Hoebel's crucible

The study of subgroup law through recorded and reconstructed cases presents several analytic problems for the relationship between case content and subgroup practices. The greater the relative structural strength of a social system the greater the mythical content of its communications related to “outside” worlds. Constructing structural models of legal systems in contact, and typifying the information content of cases in structural situations, can inform analysis of case content as mythical, politically normative, or representative of subgroup behavior outside of legal forums. Anthropologists and French structural historians can work together to examine structural indicators which signify analytic boundaries for case analysis.     

Erewhon: A manifesto of the rehabilitative ideal

Samuel Butler's novel, Erewhon (1872) is well known as a minor literary classic. This article proposes that it is also important in criminological history, in epitomizing a generation of debate about the nature of criminal responsibility. Butler wished to illustrate a paradox: contemporary social and medical sciences showed the role of determinism in causing crime, yet the courts still acted on the myth of free will, individual choice, and responsibility. Butler satirized this by depicting an imaginary world where sick people were stigmatized and punished for a condition they could not help—just as real criminals were blamed for factors beyond their control. The novel is a call for the replacement of deterrent or retributive punishment by rehabilitation and a medical model. It was especially important in the early twentieth century in helping to popularize the attack on free will and deterrence, and in propagandizing for the new discretionary penology.