There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. They are a blot upon civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed. -Clarence Darrow
CLARENCE DARROW'S Crime and Criminals, originally published by Charles H. Kerr in 1902, is not only one of the greatest works by the greatest attorney in U.S. history, it is also a little masterpiece in the literature of social criticism and the struggle for freedom.
In a few pages radiant with the forceful eloquence and dry humor for which he was so justly renowned, Darrow offers the man in the street-or more precisely in this case, in jail-a crash course in the theory and practice of law and criminology. He discusses what crime is, what causes it, why more people go to jail in winter than in summer, why the real criminals almost never go to prison, why punishment doesn't work, and-in the end-why the U.S. criminal justice system is in fact a system of injustice, a colossal and barbaric failure.
Today, when the "Prison-Industrial Complex" and its accomplices in local, state and federal government are trampling underfoot what little remains of the Bill of Rights, and locking up millions of the working poor, Darrow's radical and liberating message is not only timely, but urgent.
This new edition includes important supplemental material, most notably the remarkable essay, "Darrow's Crime and Criminals a Century Later," by Leon M. Despres, who is himself a courageous attorney in the Darrow tradition. Opening with valuable biographical and historical background regarding Darrow's views on crime and criminals, Despres also discusses the results of a survey made in 1996, in which a number of prisoners at Cook County Jail were invited to comment on Darrow's 1902 talk. Their agreements and disagreements with Darrow make fascinating reading!
This edition also features excerpts from several other writings by Darrow on law, crime and punishment. An important Afterword by Carol Heise, an attorney and an activist involved with prisoners on Cook County Jail's Death Row, focuses on Darrow's views on capital punishment.
Penelope Rosemont notes in her Foreword that "Darrow's association with the Charles H. Kerr Company was long and intimate." Of his many Kerr titles, Crime and Criminals has proved to be the most popular. Here, as Charles H. Kerr said, Darrow "tells the real reason for 'crime,' and points out the only cure."
