Graeme Newman (Editor)), Charles Mercier (Author)

In 1894, Dr. Charles Mercier sat down and wrote the single most thorough, most humorless, and — accidentally — most hilarious operations manual of the Victorian age: a complete instruction guide for running a lunatic asylum.

He was not joking. That's what makes it so funny.

Inside you'll find firm, unblinking rulings on corridor widths, the correct pitch of a drainage floor, how far apart the beds in a dormitory ought to be, the precise duties of a kitchen clerk, how to test food for adulteration, what a chaplain is and is not obliged to do, and the delicate diplomatic art of writing an annual report that satisfies the Commissioners in Lunacy without saying anything interesting at all. It is, in the truest sense, a nineteenth-century employee handbook — written with the complete sincerity of a man debating corridor widths as though they were points of theology.

It is also, in its own quiet way, a genuinely important document of early psychiatric reform: a serious argument, from inside the institution, that "no restriction is justifiable that is not required by the circumstances of the individual case." Mercier was working to drag asylum management out of the era of chains and toward something resembling human dignity — even as he remained, in every visible way, a man entirely of 1894.

This new edition restores Mercier's original text — correcting the date long misattributed as 1918 — resets it for modern readers, and adds a new introduction by Graeme R. Newman situating the book, its author, and its unintentional comedy for the twenty-first century.

What's inside:

• The complete original text of Mercier's 1894 classic, unabridged and unaltered

• A new introduction on Mercier, Victorian asylum reform, and why the book still lands as comedy

• 26 chapters covering housing, food and clothing, occupation and amusement, detention and care, and staff — the entire operational anatomy of a Victorian institution

For readers who enjoy:

• The history of medicine, psychiatry, and institutional reform

• Victorian architecture and design

• Deadpan bureaucratic writing, workplace-manual humor, and primary sources that are funnier than they meant to be.

By Jonas Ring and David Shannon

The significance of socioeconomic background factors for whether or not individuals become involved in crime has been widely discussed in the field of criminology, and the research literature in this field is extensive. The aim of this report is to provide an easily accessible overview of the knowledge that has been produced by this research. The report’s findings are based on a literature review that includes narrative reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, as well as individual studies that have examined individual-level differences in offending in relation to socioeconomic background factors. The review is based primarily on studies published by researchers in the United States, the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe, but also includes a number of studies from other parts of the world. Different studies have used different indicators of socioeconomic background, such as parents' socioeconomic status or levels of education or income, or the family's financial resources in some other sense. The review proceeds on the basis of these studies’ own definitions and measures of socioeconomic background or related concepts, such as social class. The review presents findings from research based on both registered and self-reported crime. 

 English summary of Brå report 2023:3

By Joanna Perry, et al.

This guide supplements existing ODIHR guidance on prosecuting hate crime by outlining the legal and conceptual differences between hate crime and criminalized ‘hate speech’; outlining the consequences of misapplying ‘hate speech’ provisions to prosecute hate crime, providing practical guidance on how to avoid this; and making recommendations on how to improve practice at the national level. It does not provide guidance on how to handle individual cases of any form of criminalized ‘hate speech’, nor does it suggest what forms of behaviour should be criminalized.

The guide includes the Prosecutor Decision Tree tool, which shows how hate crime provisions should be applied and how they are distinguished from criminalized ‘hate speech’; it also maps other relevant offences at the intersection of hate crime and criminalized ‘hate speech’.

Prague: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 2024. 90p.

By Ariana Markowitz 

This research explores how urban violence intersects with mass atrocities to establish identity-based mass violence (IBMV) in cities as a cross-disciplinary field of scholarship and practice. Cities affect mass violence in three main ways. First, cities offer places and reasons to gather. Second, neighborhoods, mobility infrastructure, utility systems, and other city spaces can be read as proxies for specific groups of people. Third, violence can be both a cause and a symptom of urbanization, a uniquely urban process by definition, such that urbanization can be one way to mortally wound a city. Scholars and practitioners working to prevent urban violence and the atrocity prevention community have more that unites than divides them, and preventing urban atrocities requires the active engagement of them all. Nine case studies of IBMV from Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Mazar-i Sharif, Afghanistan; Kaduna, Nigeria; San Salvador, El Salvador; Nairobi, Kenya; Flint, Michigan, USA; Aleppo, Syria; Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; and Jerusalem, Israel, illustrate the multiplicity of forms that such violence can take. The cases aid in the development of a typology of urban atrocities, a tool to identify potential risk and protective factors. An overall finding is that the local context and the built environment were salient for efforts to prevent mass violence. This was especially true where the city (1) was an enclave or was divided into enclaves, (2) had a place of encounter where groups in conflict were likely to cross paths, or (3) experienced a recent political shock. Attackers sought to dehumanize their victims as often as they sought to kill them and were most likely to define their victims based on religion. Given the prevalence of cases that featured enclaves, places of encounter, and recent political shocks, we mapped out how these values related to all other values and compared those results to the overall frequency analysis, revealing relationships that differed from what the overall frequency analysis would have predicted. Taken together, the cases shed light on four pivotal questions for preventing urban atrocities: – How does structural violence contribute to both acute and chronic mass violence in cities? – How does scaling atrocity prevention to the city affect the Responsibility to Protect? – How can municipal actors be better recognized, resourced, and empowered? – How can city residents and institutions work in partnership to take inclusive steps toward justice and healing? The analysis discusses urban vulnerability to lethal and especially nonlethal violence and unpacks the perils and possibilities of external involvement. By acknowledging the challenges to effective local peacebuilding while celebrating successful initiatives, this report establishes common ground between atrocity prevention and urban violence prevention, identifying five strategies to sustain and strengthen cities, their inhabitants, and the communities of scholarship and practice that support them. This research thus champions the fundamental role that cities play in reducing risk, building sustainable peace, and enabling community transformation. The report advocates for using urban space for justice and healing, learning from local peacebuilders, working with formal and informal actors and tools, identifying models of urban violence prevention practices, and committing to an inclusive ethics of care 

Muscatine, IA: The Stanley Center for Peace and Security, and Impact Partnere, 2020; 35p.

CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION, US. Department of Justice

• Tulsa Race Massacre: Violent attack on Black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, May 31-June 1, 1921.
• Massive Destruction: 10,000 white Tulsans destroyed homes, businesses; hundreds of Black residents killed.
• Law Enforcement’s Role: Deputized white residents participated in violence, looting, and arson.
• Failure of Justice: Authorities failed to help survivors; legal attempts for reparations were unsuccessful.
• Historical Reckoning: DOJ review acknowledges massacre’s impact, despite expired statutes of limitations.
• Legal Analysis: Modern laws could have prosecuted hate crimes, but were unavailable in 1921.
• Insurance Denials: Black residents denied compensation due to “riot clause” in policies.
• Federal Investigation: DOJ’s Cold Case Unit reviewed the events under the Emmett Till Act.
• Government’s Role: White officials obstructed rebuilding efforts, imposed restrictive fire codes.
• Survivors’ Plight: Left without resources, faced systemic racism and state-sanctioned brutality.
• Historical Documentation: Review includes survivor accounts, primary materials, and past investigations.
• Confrontation Trigger: Arrest of Dick Rowland and sensationalized newspaper article incited violence.
• Continued Efforts: Work to ensure future generations understand the massacre’s magnitude continues.

CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION, US. Department of Justice. 2025. 126p

May Contain Markup

By Murray Clark Havens, Carl Leiden & Karl M. Schmitt

Nature of Assassination: The book explores the definition, scope, andstate of knowledge on political assassinations, emphasizing their impact on political systems.

Case Studies: It includes detailed case studies of notable assassinations,such as Martin Luther King Jr., Henrik Verwoerd, and Patrice Lumumba,analyzing the assassins, conspiracies, and impacts.

Impact Analysis: The authors discuss the varying impacts of assassinations, from negligible to destructive, on political systems,personnel, and policies.

Research Challenges: The book highlights the difficulties in studying assassinations, including data collection and interpretation, and calls for further research in this area.

Prentice-Hall, 1970, 174 pages

Edited by Edward .L Glaser and Claudia Goldin

Historical Context: The book explores the history of corruption and reform in America, highlighting how corruption was prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries, similar to modern developing regions.

Consequences of Corruption: It discusses the impact of corruption on corporate governance, municipal finance, and public works, showing how it hindered economic growth and governance.

Reform Efforts: The book examines various reform efforts, such as the rise of the informative press, bank chartering reforms, and publicutility regulation, which helped curb corruption.

References: The document contains numerous references and contributions from various scholars, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

The University of Chicago Press, 2006, 386 pages

By The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade

One of the key underlying conditions that makes countries more vulnerable to illicit trade is corruption, which erodes controls designed to prohibit illegal goods to move across borders, undermines law enforcement operations to detect or interrupt illicit trade, and contributes to impunity of illicit traders. 

A new report from the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) - Money Talks: The Crooked Connection Between Corruption and Illicit Trade - finds that corruption is affecting illicit trade worldwide. There is not a single sector of illicit trade that is not tainted by corruption, including agrifoods, alcohol, IUU fishing, forced labor, timber, or wildlife, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, precious metals, gemstones, tobacco products, petroleum, or counterfeiting. 

Examples of when corruption is encountered during illicit trading include when:

• Border agents and customs officials facilitate the movement of illicit goods.

• Law enforcement officials fail to report or investigate illegal operations, prevent arrests or release suspects.

• Government officials facilitate the fraudulent issuance of permits and licenses, allow quotas to be exceeded or interfere with regulatory inspections.

• Officials involved in the criminal justice process help evidence disappear during prosecutions, delay or drop prosecutions, or to return no convictions in the cases of those who are brought to trial.

• Furthermore, there is a robust correlation between corruption (as measured by Transparency International’s CPI) and illicit trade (as measured by the EIU’s Global Illicit Trade Environment Index).

The report finds that any successful steps to mitigate illicit trade will necessarily require strong and targeted measures to mitigate corruption and prevent corrupt actors from compromising the integrity of the global supply chain.

Based on the findings of the report, TRACIT has formulated a set of policy recommendations aimed at facilitating an effective response to corruption in the context of illicit trade. These recommendations provide a “checklist” of fundamental measures that governments are encouraged to implement to improve their ability to defend against the wider societal harms of illicit trade, with a particular emphasis on addressing the enabling role of corruption in perpetuating illicit supply chains.

New York: TRACIT, 2024. 72p.