Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment

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I have not purchased or read this book.

I recently did a Google search about Willie Horton, Google brought up a result of page 748 of the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, volume 4 edited by David Levinson
Under the heading of "Controversies":

"Horton was serving a life-without-parole sentence for first-degree murder when he absconded from a work release program and brutally murdered a young Maryland couple."

As I recalled, Horton committed a rape while on furlough. I checked a number of the other results and they confirmed my recollection, Horton beat a man, raped his fiancee and stole their car. I do not minimize rape but I would place double murder as at least an order of magnitude higher and a significant exaggeration. I realize that this is only one incident, but it is the only time I've encounterd this book and have found it to be inaccurate. In view of the attention paid to Horton at the time, I find it difficult to accept such a serious error of fact in such a well documented case in a reference text. This calls into question the accuracy of the text as a whole and I would have serious doubts about using the book as source material, without verification by other sources.

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