1. Author of book: Mark S. Fleisher
Title of book: Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals
Reviewer: Merrill Singer
Title of review article: "Drugs, Violence, and Moral Panic in Urban America"
Title of Periodical in which review appeared: American Anthropology
Date of periodical in which review appeared: March 1998
Page(s) of review: 186-8

2. A review of this book by David C. Kershaw of Illinois State University (http://www.ilstu.edu/gopher/depts/polisci/COURSES/POS302/fleisher.html) mentioned that Fleisher had worked previously for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The faculty pages of Illinois State University (http://www.ilstu.edu/depts/cjs/mfleishe.htm), where Fleisher is an associate professor of criminal justice, revealed that he received a Ph.D. from Washington State University. Fleisher is also the author of two other books: Dead End Kids: Gang Girls and the Boys they Know, and Warehousing Violence.

Kershaw, David C. Rev. of Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals, by Mark S. Fleisher. 11 Feb 1997. Illinois State University Dept. of Political Science. 7 April 1999. <http://www.ilstu.edu/gopher/depts/polisci/COURSES/POS302/fleisher.html>.

Fleisher, Mark. Faculty home page. 5 May 1997. Illinois State University Criminal Justice Sciences. 7 April 1999. <http://www.ilstu.edu/depts/cjs/mfleishe.htm>.

3. Fleisher, Mark S. Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Mark Fleisher, associate professor of Criminal Justice at Illinois State University, conducted field ethnography for several years both in prisons and on the street. His interviews with his contacts revealed a common theme of a brutal, addicted, and/or criminal family producing violent, addicted and/or criminal children. Fleisher also writes of a "street life cycle" of four steps which all of his contacts are following. Fleisher proposes stopping this life cycle before it starts by removing children from these families and putting them in government-run, small group homes. Fleisher's solutions to the enculturation of children into this deviant lifestyle is viewed with mixed feelings. In her review of Beggar and Thieves in Contemporary Sociology (531), Eleanor M. Miller writes that some may find Fleisher's solutions "radical or naive, and they certainly are controversial", while Janet St. John, in her review (369) considers Fleisher's "well-thought out, realistic proposals for change". The real value of this book lies, perhaps, more in the research tracing the lives of these "beggars and thieves" and how they came to be where they are today, than in Fleisher's proposed solutions.

Miller, Eleanor M. Rev. of Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals, by Mark S. Fleisher. Contemporary Sociology 25 (July 1996):531.

St. John, Janet. Rev. of Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals, by Mark S. Fleisher. Booklist 92 (15 October 1995): 369.

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