These twelve previously unpublished essays explore the international phenomenon of hate crime, examining the socio-psychological dynamics of these crimes and the settings in which they occur, the relationships between offenders and their victims, the emotional states of the participants, and the legal and law enforcement responses to these crimes.The essays address religious, racial, ethnic, and sexual crimes in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The essayists provide historical reviews of the problems and the ways local authorities understand and cope with...

George H. Ryan, Illinois governor from 1999 to 2003, became nationally known for two significant and very different reasons. The first governor in the United States to clear out his state s death row and put a moratorium on the death penalty, he was also convicted and sent to prison on corruption charges." The Man Who Emptied Death Row: Governor George Ryan and the Politics of Crime" details the career of a man who both enhanced and tarnished the image of the highest office in Illinois and examines the political history and culture that shaped him.Author James L. Merriner explores the two...

On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan's moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle's sentence to natural life.

The commutation...

Taking readers into the darkness of solitary confinement, this searing collection of convict experiences, academic research, and policy recommendations shines a light on the proliferation of supermax (super-maximum-security) prisons and the detrimental effects of long-term high-security confinement on prisoners and their families.

Stephen C. Richards, an ex-convict who served time in nine federal prisons before earning his PhD in criminology, argues the supermax prison era began in 1983 at USP Marion in southern Illinois, where the first "control units" were built by the Federal Bureau of...