City of Courts

What could be more liberal than believing in society''s responsibility for crime--that crime is less the product of free will than of poverty and other social forces beyond the individual''s control? And what could be more progressive than the belief that the law should aim for social not merely individual justice? This work of social cultural and legal history uncovers the contested origins and paradoxical consequences of the two protean concepts in the cosmopolitan cities of industrial America at the turn of the twentieth century.