

Lynch Law in Georgia

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

A Six-Weeks’ Record in the Center of Southern Civilization, As Faithfully Chronicled by the “Atlanta Journal” and the “Atlanta Constitution.” Also the full report ofLouis P. Levin. The Chicago Detective Sent to Investigate the Burning of Samuel Hose, the Torture and Hanging of Elijah Strickland, the Colored Preacher, and the Lynching of Nine Men for Alleged Arson. This Pamphlet is Circulated by Chicago Colored Citizens. 2939 Princeton Avenue, Chicago.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1899) 20 pages.

The Red Record

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States. “ From 1865 to 1872, hundreds of colored men and women were mercilessly murdered and the almost invariable reason assigned was that they met their death by being alleged participants in an insurrection or riot. But this story at last wore itself out. No insurrection ever materialized; no Negro rioter was ever apprehended and proven guilty, and no dynamite ever recorded the black man's protest against oppression and wrong.􏰎􏰍

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1895) 112 pages.

The Prison of Democracy

By Sara M. Benson.

Race, Leavenworth, and the Culture of Law. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens.

UC Press (2019) 209 pages.

Punishing the Criminal Corpse, 1700–1840

By Peter King.

Aggravated Forms of the Death Penalty in England. While eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historians have extensively studied the ‘Bloody Code’ and the resulting interactions around the ‘Hanging Tree’, they have largely ignored an important dimension of the capital punishment system – the courts extensive use of aggravated and post-execution punishments. With this book, Peter King aims to rectify this neglected historical phenomenon.

Palgrave (2017) 221 pages.

Representing Mass Violence

By Joachim J. Savelsberg.

Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur. “It has often been argued for the case of Rwanda that the United Nations’ and the US government’s reluctance to call the 1994 mass killings genocidal prevented an appropriate response and cost hundreds of thousands of additional lives. It thus matters whether we define mass violence as a form of genocide specifically, as criminal violence generally, or as something else altogether.”

UC Press. (2015) 363 pages.

Pirates of Empire

By Stefan Eklöf Amirell

Colonisation and Maritime Violence in Southeast Asia. “The suppression of piracy and other forms of maritime violence was a keystone in the colonisation of Southeast Asia. Focusing on what was seen in the nineteenth century as the three most pirate-infested areas in the region – the Sulu Sea, the Strait of Malacca and Indochina – this comparative study in colonial history explores how piracy was defined, contested and used to resist or justify colonial expansion, particularly during the most intense phase of imperial expansion in Southeast Asia from c. 1850 to c. 1920.”

Cambridge University Press. (2019) 278 pages.

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Anti-Lynching Crusaders

By Mrs. Mary B. Talbert and the anti-lynching crusaders..

Anti-Lynching crusaders are a band of women organized to stop lynching. Their slogan is: “A Million Women United To Stop Lynching.” They are trying to raise at least one dollar from every woman united with them and to finish this work on or before January 1st, 1923. ….How many people realize that since 1889 eighty-three women are known to have been lynched?

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1923) 8 pages.􏰁􏰂

Repealing The 8th

By Fiona De Londras and Máiréad Enright.

Reforming Irish abortion law. The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution was ratified in 1983,1 and provides—in the form of Article 40.3.3—that: “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.” At first glance, the 8th Amendment may seem innocuous or merely aspirational. However, over time this provision, which could have been read in dozens of ways, has come to ground a near-absolute prohibition on abortion in Irish law.

Policy Press. (2018) 165 pages.

Just and Painful 2nd Edition

By Graeme R. Newman

Not everyone will agree with this book. Some will say it is a case for torture. It is not. But everyone who reads it, especially those concerned that today's longer, tougher sentences are turning the U.S. into an "inmate nation"-will be forced to rethink exactly what we mean by punishment. And justice. This book Is for everyone outraged by crime-and by the chaos of our criminal justice system. Why, Graeme Newman asks, has reform after reform failed to halt the spread of crime? How can we demand long, mandatory sentences when voters refuse to spend the money to build more and bigger prisons? Does anyone know what to do with those who break the law? An exciting sequel “Civilization and Barbarism: Punishing Criminals in the 20th Century” published by SUNY Press, takes the argument way beyond anything before.

Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2021. 166p.

Vendetta (Italian Edition)

By Pietro Marongiu and Graeme R. Newman

Gli Autori di questo saggio, che costituisce una pietra miliare negli studi sulla Vendetta, sono eminenti criminologi che hanno riunito diverse suggestioni provenienti dalla storia, dall’antropologia, dalla sociologia, dalla letteratura classica e dalla mitologia nell’intento di migliorare la nostra comprensione della violenza, della giustizia penale e del vigilantismo nella società moderna. Partendo da diverse rappresentazioni classiche della Vendetta nei miti greci, nei drammi di Shakespeare, nell’Inferno di Dante Alighieri, nel folklore del selvaggio west, fino alle saghe contemporanee dei supereroi come Batman e Superman, vengono indagate le radici storiche e culturali del desiderio universale di restituire i torti subiti. Marongiu e Newman affermano che tutti i comportamenti vendicativi originano da un “elementare senso di ingiustizia, un sentimento primitivo di ribellione contro un potere tirannico contro il quale si è impotenti a reagire” e che tutte le vendette sono fondamentalmente motivate da un bisogno generale e insopprimibile di uguaglianza, giustizia e reciprocità. Il libro ricostruisce la nascita e i cambiamenti che il bisogno di vendetta ha subito nel corso dei secoli e come esso ha influenzato i nostri sistemi legali, i nostri codici morali e i miti della nostra cultura.

Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012. 152p.