Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction (review)

Ruggiero’s Crime in Literature offers an engaging exploration of the criminological and sociological nexus with classical literary works. The book utilizes “fiction as a tool for communication of sociological meaning and the elaboration of criminological analysis” (p.1). Ruggiero surveys classical stories to draw out kernels of and build upon sociological and criminological discourses and concepts. He reads through various texts showing what they can teach us about, inter alia, white collar crime, illicit drug use, and imprisonment. Throughout the book he flexes his literary exegetical muscles and showcases an in-depth knowledge of both the criminological and to a lesser extent the sociological canon as it pertains to manifold forms of crime.

While sociology proper has delved into the link between the fictional and sociological imaginations, Crime in Literature is unique insofar as it is the first book to directly address the relationship between fiction, contemporary criminal justice agencies and criminology. Those interested in the connection between fiction and crime will find Crime in Literature invaluable. In addition, this book would be great to offer as core reading to introductory undergraduate criminology classes, since Ruggiero utilizes fiction as a tool to elucidate close to a dozen sub areas within criminology from Lombroso onwards.

Ruggiero desires for criminology to look at other genres and disciplines that have to date received little attention in the discipline. He avers that we should reassess our theoretical approaches to crime, the law and punishment in light of what literary works can bring to the foray. Ruggiero seeks to breathe new imaginative potentialities into criminological work through fiction and to utilize fiction for its diagnostic value rather than descriptive and reflective worth (p. 5).

The book opens with an introductory chapter and is followed by ten chapters, each covering a specific criminological area and attendant pertinent classical work of fiction. He begins by considering political violence in Dostoievsky’s The Devils and Camus’ The Just. In the former, Ruggiero illuminates how threads of the positivist school, specifically Lombroso’s theory of criminal atavism, surface in Dostoievsky’s analysis of political offenders. In The Devils, political offenders are shown to commit ‘natural crimes’ and suffer from hysteria, resulting in excessive egoism, and epilepsy, conditions that Lombroso associates with anarchists. The Just is read as the clashing of revolutionaries’ conduct norms with the dominant sector. Like conflict theory, the challenge to dominant norms lead to the criminalization of political activity of the revolutionary groups, with dissent, disobedience or violence being met with brutal suppression. In the chapter on organized crime, Ruggiero reviews the works of Miguel de Cervantes, John Gay and Bertolt Brecht, revealing the dynamic between professional criminals and criminal organizations and the structure and recruitment of criminal organizations. These works show how organized crime fills the deficiencies of institutional state power, by the organization tempering social conflicts and violent excesses, and the mutually beneficial relationships made with the official establishment.

In Charles Baudelaire and Jack London, Ruggiero discovers both support and rejection of Merton’s notions regarding drug users. For these authors, drug and alcohol use, in the main, is not associated with defeatism, resignation or retreatism, but in fact, activity and achievement. Yet there remain hints of a retreatist argument, insofar as London sees alcohol as thwarting human achievement and Baudelaire views creative activity as a drug-free enterprise. In Zola’s Nana, he finds Lombroso again rearing his head, as the lascivious female offender, Nana, is depicted as a nymphomaniac, suffering from hysteria on account of her gender. In line with the naturalism of Lombroso, Zola positions women as subjects of hidden criminality and in the case of sex worker, Nana, as a threat to society. In the fifth chapter, Ruggiero discusses ethnic minorities, hate and crime in the work of James Baldwin and Richard Wright. In Blues for Mister Charlie and Native Son, Ruggiero reveals the causes and mechanisms of racial exclusion and forms of hate crime visited on minorities and the justifications for such violence.

In the...