Crime and Law Enforcement in the Colony of New York, 1691–1776

Douglas Greenberg is Professor of History and Executive Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is coauthor of A Concise History of the American People and coeditor of Colonial America: Essays in Political and Social Development.

Greenberg expertly demonstrates how social developments affected the pattern of law enforcement in colonial New York, and thus he aids scholarly understanding of the relationship between legal and social change. He also shows that colonial New York, at least, was no 'peaceable kingdom.'.(Journal of American History) Greenberg tells of illiterate judges, sheriffs afraid to arrest criminals, and a jailer for the City of New York who was described as 'among other things—an idiot, a glutton, a drunk, a frog, a fool, and an ignoramous.' This book offers important insights and information for those who wish to understand the phenomenon of crime. It also will be of interest to colonialists, urbanist, social historians, and legal historians.(Journal of Interdisciplinary History) Greenberg's most striking argument is that New York's law enforcement machinery did not work, and this debility suggests that political development was running far behind economic and social development.(English Historical Review)

• PrefaceAbbreviations1. Introduction: Law and Society in Colonial New York2. The Demography of Crime: The Accused3. The Demography of Crime: The Judged4. Crimes, Criminals, and Courts5. The Chronological Dimensions of Crime6. The Effectiveness of Law Enforcement: The Institutional Setting7. The Effectiveness of Law Enforcement: A Quantitative Analysis8. Crime and Law Enforcement in Eighteenth-CenturyNew York: An InterpretationBibliographyIndex