THE ROOTS OF JUSTICE Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California 1870-1910

Hardback. Studies in Legal History. The first comprehensive study of the entire system of criminal justice as it functioned in an American county during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rich in historical detail, this study places the criminal courts in perspective, examining the interrelationships between the various elements of criminal justice and between the system and the larger society. The authors focus on Alameda County, California, and its principal city, Oakland, during the time when the county's population grew from 24,000 to more than 246,000. By combining statistical analysis of documentary sources with contemporary newspaper accounts and explorations in criminal case-files, the authors reconstruct in detail, the operations of the county's entire criminal justice system. They examine the sources of many contemporary criminal justice problems. The original Oakland police-arrest blotters, combined with records of felony trial courts, appellate courts, and the California prison system, permit the authors to trace the flow of the criminal process from arrest to trial, sentencing, and punishment. As criminal justice matured from an amateur to a professional system, reform efforts moulded the system to individualised demands. Probation, parole, and juvenile justice widened the judicial discretion and produced reactions in other parts of the system. In no other jurisdiction has 19th-century justice been examined in such scope and depth. Illus., Tables, A Concluding Word + Index. 335pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in Vg+ sl. torn and sunned Vg+ dw.