crime

• 
• SOURCE: Crosscut
  10/15/2021
  

  Beware "Rising Crime" Rhetoric in Seattle Politics

  by Dan Berger

  Progressive prosecutor candidates like Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in Seattle reflect a growing social movement to reverse decades of failed "tough on crime" policies that have accomplished little but swell the ranks fo the incarcerated, says a historian of crime and punishment.

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  10/4/2021
  

  Are Millennial Workers and Boomer Managers Destroying the Mafia, Too?

  Federal prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s decimated experienced middle-management ranks in New York's organized crime families. Are they struggling today because their remaining workforce consists of boomers who can't quit and millennials who are on their phones too much? 

• 
• 9/26/2021
  

  The Rogues Gallery: The Messy Growth of Modern Policing in Gilded Age New York City

  by John Oller

  John Oller's new book on the rise of the NYPD combines a history of the social dynamics of the booming city, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, and a gallery of colorful rogues – in and out of uniform – whose battles shaped American law enforcement for good and ill. 

• 
• 8/8/2021
  

  Drug Prohibition and the Political Roots of Cartel Violence in Mexico

  by Benjamin T. Smith

  Violence is not so much in the DNA of the drug trade as the DNA of drug prohibition. And until both American and Mexican police forces stop treating it like a war, the violence won’t stop.

• 
• SOURCE: Electronic Frontier Foundation
  7/29/2021
  

  It’s Time for Police to Stop Using ShotSpotter

  by Matthew Guariglia

  Surveillance systems intended to detect the auditory signature of a gunshot are inaccurate, meaning "police officers routinely are deployed to neighborhoods expecting to encounter an armed shooter, and instead encounter innocent pedestrians and neighborhood residents."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2021
  

  Supreme Court Rejects Sentence Reductions for Minor Crack Offenses

  Justices disagreed about what lessons to draw from the history of the 1986 Crime Bill that created the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offenses. Does the fact that some Black organizations at the time supported the law excuse its racist impact? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  6/14/2021
  

  Hyper-Segregation, Inequality, And Murder Rates — A Review Of “The Ecology Of Homicide”

  by Menika Dirkson

  The late historian Eric Schneider uses criminal court records to argue that Philadelphia's violent crime rate is an ecological phenomenon, in which public policy decisions and private actions created conditions for spikes in violence. 

• 
• SOURCE: HuffPost
  6/11/2021
  

  White House Pushes To Jump-Start Civil Rights-Era Cold Cases Board

  The White House has named nominees for the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, which will reexamine unsolved murder cases of the civil rights era.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  4/29/2020
  

  ‘I’ve Lost Everything to the Beast’: Reviewing 4 Books on MS-13

  by Rachel Nolan

  While the specter of the MS-13 gang has been central to political panics about immigration, the group's origins are American. A Latin American historian reviews four new books. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/24/2021
  

  Why America’s Great Crime Decline Is Over

  Sociologist Patrick Sharkey examines the trajectory of crime in modern America and rejects single-cause explanations. 

• 
• SOURCE: Ars Technica
  3/23/2021
  

  Stabbing, Crucifixion, Eaten by Eels: Learn all about Murder the Roman Way

  Historian Emma Souther's new book is a mix of the true crime genre and a history of crime and punishment in ancient Rome. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/11/2020
  

  51 Years Later, Coded Message Attributed to Zodiac Killer Has Been Solved, F.B.I. Says

  The FBI announced that a Virginia software developer led a successful effort to solve a coded message created by the notorious Bay Area serial killer. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/30/2020
  

  Why New York’s Mob Mythology Endures

  by Adam Gopnik

  "Generally, in Mob stories, the cute bits are not real, and the real bits are not cute. Given that grim truth, there’s something to be said for just shutting your eyes and repeating the cute bits." Some new books on the Mafia unfortunately follow the pattern. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/13/2020
  

  Thieves Grab Nazi Memorabilia in Museum Heists, Puzzling Police

  Since March, four museums in the Netherlands and Denmark have been broken into, and memorabilia, including Nazi uniforms, has been stolen. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  8/31/2020
  

  Even After Their Fearmongering Proves Wrong, Republicans Keep At It. Here’s Why.

  by Lawrence B. Glickman

  Trump's politics of fear are an extension of reactionary political rhetoric that dates back to the effort by right-wing leaders to argue that New Deal programs would lead to totalitarianism. 

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  8/6/2020
  

  News From the Dead

  by Eileen Sperry

  The experiences of convicted women who were "resurrected" after being unsuccessfully hanged illuminate the precarious legal and social standing of women in early modern England. 

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  7/29/2020
  

  Chicago Becomes a Stage for Fulfilling a Conservative Battle

  Conservatives have wanted the federal government to take control of crime in Chicago for decades — long before Trump got into politics.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Post
  7/24/2020
  

  UNC Wilmington Professor Mike Adams Found Dead in His Home

  The criminology professor had been praised by some as a champion of free speech and condemned by others as a purveyor of racist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted rhetoric. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/16/2020
  

  When Crime Photography Started to See Color

  A new book of crime photographs by the late Gordon Parks reveals the photographer's art and his efforts to fight back against dominant and frequently racist ways of depicting crime and law enforcement.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/31/2020
  

  The Flawed Politics of a Law-and-Order Campaign

  by Walter Shapiro

  Looking back at the early Nixon years with a half-century’s hindsight actually offers reasons to hope. Even in 1968 and the divisive 1970 congressional elections that followed, voters were not easily gulled by Republican rabble-rousing.