All Outputs (8)

Conflict or Consensus? The Politicization of Law and Order in the United States since 1960 (2024)
Book Chapter
Merton, J. (2024). Conflict or Consensus? The Politicization of Law and Order in the United States since 1960. In J. Campbell, & V. Miller (Eds.), The Routledge History of Crime in America (459-473). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003300151-37

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the history and historiography of “law and order” politics since the 1960s. Dismissing the significance of rising crime rates alone in explaining crime's politicization during the 1960s, it explores alt... Read More about Conflict or Consensus? The Politicization of Law and Order in the United States since 1960.

Punishment in America: Innovation, Continuity, Recycling, and Technological Transformations (2024)
Book Chapter
Miller, V. (2024). Punishment in America: Innovation, Continuity, Recycling, and Technological Transformations. In J. Campbell, & V. Miller (Eds.), The Routledge History of Crime in America. Routledge

This chapter examines the historical transformations and contemporary uses of three groups of punishments: non-custodial sanctions, imprisonment, and the death penalty. It begins with a contemporary overview of mass incarceration but crosses differen... Read More about Punishment in America: Innovation, Continuity, Recycling, and Technological Transformations.

“A Ringer Was Used to Make the Killing”: Horse Painting and Racetrack Corruption in the Early Depression-Era War on Crime (2021)
Journal Article
Miller, V. (2021). “A Ringer Was Used to Make the Killing”: Horse Painting and Racetrack Corruption in the Early Depression-Era War on Crime. Journal of American Studies, 55(5), 1153-1177. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875820001759

Peter Christian "Paddy" Barrie was a seasoned fraudster who transferred his horse doping and horse substitution skills from British to North American racetracks in the 1920s. His thoroughbred ringers were entered in elite races to guarantee winnings... Read More about “A Ringer Was Used to Make the Killing”: Horse Painting and Racetrack Corruption in the Early Depression-Era War on Crime.

Hanging, the Electric Chair, and Death Penalty Reform in the Early Twentieth-Century South (2019)
Book Chapter
Miller, V. (2019). Hanging, the Electric Chair, and Death Penalty Reform in the Early Twentieth-Century South. In A. L. Wood, & N. J. Ring (Eds.), Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South. University of Illinois Press

This chapter focuses on the transition from hanging to electrical execution in Florida and the changing role of the sheriff as executioner in the 1920s.

“It doesn’t take much evidence to convict a Negro”: Capital punishment, race, and rape in mid-20th-century Florida (2017)
Journal Article
Miller, V. (2017). “It doesn’t take much evidence to convict a Negro”: Capital punishment, race, and rape in mid-20th-century Florida. Crime, histoire & societes = Crime, history & societies / International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, 21(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.4000/chs.1714

Thirty men were executed for rape in Florida between 1940 and 1964, in a state undergoing rapid population growth, Sunbelt economic change, and black freedom struggle protest and activism. No white man was sentenced to death for the rape of a “Negro”... Read More about “It doesn’t take much evidence to convict a Negro”: Capital punishment, race, and rape in mid-20th-century Florida.

Reflections on the chain gang and prison narratives from the Southern United States (2016)
Book Chapter
Miller, V. (2016). Reflections on the chain gang and prison narratives from the Southern United States. In D. Nash, & A.-M. Kilday (Eds.), Law, crime and deviance since 1700: microstudies in the history of crime. Bloomsbury Publishing

“A perfect hell of misery”: real and imagined prison lives in an “American Siberia” (2014)
Book Chapter
MILLER, V. (2015). “A perfect hell of misery”: real and imagined prison lives in an “American Siberia”. In Transnational penal cultures: new perspectives on discipline, punishment and desistance. Routledge

This chapter provides a brief overview of George Kennan's critique of prison conditions in late nineteenth-century Siberia, examines the nascent leasing system in Florida in the 1870s and 1880s described by Powell, of vermin-infested convicts in comm... Read More about “A perfect hell of misery”: real and imagined prison lives in an “American Siberia”.

Respectable white ladies, wayward girls, and telephone thieves in Miami’s “Case of the Clinking Brassieres”
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Miller, V. Respectable white ladies, wayward girls, and telephone thieves in Miami’s “Case of the Clinking Brassieres”. Presented at European Social Science History Conference

This essay uses the 1950 “case of the clinking brassieres” to explore female theft in Miami at mid-century and the ways in which gender, race, class, respectability, and youth offered protections and shaped treatment within Florida’s criminal justice... Read More about Respectable white ladies, wayward girls, and telephone thieves in Miami’s “Case of the Clinking Brassieres”.