Routledge History of Crime in America

Covering a broad chronology from the colonial era to the present, this volume’s 28 chapters reflect the diverse approaches, interests and findings of an international group of new and established scholars working on American crime histories today.

The book is organized around major themes in crime history, including violence, science and technology, culture, gender and organized crime, and it addresses pressing contemporary concerns such as mass incarceration and the racial politics of crime in modern America. It also engages with the history of crime literature, film and popular culture from colonial execution sermons to true crime television in the twenty-first century. The volume is alert to continuities and diversity over time and place in the history of American crime, notably in chapters on the South, the West and the impact of urbanization on practices and ideas about crime and law enforcement in different periods of the American past.

The Routledge History of Crime in America is an indispensable, interdisciplinary resource for students and researchers working in areas of crime, crime policy, punishment, policing and incarceration.

James Campbell is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Leicester, UK. He has published on histories of crime, punishment and law in the United States, Jamaica and the British Empire and is currently working on the history of the death penalty and its abolition in Britain’s last colonies.

Vivien Miller is Professor of American History at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her publications cover murder, rape, kidnapping, fraud, theft, convict leasing, chain gangs, prisons, capital punishment, organized crime and racetrack corruption. She is currently working on the history of acid crime in the urban-industrial United States.