The Early Criminal Record on the Boundary of Entertainment: Thomas F. Byrnes’ Professional Criminals of America and the Spectacle of Criminal Identification

While the proliferation of criminal records has received much recent attention, the origin of the criminal record in the United States itself is relatively obscure. This article examines an episode in the development of criminal record keeping and lateral surveillance in the United States, the publication and reception of Thomas F. Byrnes’ Professional Criminals of America ([1886] 1969). I argue that Professional Criminals of America developed a cultural purchase well beyond its relatively modest circulation. By exploiting anxieties about mobility, anonymity, and the decline of class distinction, Byrnes’ book sold itself as a tool to develop regimes of lateral surveillance, enlisting regular citizens to support the police by spying on one another.