Search and Destroy

Dr Jerrry Miller holds a Doctor of Social Work degree from the Catholic University of America. In 1968, he became Associate Professor of Social Work at Ohio State University. He was subsequently appointed to the cabinet of Massachusetts Republican Governor Frank Sargent in 1969 to head the newly created Massachusetts Department of Youth Services and has also served on the gubernatorial staff of Milton Shapp, former governor of Pennsylvania. In 1977, he founded the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), a non-profit organization to set up alternative plans for youth and adults otherwise institutionalized in reform schools, prisons, mental hospitals and state institutions for the developmentally disabled. He has been consultant to the U.S. Justice Department, evaluating juvenile and adult institutions in more than 30 states, and has served as a special master for a number of federal judges. He has assisted in developing mitigative studies for individuals on death row in numerous states. He continues to see individuals clinically and is presently finishing a manuscript on the issue of sex offenders in our society and the 'moral panic' in which modern industrial societies are caught up. His articles dealing with the topics of this book have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

"The stain of minority incarceration has spread so widely that it is corrupting our nation. In this book, Jerry Miller carefully documents the intellectual genesis of this corruption and describes the profound changes needed to rescue the country from the descent into brutality." —John McKnight, Northwestern University

• 1. Prologue: from which aristocratic colours peep; 2. The scope of the problem; 3. Hyping violence; 4. Unanticipated consequences; 5. Race baiting and kitsch; 6. The search for the criminaloid; 7. Banishing indecision; 7. Epilogue.