| Crimes Against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 Contributor(s): Robertson, Stephen (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807855960 ISBN-13: 9780807855966 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $35.63 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2005 Annotation: Robertson's study, based on the previously unexamined files of the New York County district attorney's office, reveals the importance of child sexuality and sex crimes in twentieth-century American culture. He offers the first major study of the child protection movement's law enforcement work and the prosecution of sexual violence in American criminal courts in the first half of the 20th century. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Law | Criminal Law - General - Social Science | Children's Studies - Law | Child Advocacy |
| Dewey: 345.747 |
| LCCN: 2004019073 |
| Series: Studies in Legal History |
| Physical Information: 0.85" H x 6.28" W x 9.24" (1.12 lbs) 352 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic - Cultural Region - Northeast U.S. - Geographic Orientation - New York |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In the first half of the twentieth century, Americans' intense concern with sex crimes against children led to a wave of public discussion, legislative action, and criminal prosecution. Stephen Robertson provides the first large-scale, long-term study of how American criminal courts dealt with the prosecution of sexual violence against children. Robertson describes how the nineteenth-century approach to childhood as a single phase of innocence began to shift at the end of the century to include several stages of childhood development, prompting reformers to create legal categories such as statutory rape and carnal abuse to protect children. However, while ordinary New Yorkers' involvement in the prosecution of those offenses reshaped their understandings of who was a child and produced a new concern to establish the age of their sexual partners, their beliefs in childhood innocence and in a concept of sexuality centered on sexual intercourse remained unchanged. As a result, families' use of the law and jurors' decisions ultimately diminished the protection the new laws offered to children. Robertson's study, based on the previously unexamined files of the New York County district attorney's office, reveals the importance of child sexuality and sex crimes in twentieth-century American culture. |
Contributor Bio(s): Robertson, Stephen: - Stephen Robertson is a lecturer in the department of history at the University of Sydney. |