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By Root 1904 0

and Disorder in the New Republic (1971). An excellent recent treatment, which puts Rothman and others under a revisionist searchlight, is Adam J. Hirsch, The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (1992). There is a modern edition of Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, with a foreword by Thorsten Sellin (1964). The penitentiary also figures in Hindus’s comparative study of Massachusetts and South Carolina, mentioned earlier; see also Shelley Bookspan, A Germ of Goodness: The California State Prison System, 1851-1944 (1991); Donald R. Walker, Penology for Profit: A History of the Texas Prison System, 1867-1912 (1988). For the twentieth century, there is James B. Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society (1977); John J. DiIulio, Jr., has written a useful review essay, “Understanding Prisons: The New Old Penology,” in Law and Social Inquiry 16:65 (1991). There are quite a few interesting firsthand accounts of prisons, prison life, and the like; see, for example, Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing (1932), written by a warden at Sing Sing. A great deal of useful information is to be found in Margaret Wemer Cahalan, Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850-1984, published by the Department of Justice in 1986. A very intelligent account of the social meaning of the recent rise in prison populations is Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, The Scale of Imprisonment (1991).

There is a sizable literature, too, on vigilantes and vigilante movements; and on law and order in the Wild West. It’s a mixed bag at best. Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (1975), is the most comprehensive book on the subject. Among other works may be mentioned Robert M. Senkewicz, Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco (1985); Philip D. Jordan, Frontier Law and Order: Ten Essays (1970); Glenn Shirley, West of Hell’s Fringe: Crime, Criminals and the Federal Peace Officer in Oklahoma Territory, 1889-1907 (1978); and Larry D. Ball, Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona, 1846-1912 (1992); Kevin J. Mullen, Let Justice Be Done: Crime and Politics in Early San Francisco (1989). Particularly interesting is the treatment of law and order in the West in Roger D. McGrath, Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier (1984). A related matter is taken up in Wilbur R. Miller’s Revenuers and Moonshiners: Enforcing Federal Liquor Law in the Mountain South, 1865-1900 (1991). Another study worth reading is Stephen Cresswell, Mormons, Cowboys, Moonshiners and Klansmen: Federal Law Enforcement in the South and West, 1870-1893 (1991). Paul Angle’s book, Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness (1952), which deals with a single American county (Williamson County, Illinois), is useful and very good reading, too.

Everybody (or almost everybody) loves a good mystery, and a good crime story; and there are many books dealing with this or that great American murder and the trials that ensued. I will mention only a few. For the nineteenth century, there is David Richard Kasserman, Fall River Outrage: Life, Murder, and Justice in Early Industrial New England (1986); and Raymond Paul, Who Murdered Mary Rogers? (1971). For later cases, see, for example, William M. Kunstler, The Minister and the Choir Singer (1964), on the famous Hall-Mills case; and Hal Higdon, The Crime of the Century: The Leopold and Loeb Case (1975). Some of these cases continue to fascinate generation after generation—the Lizzie Borden case most of all, it seems—and there are constantly new attempts to “solve” them (even those that do not seem to need to be solved). A good example of this genre is Robert Sullivan’s book The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman (1971) on the sensational mid-nineteenth century murder at Harvard. Sullivan argues strenuously that Dr. Webster, who was executed for the crime, was innocent after all. I for one was not convinced.

In recent years, there