Theme: Crime

I am not talking here about Jodi Arias’ obvious penchant for blood (or the way blood was splashed all over that bathroom and hallway as she butchered her on-again and off-again lurid lover, and all the images thereof, implied and actual, that we’ve been subjected or treated to). I am talking about the mob’s need for blood. I am talking about human need. I am talking, of course, about our need.Read more

When Tina Fly was eight years old, she put a firecracker in a classmate’s ear. Tina was a nearly illiterate child. The incessant teasing by other students compounded her behavioral problems, like the fire cracker incident, and eventually she was put in special classes. Her mother, Genia Jackson, remembers a doctor prescribing Ritalin for Tina when she was nine, which was the beginning of years of trips to the physician and psychologist.Read more

In the years before the American War of Independence, Colonial merchants were leading players in the Atlantic smuggling economy, most notably in the illegal importation of molasses from the West Indies for distilleries in New England. Read more

The cultural practice of the "perp walk" is a form of social performativity. The perp walk itself is not a performance, singular. Rather, it is a myriad of happenings, spectacles that are historically and ontologically specified, a genre of modern pop ritual recognized and claimed as an informal aspect of the judicial system, most specifically within the United States of America. Read more

Since the sad death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, there has been a lot of discussion of the extent to which the criminal prosecution hanging over him contributed to his suicide. Some have pointed their fingers at MIT, suggesting that, by failing to waive its complaint against him for using its network to download files, the university bears some responsibility for his suicide. MIT has now set up an internal investigation.Read more

Award-winning investigative reporter Ahmet Sik is no stranger to danger. In 1998, he was hospitalized after a pro-police mob, furious about a murder conviction against several cops in a torture case, attacked the victim’s lawyers, the prosecutor, and journalists.Read more

When Judge Hoffman mounted the bench in his courtroom on September 24, 1969, his marshal Ron Dobroski banged the gavel and there was the shuffle and stir of everyone rising—everyone except seven of the defendants. Judge Hoffman never seemed so slight as, with his right hand tucked in a languid Napoleonic fashion into his black robe, he looked over the courtroom. Read more

Perhaps no History in the World, either ancient or modern, can produce an Instance of any one Man's Life fill'd with so many calamitous Circumstances, as That of the unhappy young Gentleman, who is the melancholy Subject of the following Sheets; his Misfortunes may be said to be begun, if not strictly before he had a Being, yet, before his BirthRead more

While this has a certain superficial appeal, it can easily be countered. First, stealing from the porn industry is still stealing. Second, stealing from the porn industry does not seem to do anything to counter any moral badness of the industry-that is, the theft cannot be justified on the grounds that it makes things morally better. Read more

Jack “Legs” Diamond is little remembered today, but for the last eighteen months of his life he rivaled Al Capone as the most famous gangster in Prohibition Era America. Whereas Capone was famous for being the CEO of the largest criminal enterprise in the U.S., Jack was famous for getting shot, beating the rap and carrying on a highly publicized extra-marital affair with his Ziegfeld showgirl mistress.Read more

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Repetition, according to Hegel, plays a crucial role in history: when something happens just once, it may be dismissed as an accident, something that might have been avoided if the situation had been handled differently; but when the same event repeats itself, it is a sign that a deeper historical process is unfolding. Read more

The wonderful American poet Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent lecture about poetry that “this year, a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that one out of every 136 residents of the United States is behind bars—many in jails, unconvicted.” Read more

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Flanders’s book is more than a catalogue of crimes and their subsequent incarnations in popular culture. Over 500 pages it builds into an alternative history of the Victorian ageRead more

Female “outlaws” have been a staple of American popular culture at least since the 1830s. James Gordon Bennett used the murder of prostitute Helen Jewett to cash in on public repulsion-fascination.Read more

The year I turned thirteen, my father took me and my elder brother, Yemi, to Lagos’s Bar Beach to witness the death by firing squad of the notorious armed robber Lawrence “The Law” Anini and his gang of seven robbers. A few years later my brother Yemi was also to die by firing squad as an armed robber. Read more

He himself might be one of just another confused but adamant sect. This idea had crossed his mind, since he was certain there was much to repay or regain from his past woes and he knew who had burned the small church on the verge of Wall Doxey Park that Wednesday evening. None but himself. Read more

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