History of Crime & Punishment
Dr. Mitchel Roth takes a big bite out of the history of the criminal justice in his latest book, examining the evolution of crime and punishment worldwide in An Eye for an Eye: A Global History of Crime and Punishment.
The book traces the history of crime back thousands of years to cultures that existed before the written word and how justice was dispensed before governments were formed. The book examines crime and punishment globally from a non-Western perspective and demonstrates how different cultural beliefs influence the methods of punishment, including public corporal and capital punishment. Dr. Roth also chronicles the transformation of punishment and the development of the modern penitentiary as governments became more centralized and countries adopted prison systems.
But despite these advances, Dr. Roth notes a remarkable continuity in the in the crimes that are committed and the sanctions used to punish them.
Vol 17 No 29