Life Sentences Blog

This page collects various materials that I use in my course “Crime and Punishment in American History.”  Some are required reading, and some are recommended.

Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 (George Lincoln Burr, ed. 1914) (excerpts).

Cesare Beccaria, Of Crimes and Punishments (2d American edition, 1819; originally published in Italian in 1764).

John Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777).

Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon (1791).

Gustave de Beaumont & Alexis de Toqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, and Its Application in France (Francis Lieber, trans. 1833).

Charles Dickens, “Philadelphia and Its Solitary Prison,” in American Notes: A Journey (1842).

National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, Reports on Prohibition Enforcement and Criminal Statistics (1931).

Website for Stanford Prison Experiment (1971).

Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Prisoners 1925-81 (1982).

Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Race of Prisoners Admitted to State and Federal Institutions, 1925-86 (1991).

Michael J. Klarman, “Scottsboro,” 93 Marq. L. Rev. 379 (2009).

Historical U.S. Census data.