Archives:

Bernard E. Harcourt collection on Doyle Lee Hamm, 1916-2023

This collection features legal, personal, and family social history documents relating to the life, career, capital murder conviction and death sentence of Doyle Lee Hamm, who was the subject of an attempted execution by lethal injection by the State of Alabama on February 22, 2018. The social history materials collected during the mitigation investigation of Mr. Hamm’s capital murder case date back to the Depression Era. Hamm died of complications from lymphatic cancer on November 28, 2021, in the William C. Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore, in southern Alabama. He was 64. The archives are available here: https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_17700922

Bernard E. Harcourt collection on Motsuenyane Commission of Inquiry, South Africa, 1993

The Motsuenyane Commission of Inquiry was appointed by the President of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC), Dr. Nelson Mandela, to investigate allegations of human rights abuses and alleged disappearances among its members. Its terms of reference were dated the 12th January, 1993. This is a historic event insofar as it is the first time that a liberation movement has engaged an independent commission to review allegations that its members violated human rights guarantees within its ranks.

This collection includes an electronic version of the final report of the Motsuenyane Commission, as well as supporting documents, photographs, and news clipping. The archive is available here: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_projects/1/ 

Data:

An Institutionalization Effect: The Impact of Mental Hospitalization and Imprisonment on Homicide in the United States, 1934 – 2001 (ICPSR 34986)

This data set explored the effect of imprisonment on violent crime rates prior to 1991. Previous research focused exclusively on rates of imprisonment, rather than using a measure that combines institutionalization in both prisons and mental hospitals. Using state-level panel-data regressions over the 68-year period from 1934 to 2001 and controlling for economic conditions, youth population rates, criminal justice enforcement, and demographic factors, this study found a large, robust, and statistically significant relationship between aggregated institutionalization (in mental hospitals and prisons) and homicide rates. This finding provided strong evidence of what should now be called an institutionalization effect — rather than an imprisonment or incapacitation effect. Demographic information collected include national unemployment rates and institutional race and age composition. All data are available here: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/34986