NCJ Number
129042
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 15 Issue: 2 Dated: (Autumn 1990) Pages: 208-220
Date Published
1990
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This paper explores the response of lawyers and fiction writers to the modernization of American criminal law in the early twentieth century. It focuses on changes in the substantive law of crimes and the problem of the criminal corporation.
Abstract
Lawyers responded to attacks on the criminal justice system from the media by convening the National Conference on Criminal Justice in Chicago in June 1909. The conference created the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology for "scientific" law reform. In addition to publishing an interdisciplinary journal, the Institute provided translations to American audiences, for the first time, of major works by European criminologists. No significant changes in substantive criminal law resulted, but several new economic regulations were added to the criminal code prior to World War I. Creative writers, on the other hand, developed new approaches to the treatment of criminality in fiction; authors of the Progressive Era provided a more compassionate view of criminality and its causes. This humanistic approach led to the establishment of the first important civil rights organizations: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Since human rights consciousness has been perpetuated by writers since the turn of the century, creative literature links human initiatives of the Progressive years with the due process revolution of the 1960s. 6 notes and 40 references (Author abstract modified)