Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Crimes & Punishments

Volume II, Number 2 | spring 2009

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Soldiers and police establishing line at door of the Morgan Bank after anti-capitalist Wall Street bombing, September 16, 1920.

Preamble

Crime Scenes

By Lewis H. Lapham

The American fondness for the dressing up of crime in the costumes of romance is an amusement priced at too high a cost.

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Original death chamber at the Red Hat Cell Block, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 2010. Photograph by Lee Honeycutt.

Staking a Life

By Christopher Hitchens

Why is the United States so wedded to the infliction of the death penalty?

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Map

Spider Men

The world’s most-wanted criminals.

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c. 1775 | London

Sops for Seberus

Does the punishment fit the crime?More

1870 | San Francisco

Giving the Devil His Due

We have contemplated with considerable satisfaction the various attempts to take human life during the present week.More

c. 1040 | Inverness

False Face, False Heart

What lurks inside the hearts of Scotsmen?More

Charts & Graphs

Crime Pays

Following the money.

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At the age of seventeen, Hawthorne mused to his mother about the possibility of “relying for support upon my pen.”

Image of Japanese poet and essayist Yoshida Kenko.

Woman with short gray hair seated with a book open in her lap

To live outside the law you must be honest.

—Bob Dylan, 1966

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

American lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Friedrich Nietzsche & Clarence Darrow

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