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Research
Allen Steinberg is interested in the social history of law and politics. His more specific interests are the evolution of urban criminal justice systems and the relationship between people and the state, broadly defined. His first book, The Transformation of Criminal Justice, explored how informal, neighborhood courts in Philadelphia were supplanted in the mid-nineteenth century by a formal justice system dominated by city police and a public prosecutor. He is now working on a book on the politics of law enforcement in New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century, looking at how criminal prosecution, private law enforcement and techniques of criminal investigation shaped state-building during the Progressive era.
In 1990, The Transformation of Criminal Justice won the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association and the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award from the Social Science History Association. Allen Steinberg has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1983.
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