"Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers effectively makes the complexities of criminal justice ideals accessible through captivating stories and excellent research. . . . I would highly recommend this entertaining and enlightening book for law, general academic, and public libraries."—Stephanie Ziegler, Law Library Journal
“This engaging book blows the top off the tired old argument over whether humans are selfless do-gooders or relentless self-interest machines. . . . With a series of lively, surprising, and entertaining examples of how we actually behave when the veneer of civilization is gone, this book is a must for anyone who has wondered whether government interferes with our inherently good natures or restrains our inherently bad ones.”—Morris Hoffman, state trial judge, member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience, and author of The Punisher’s Brain
“I’ve been a fan of Paul Robinson’s writings on criminal justice for many decades. This book brings his brilliant scholarship to a wider audience in the context of criminal justice issues that affect us all.”—Alan Dershowitz, author of Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law and professor emeritus of law at Harvard University
“Paul Robinson, perhaps the nation’s leading criminal law scholar, has produced a book that raises profound issues while suggesting practical legal reforms—and he does so in a remarkably entertaining way.”—Paul G. Cassell, former federal judge and Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah
“Fun, fascinating, and full of insight: Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers will make you reconsider what you think you know about government and its relationship to social order.”—Peter T. Leeson, author of Anarchy Unbound and Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University
“Hobbes said a society without punishment would be a jungle. Some modern day academics have suggested it would prove to be a paradise, if we would only give it a chance. Who is right? Both and neither, as Paul and Sarah Robinson show with the help of some extraordinary, insufficiently appreciated ‘natural experiments.’. . . Here we learn how justice emerges from nature red in tooth and claw.”—Leo Katz, author of Why the Law Is So Perverse and Frank Carano Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania
