As the penal crisis deepens in the United States and as the forces of "law and order" gain ascendancy in the Western, capitalist nations (see Crime and Social Justice No. 15), a historical perspective and methodology become not only important, but also necessary for understanding the roots of the current situation. In this issue of Crime and Social Justice, we include materials that put current debates in historical focus.

The lead article by Julia Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger reviews anthropological evidence concerning the origins of sexual inequality and locates the roots of violence against women in socioeconomic conditions and the mode of production. Not only is this significant essay a systematic critique of natural law conceptions of the "battle of the sexes," it also raises important policy issues and questions about the contemporary anti-rape movement.

Pat O'Malley's article examines the decline of banditry in Australia and the Kansas-Missouri border region of the United States in the latter half of the 19th century. Following the pioneering work of E.J. Hobsbawm (Primitive Rebels), O'Malley demonstrates that the decline and transformation of "social banditry" has to be concretely understood in the context of historically specific class relations. Similarly, Gerda Ray's review essay of The Prison and the Factory (by Melossi and Pavarini) explores the varieties of penal discipline associated with the development of the penitentiary as an instrument of capital accumulation and labor discipline.

In recent years, Marxists (especially in Europe) have turned their attention to the nature and origins of bourgeois law and the modern legal system. Dragan Milovanovic's article summarizes and reviews the important debates currently taking place, in particular focusing on structural critiques of instrumentalism. Like the contributions by the Schwendingers, O'Malley, and Ray, Milovanovic's article indicates the necessity for criminologists and sociologists to examine "crime" and "criminal justice" through the lens of class analysis.

Ivan Jankovic reviews four recent books on deterrence (a dominant preoccupation of the new "realists") and discusses how this apparently modern issue is very much a restoration of an ancient dispute between utilitarians and retributivists. Similarly, Dennis Hoffman's review of a recent anarchist book, The Struggle to Be Human, puts the relationship between society and state power in a larger historical context.

Finally, we are pleased to include a new feature, Ruth Morgan's photographic essay on County Jail. These photographs communicate more than most articles about the current penal crisis and remind us that human dignity endures even under the most inhuman conditions.