"It has long been held that humans need government to impose social order on a chaotic, dangerous world. How, then, did early humans survive on the Serengeti Plain, surrounded by faster, stronger, and bigger predators in a harsh and forbidding environment? Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers examines an array of natural experiments and accidents of human history to explore the fundamental nature of how human beings act when beyond the scope of the law. Pirates of the 1700s, the leper colony on Molokai Island, prisoners of the Nazis, hippie communes of the 1970s, shipwreck and plane crash survivors, and many more diverse groups--all existed in the absence of formal rules, punishments, and hierarchies. Paul and Sarah Robinson draw on these real-life stories to suggest that humans are predisposed to be cooperative within limits. What these "communities" did and how they managed have dramatic implications for shaping our modern institutions. Should today's criminal justice system build on people's shared intuitions about justice? Or are we better off acknowledging this aspect of human nature but using law to temper it? Knowing the true nature of our human character and our innate ideas about justice offers a roadmap to a better society. "--

Paul H. Robinson is Colin S. Diver Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the world’s leading criminal law scholars. A prolific writer and lecturer, he is the lead editor of Criminal Law Conversations and the author of Intuitions of Justice and the Utility of Desert, among other books.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Part 1. Human Rules

1. What Is Our Nature? What Does Government Do for Us and to Us?

2. Cooperation: Lepers and Pirates

3. Punishment: Drop City and the Utopian Communes

4. Justice: 1850s San Francisco and the California Gold Rush

5. Injustice: The Batavia Shipwreck and the Attica Uprising

6. Survival: The Inuits of King William Land and the Mutineers of Pitcairn Island

7. Subversion: Prison Camps and Hellships

Part 2. Modern Lessons

8. Credibility: America’s Prohibition

9. Excess: Committing Felony Murder While Asleep in Bed and Life in Prison for an Air-Conditioning Fraud

10. Failure: Getting Away with Murder Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

11. Collapse: Escobar’s Colombia

12. Taking Justice Seriously: Five Proposals

Postscript: What Are They Doing Now?

Notes

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

Index