The United States of America is home to over 3,000 jails. On any given day, these jails hold over 700,000 people. More than 12 million individuals pass through an American jail each year.
How timely, that on the day I began reading this excellent book, in mid-January 2002, the weekly magazine Science News included an article whose headline was “Record Science Budget Evaded
“The Most Hated Man in America is an invaluable cautionary tale about the insidious threat to society of induced moral panics that can easily run away with reason
