Perspective

Fox Butterfield, born in 1939, was a journalist who worked at the New York Times for thirty years and has worked on the history of criminal violence. Perhaps his greatest study in to the nature of violent crime is All God's Children. As seen in the themes, Butterfield sets out to make particular points about the nature of crime as illustrated by the life of the Bosket family. All God's children not only tells a story but makes an explicit, extended argument throughout the book.

Butterfield's primary bias is that he opposed the common American practice of treating criminal violence only in accord with an imprisonment model. On Butterfield's view, prison only hardens criminals and further internalized the honor code that leads to so much violence in the first place. Prison also splits families, leaving children alone with mothers working constantly that pushes children into the street gangs for...