| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.4

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.4 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Pursuing Johns: Criminal Law Reform, Defending Character, and New York City's Committee of Fourteen, 1920–1930. By Thomas C. Mackey (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. x plus 297 pp. $63.95 cloth, $9.95 CD-ROM).

Thomas C. Mackey's Pursuing Johns is a narrow study of a failed effort to achieve social reform. Specifically, it analyzes the New York City Committee of Fourteen's 1920s campaign to expand the use of vagrancy statutes to prosecute male customers of female prostitutes. Given the constricted topic and the effort's lack of success, why does this matter? Mackey offers two convincing reasons. First, this campaign illuminates the more general dynamic of how social reform worked, especially movements that sought to use criminal law to generate change. Second, it contributes to a rethinking of the 1920s in American history, suggesting ways in which reform persisted into a decade glibly associated with a revolution in manners and morals.

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