Why Crime Does Not Pay

Burke, Sophie Van Elkan Lyons, Mrs.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 357K words
Chapters: 36

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Why Crime Does Not Pay by Mrs. Sophie Van Elkan Lyons BurkeAuthor: Burke, Sophie Van Elkan Lyons, Mrs.,Language: English, Class: HV: Social sciences: Social pathology, Social and Public Welfare, Release Date: May 27, 2019

Editor's review

This book belongs to the literature of social pathology and public welfare. Its title states plainly that crime does not pay, and its subject is the cost and consequences of criminal conduct. Sophie Van Elkan Lyons Burke writes in a persuasive, exhortatory register, aiming less at criminological theory than at social instruction and crime prevention. Its value for readers lies in the window it opens onto late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular English-language writing on the causes of crime, punishment, and moral discipline, and it can serve as supporting evidence for the history of criminological thought and of shifting ideas about social relief and welfare. The prose addresses a general readership and carries a strong tone of moral admonition; some of its views now look dated and need to be read in historical context. As a public-domain electronic text it is short and well suited to a quick reading for its arguments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students of the history of criminological thought and the evolution of social welfare ideas
Readers interested in nineteenth-century popular writing on social instruction
Those who need an English public-domain text for outside reading or excerpt-translation practice
Social science enthusiasts concerned with the changing rhetoric of crime prevention and moral suasion

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking modern empirical data and statistical analysis in criminology
Readers looking for accounts of how specific cases were solved or for true-crime stories
Specialist researchers expecting rigorous scholarly argument and theoretical frameworks

Reading tips

Read the book through first to grasp the author's central argument, then return to see how each chapter uses examples to support the conclusion that crime does not pay.
Mark passages with a moral admonitory tone as you read and consider the period ideas and social background behind them.
Compare it with modern criminology textbooks to trace how explanations of the causes of crime and the effects of punishment have changed over the past century or so.
If using it for language study, choose short passages to translate and note the features of its preachier sentence patterns.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Does this book deal with real cases?

Judging by its title and classification, it is an argumentative work in social pathology and public welfare whose aim is to show the cost and consequences of crime, not a case-by-case true-crime narrative centered on detection. Readers should not expect a collection of real case stories.

Do the book's views still hold today?

The book is heavily moral admonitory in tone, and some of its explanations carry the limitations of the author's era and do not fully match modern empirical criminology. It is best read as a document in intellectual history, to understand how people of the time argued for crime prevention, rather than as a source of conclusions to be accepted directly.

Is it suitable as an introductory criminology text?

Not really. It lacks the theoretical frameworks and data of modern criminology and is better read, once you have some background, as a historical text for understanding early popular writing on crime. Beginners would do better to start with contemporary introductions to criminology.

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About the author

Burke, Sophie Van Elkan Lyons, Mrs. Author

Sophie Van Elkan Lyons, Mrs. Burke is an author about whom little public information is available. Only one work by her is held in the collection, Why Crime Does Not Pay. The surviving catalog records show her under the title Mrs., with the maiden name Lyons retained in her full name, while details such as nationality, dates of birth and death, and education cannot be verified. On the available evidence, her writing centers on crime and punishment: the title itself argues that crime brings no profit, giving the book a cautionary and moralizing tone typical of popular expository writing for general readers. Such works usually illustrate the consequences of crime through cases or reasoning and stress law-abiding conduct. Given the scarcity of sources, the book's specific approach and contemporary influence are hard to assess; it survives as her only recorded title and as a sample of popular writing on this subject.