Informed by the perspective of the social sciences, this book is a social history of crime and punishment, the story of America's social reaction to crime. The history of crime and punishment in America is not a history of criminal law or an intellectual history of penology or a treatise on the philosophy of good and evil. This book chronicles the development of a working system of criminal justice, from arrest to trial to prison and punishment. The author argues that the evolution of criminal justice has reflected transformations in America's character. Thus, the theocratic world of 17th-Century Puritanism generated a peculiar equation between crime and sin. The geographic and social mobility of 19th-Century America produced its own distinctive approach to crime and punishment; and the expressive individualism of the 20th Century encouraged an emphasis on "crimes of the self." Among the issues of crime and punishment in American history discussed are the Salem witchcraft trials, the "Red Scare" after World War I, the rise of the American penitentiary, the emergence of the professional detective, the development of laws against fornication and gambling, the reform of rape laws, the rise of the insanity defense, and the growth of a prisoners' rights movement. Also included are discussions about the growth of white-collar crime and the revolutionary changes in the relationship between gender and criminal justice. Chapter notes, a bibliographic essay, and a subject index