Gresham M. Sykes

Fascinating selection of materials on Crime, of which there are few social problems that arouse greater public concern. Few books are better at opening a window into the main issues. The anthology includes historians(Alan Harding), novelists (Twain, Dostoevsky), philosophers (Plato, Hobbes), lawyers, judges (cases), anthropologists, biologists (Montagu), psychologists (Szasz), sociologists (Cressey, Bell), police, and criminologists.

Few Laws are enforced. Any casual observer of the current system of the administration of criminal justice knows as fact that "those responsible for the enforcement of criminal laws do not have sufficient resources to accomplish anything approaching full enforcement". [6, 214] Prosecutors still have authority to decline to enforce or simply fail to do so. [8]

"White collar crime" is included in the Index, with considerable, and well-deserved attention. Ambrose Bierce, living in the age of Robber Barons, wrote an essay on the ways in which a rogue achieves social legitimacy. [213]

Common law origins. "The beginnings of the Common Law are often placed in the twelfth century, but English society is of course much older, and as early as the seventh century the laws on which that society rested were remarkable for their vigour."[23] Alan Harding points out the historical development of the concept of crime as a wrong against the community rather than against a particular individual only. He does not mention Boadicea, but cites Bede's account of the missionaries from Rome arriving in Kent in 597, issuing Roman laws [23]. Peace was called protection [24]. A great mass of customary rules appear to prevent "fraudulent selling", the source of a majority of the cases of violence. [25]

Dostoevsky was imprisoned for years at the fortress of Omskin, Siberia, with thieves, murderers, and other political prisoners. His experiences were the basis for one of the great books documenting what it means to serve a prison term--The House of the Dead.

Paul Goodman describes our "missed revolutions", arguing that crime cannot be solved with bits and pieces of more police, bigger prisons, or therapy, but rather a better society, in which opportunities abound, and violence and deprivations no longer have a place. [421]

The Postscript: "[W]e finish with questions, not answers; unresolved disputes, not final verdicts; uncertainties, not a clear path to a proven cure. There are some people, undoubtedly, for whom such ambiguities are intolerable. We suspect, however, that the ability to live with these ambiguities, to exist in a state of tension with conflicting goals and a slowly receding ignorance, is a necessary element in the search for a just social order in which the "crime problem" is kept in perspective."… (mere)