Best Criminology Books
1. 
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
by:
Robin Bernstein
4.40 avg rating — 48 ratings 
3. 
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime
by:
Val McDermid
4.10 avg rating — 12,179 ratings 4. 
18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
by:
Bruce Goldfarb
3.69 avg rating — 3,761 ratings 5. 
Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls
by:
Carrie Goldberg
4.31 avg rating — 1,632 ratings 6. 
American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic
by:
John Temple
4.26 avg rating — 2,453 ratings 
8. 
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 4.52 avg rating — 115,042 ratings
8. 
A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them
by:
Neil Bradbury
4.12 avg rating — 8,908 ratings 
8. 
Deep-Level Influencing - A Successful Career: Learning from Serial Killers
by:
Michael Brady
4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings 
15. 
Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial 4.24 avg rating — 284 ratings
15. 
Blood, Bullets, and Bones: The Story of Forensic Science from Sherlock Holmes to DNA
by:
Bridget Heos
3.84 avg rating — 963 ratings 15. 
The Best New True Crime Stories: Crimes of Passion, Obsession & Revenge
by:
Mitzi Szereto
3.70 avg rating — 46 ratings 15. 
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond
by:
Mark Ames
3.80 avg rating — 518 ratings 
19. 
Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics
by:
Richard Evershed
3.89 avg rating — 157 ratings 
22. 
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America 4.44 avg rating — 44,180 ratings
22. 
Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence
by:
Patrick Sharkey
3.86 avg rating — 492 ratings 
26. 
American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI 3.66 avg rating — 10,272 ratings
28. 
"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide
by:
Samantha Power
4.26 avg rating — 10,876 ratings 28. 
The Bone Detectives: How Forensic Anthropologists Solve Crimes and Uncover Mysteries of the Dead
by:
Donna M. Jackson
3.74 avg rating — 86 ratings 30. 
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland 4.47 avg rating — 149,017 ratings
31. 
The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
by:
Clea Koff
4.01 avg rating — 2,952 ratings 
33. 
A Question Of Intent: A Great American Battle With A Deadly Industry
by:
David A. Kessler
4.17 avg rating — 283 ratings 35. 
Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones
by:
Greg Campbell
3.92 avg rating — 1,680 ratings 36. 
The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History
by:
Stephan Talty
3.63 avg rating — 2,361 ratings 
38. 
Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate
by:
Helen Prejean
4.14 avg rating — 8,952 ratings 39. 
And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank
by:
Steve Oney
4.07 avg rating — 474 ratings 
41. 
The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire
by:
Sam Heys
4.29 avg rating — 153 ratings 41. 
The Sex Offender Housing Dilemma: Community Activism, Safety, and Social Justice
by:
Monica Williams
4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings 43. 
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist 4.05 avg rating — 6,575 ratings
44. 
45. 
Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 4.23 avg rating — 65 ratings
46. 
Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime
by:
Ben Blum
3.65 avg rating — 1,214 ratings 47. 
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
by:
Mab Segrest
3.78 avg rating — 187 ratings 48. 
Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
by:
Michael Cannell
3.83 avg rating — 1,151 ratings 49. 
Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing
by:
Dave Grossman
3.71 avg rating — 334 ratings 50. 
A Curious Madness: An American Combat Psychiatrist, a Japanese War Crimes Suspect, and an Unsolved Mystery from World War II
by:
Eric Jaffe
3.56 avg rating — 154 ratings 51. 
Mapping Humanity: How Modern Genetics Is Changing Criminal Justice, Personalized Medicine, and Our Identities 3.89 avg rating — 37 ratings
52. 
Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System 4.39 avg rating — 807 ratings
53. 
Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York
by:
Carl Suddler
4.43 avg rating — 23 ratings 54. 
Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
by:
Emily Bazelon
4.31 avg rating — 1,825 ratings 55. 
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
by:
Nick Bilton
4.41 avg rating — 50,870 ratings 56. 
Fugitive Man: Hunting Violent Criminals for the FBI and Searching for Justice for the Innocent Convict 4.45 avg rating — 11 ratings
57. 
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror
by:
Eric Stover
4.36 avg rating — 22 ratings 58. 
The Butcher's Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World's Most Successful Manhunt
by:
Julian Borger
4.12 avg rating — 511 ratings 59. 
60. 
Freedom's Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Man Who Masterminded America's First War on Terror
by:
Charles Lane
3.61 avg rating — 580 ratings 
62. 
I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad
by:
Baynard Woods
3.89 avg rating — 1,596 ratings 
64. 
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
by:
Virginia Eubanks
4.01 avg rating — 2,737 ratings 65. 
Shots Fired: The Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, and Myths about Police Shootings
by:
Joseph Loughlin
4.05 avg rating — 39 ratings 66. 
Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina
by:
Ronnie Greene
3.95 avg rating — 286 ratings 67. 
New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that Launched the Progressive Era
by:
Daniel Czitrom
3.46 avg rating — 52 ratings 68. 
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces
by:
Radley Balko
4.32 avg rating — 3,972 ratings 69. 
When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted
by:
Jim McCloskey
4.36 avg rating — 757 ratings 70. 
Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense 4.01 avg rating — 259 ratings
71. 
Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South 4.16 avg rating — 286 ratings
72. 
The Districts: Stories of American Justice from the Federal Courts
by:
Johnny Dwyer
4.22 avg rating — 60 ratings 73. 
Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law
by:
Preet Bharara
4.27 avg rating — 5,817 ratings 74. 
Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights
by:
Doug Jones
4.20 avg rating — 383 ratings 75. 
With One Shot: Family Murder and a Search for Justice
by:
Dorothy Marcic
3.06 avg rating — 353 ratings 76. 
Justice on the Grass: Three Rwandan Journalists, Their Trial for War Crimes and a Nation's Quest for Redemption 3.94 avg rating — 66 ratings
77. 
Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right
by:
Barry Scheck
4.15 avg rating — 899 ratings 78. 
Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
by:
Dave Eggers
4.30 avg rating — 352 ratings 79. 
The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South
by:
Gilbert King
4.34 avg rating — 234 ratings 80. 
Last Chance for Justice: How Relentless Investigators Uncovered New Evidence Convicting the Birmingham Church Bombers
by:
T.K. Thorne
4.26 avg rating — 47 ratings 
82. 
Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice 4.31 avg rating — 1,084 ratings
83. 
Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town
by:
Melissa Checker
3.92 avg rating — 138 ratings 84. 
Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It
by:
Lisa Bloom
4.10 avg rating — 324 ratings 85. 
Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics
by:
Kay Whitlock
3.88 avg rating — 51 ratings 86. 
With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
by:
Glenn Greenwald
4.26 avg rating — 1,310 ratings 
88. 
89. 
The Attica Turkey Shoot: Carnage, Cover-Up, and the Pursuit of Justice
by:
Malcolm Bell
4.25 avg rating — 12 ratings 90. 
The Story Of Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the Crescent City
by:
Justin Nobel
4.13 avg rating — 82 ratings 91. 
Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler
by:
Stefan Ihrig
4.15 avg rating — 27 ratings 92. 
Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia
by:
Edward Humes
4.01 avg rating — 968 ratings 93. 
Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice
by:
Matt Eisenbrandt
4.07 avg rating — 54 ratings 94. 
Until Justice Rolls Down: The Birmingham Church Bombing Case (Fire Ant Books)
by:
Frank Sikora
4.50 avg rating — 12 ratings 95. 
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
by:
Jesse Eisinger
3.79 avg rating — 1,876 ratings 
97. 
Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force--The NYPD 3.47 avg rating — 129 ratings
98. 
Killing the Story: Journalists Risking Their Lives to Uncover the Truth in Mexico
by:
Témoris Grecko
3.85 avg rating — 39 ratings 99. 
When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later
by:
Robert Giles
4.39 avg rating — 71 ratings 100. 
League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth 4.19 avg rating — 4,614 ratings