Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

Legal History: Crime and Punishment Research Guide

This guide details primary English and American resources on the history of crime and punishment.

Crime & Punishment - General Works

The history of crime and punishment has roots back in time, to Roman and Greek times, to the Middle Ages, with its punishments of stoning, burning, quartering, whipping, drowning and other violent acts. The administration of justice, criminal law and codes, penal institutions, transportation and colonization, are all part of the history of crime and punishment. Outlined below are some of the more interesting and useful works on the history of crime and punishment in England, Europe, America and Australia. Below here are general works, with a few biographies of those authors who were important writers in the analysis of criminal law. There are many more works available in the library than can be described here.

B1574.B33 I5 1996r
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Reprint of London, New York: Methuen, 1982. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

B1574.B3 1995r
Bentham, Jeremy. The Works of Jeremy Bentham. 11 vols. Reprint of: Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1843. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1995.

INTL
KD7865 .S44 1997
Bentley, D.R., ed. Select Cases from the Twelve Judges' Notebooks. London: J. Rees, 1997.

INTL
KDC910 .F37 1997
Farmer, Lindsay. Criminal Law, Tradition, and Legal Order: Crime and the Genius of Scots Law, 1747 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

KF4545.S5 F59 1987
Flanigan, Daniel J. The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom, 1800-1868. New York: Garland Pub., 1987.

INTL
HV9960.G72 E544 2001
Follett, Richard R. Evangelicalism, Penal Theory, and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in
England, 1808-30. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

KF9218.F68 1999
Foundations of Criminal Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Includes works by Kent Greenawalt, Richard Posner, Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant and many more, on crime, punishment and violence.

KF9219 .H39 1985
Henderson, Dwight F. Congress, Courts, and Criminals: The Development of Federal Criminal Law, 1801-1829. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1985.

HV6021.H583 1994
History of Criminology. Aldershot, England; Brookfield, Vt.: Dartmouth, 1994.

Includes essays by Jeremy Bentham, Samuel Romilly, Daniel Defoe and more on crime, punishment, prisons, criminal psychology and more.

KF9223 .K47 1993
Kerr, Derek Noel. Petty Felony, Slave Defiance, and Frontier Villainy: Crime and Criminal Justice in Spanish Louisiana, 1770-1803. New York: Garland Pub., 1993.

KF9390.A7 T74 1998
Kittrie, Nicholas N. & Eldon D. Wedlock, Jr. The Tree of Liberty: A Documentary History of Rebellion and Political Crime in America. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

INTL
KD8220 .L36 2003
Langbein, John H. The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

KF9223 .M38 1993
McManus, Edgar J. Law and Liberty in Early New England: Criminal Justice and Due Process, 1620-1692. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

KF9225 .P47 2000
Pestritto, Ronald J. Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.

INTL
KU3420 .N37 1994
Philips, David & Susanne Davies, eds. A Nation of Rogues? Crime, Law and Punishment in Colonial Australia. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994.

INTL
K170.P45 1970
Phillipson, Coleman. Three Criminal Law Reformers: Beccaria, Bentham, Romilly. Montclair, N.J.: P. Smith, 1970.

HV6046.E56 2000
Rafter, Nicole H. Encyclopedia of Women and Crime. Phoenix, Az.: Oryx Press, 2000.

KFC4195 .S74 2005
Steenburg, Nancy Hathaway. Children and the Criminal Law in Connecticut, 1635-1855: Changing Perceptions of Childhood. New York: Routledge, 2005.

INTL
KUC379.5 .W66 2002
Woods, G. D. A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 1788-1900.Sydney: Federation Press, 2002.