The Investigation Of The Magistrates Courts In The First Judicial Department And The Magistrates Thereof And Of The Attorneys At Law Practicing In Said Courts

This work presents a part of the famous Seabury investigation into the need for reform in the Magistrate Courts in the State of New York. There were numerous abuses in these courts of which this report thoroughly investigates.

This widely acclaimed study of political power in a metropolitan community portrays the political system in its entirety and in balance—and retains much of the drama, the excitement, and the special style of New York City. It discusses the stakes and rules of the city's politics, and the individuals, groups, and official agencies influencing government action.

Most Americans think that judges should be, and are, generalists who decide a wide array of cases. Nonetheless, we now have specialized courts in many key policy areas. Specializing the Courts provides the first comprehensive analysis of this growing trend toward specialization in the federal and state court systems. Lawrence Baum incisively explores the scope, causes, and consequences of judicial specialization in four areas that include most specialized courts: foreign policy and national security, criminal law, economic issues involving the government, and economic issues in the private sector. Baum examines the process by which court systems in the United States have become increasingly specialized and the motives that have led to the growth of specialization. He also considers the effects of judicial specialization on the work of the courts by demonstrating that under certain conditions, specialization can and does have fundamental effects on the policies that courts make. For this reason, the movement toward greater specialization constitutes a major change in the judiciary.

During the Progressive Era, young working-class women were sometimes jailed for engaging in social and sexual activities that signaled their rejection of Victorian moral standards. These disadvantaged "delinquents" were subject to legal sanctions that were rarely applied to rebellious middle-class girls. As she traces the history of a social crisis that came to be known as the "girl problem", Ruth M. Alexander reconstructs the stories of individual women incarcerated in reformatories who helped redefine female adolescence in the United States. Alexander draws on the rich case files of reformatories at Bedford Hills and Albion, New York. Bringing together writings by the young inmates, letters from their parents, and institutional records, she follows the histories of a hundred girls as they run afoul of the law, are incarcerated, and struggle to reenter society. From the interplay among girls, families, courts, and penal institutions emerges a fascinating picture of class inequality and culture conflict. Alexander finds that most delinquent young women eventually accepted the idea that freedom was best won by conformity and accommodation. In showing how a new social problem was identified and tackled, Alexander also documents the emergence of the modern professions of social work and mental hygiene. Reenacting a key chapter in the transformation of adolescence, The "Girl Problem" contributes to the history of sexuality and social reform through the Progressive Era and beyond.

This is the story of organized crime's penetration of the islands and the corruption of its high officials during the time The Bahamas become politically independent of Great Britain. It describes secret U.S. Internal Revenue Service operations aimed at American criminals involved in Bahamian-based tax scams and similar crimes. Block paints a devastating picture of a symbiotic relationship among off-shore tax havens in The Bahamas, sophisticated American criminals, and complacent public officials in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the I.R.S. launched major investigations into American organized crime and the subterranean economy of The Bahamas. Block's access to the private papers of many of the key players in these affairs has given him a unique perspective. He has uncovered details of crime, corruption, and bureaucratic infighting within and among the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments that have been largely unrecognized by previous researchers. Block shows how important links in the international traffic in cocaine were forged in the Bahamas, in full view of American officials. Masters of Paradise raises major questions about American law enforcement officials' commitment to fighting complex international crime during the 1960s and the 1970s. While there have been other studies of tax havens, money laundering, and offshore investigations, Block's access to information and his grasp of its meaning is unique. Professionals interested in the history and sociology of organized crime and the underground economy will find this book eye-opening. General readers interested in organized crime and political corruption will find it absorbing.

A surprising history unfolded in New Deal– and World War II–era New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's approach to low-level policing anticipated later trends in law enforcement, including "broken windows" theory and "stop and frisk" policy. Police officers worked to preserve urban order by controlling vice, including juvenile delinquency, prostitution, gambling, and the "disorderly" establishments that officials believed housed these activities. This mode of policing was central to La Guardia's influential vision of urban governance, but it was met with resistance from the Black New Yorkers, youth, and working-class women it primarily targeted. The mobilization for World War II introduced new opportunities for the NYPD to intensify policing and criminalize these groups with federal support. In the 1930s these communities were framed as perils to urban order; during the militarized war years, they became a supposed threat to national security itself. Emily M. Brooks recasts the evolution of urban policing by revealing that the rise of law-and-order liberalism was inseparable from the surveillance, militarism, and nationalism of war.