Essays on Justice: Natural, Unnatural, and Criminal (New ed)

Essays on Justice: Natural, Unnatural and Criminal is a selection of  easy to read articles based on academic research previously published in books, academic journals and newspapers by criminologist and psychologist Ehor Boyanowsky.

Unlike most citizens, not only has he had the time to think about things for more than five minutes, he has researched those issues extensively and reached some unusual if not startling conclusions based on his findings.   And so those chapters stand independently providing explanations in plain language for important, even grave issues that trouble  North Americans.

They have proved invaluable for initiating discussion and questioning students’ (and even professors’) assumptions and provoking formal debate.

Prof. Boyanowsky’s students tell him his book is the first thing they read for homework each night and eagerly pass it on to their parents and friends, unprecedented for an assigned text.   For example does the widespread attraction to violence in the media suggest a sickness in Americans leading to more violence?  Perhaps surprising to many who think so, it turns out that for the vast majority, viewing violent programs and films actually helps people cope with their fears rather than spurring them on to aggression.

Who is the aggressor in domestic violence? Most readers are startled to discover that women  are as - or more - likely to initiate serious physical aggression, a finding even more pronounced in an international study of university students.

However, it is indisputable that men are almost exclusively the perpetrators of mass killings.

Why? Boyanowsky examines the expectations the cultures, especially patriarchal cultures, place  upon young men and how the inability to fulfil those expectations leads to violent outbursts.  In the introductory chapter on "creating a world view" and in “the passion for killing” Boyanowsky, using his personal history, points out how being a predator, a hunter and fisher, led to his intense and long term commitment to protecting the environment as it had for others including Teddy Roosevelt, the first environmental president.

He also analyzes why ecocrimes although injuring and even killing thousands as opposed to individual acts of violent crime against other individuals such as robbery, aggravated assault and murder, are so much more difficult to prosecute and to impose serious penalties and jail time.  In explaining the difference between right wing and left wing, the author clarifies the different approaches based on closeness of relationship versus complete egalitarian inclusion that however, in extreme situations, result in similar totalitarian governments. And most controversially, Boyanowsky makes the argument, based on research, for complete decriminalization of all drugs to reduce crime and for decriminalization of the mere viewing (not production) of child pornography, not only on civil libertarian grounds, but in order to protect children from pedophiles.

Finally, he shows how favouring one group versus another “sows the seeds of mass murder” and even genocide.