Flowers, R(onald) Barri

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FLOWERS, R(onald) Barri

PERSONAL:

Born in Detroit, MI; married H. Loraine Flowers (a crime researcher and author). Education: Michigan State University, B.A., M.S. (criminal justice).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Beaverton, OR. Office—c/o Charles C. Thomas, Publisher Ltd., 2600 South First St., Springfield, IL 62704. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

MEMBER:

American Crime Writers League, Black Writers Alliance, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Good Book Club.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Criminal Jurisdiction Allocation in Indian Country, Associated Faculty Press (Port Washington, NY), 1983.

Children and Criminality: The Child as Victim and Perpetrator, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Women and Criminality: The Woman as Victim, Offender, and Practitioner, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Minorities and Criminality, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Demographics and Criminality: The Characteristics of Crime in America, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1989.

The Adolescent Criminal: An Examination of Today's Juvenile Offender, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1990.

The Victimization and Exploitation of Women and Children: A Study of Physical, Mental, and Sexual Maltreatment in the United States, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1994.

Female Crime, Criminals, and Cellmates: An Exploration of Female Criminality and Delinquency, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1995.

The Sex Slave Murders, J. Flores (Miami, FL), 1995.

The Prostitution of Women and Girls, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1998.

Drugs, Alcohol, and Criminality in American Society, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1999.

Domestic Crimes, Family Violence and Child Abuse: A Study of Contemporary American Society, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2000.

(With wife, H. Loraine Flowers) Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the Twentieth Century, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2001.

Runaway Kids and Teenage Prostitution: America's Lost, Abandoned, and Sexually Exploited Children, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2001.

Sex Crimes, Predators, Perpetrators, Prostitutes, and Victims: An Examination of Sexual Criminality and Victimization, Charles C. Thomas (Springfield, IL), 2001.

Kids Who Commit Adult Crimes: Serious Criminality by Juvenile Offenders, Haworth Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Murder, at the End of the Day and Night: A Study of Criminal Homicide Offenders, Victims, and Circumstances, Charles C. Thomas (Springfield, IL), 2002.

Male Crime and Deviance: Exploring Its Causes, Dynamics, and Nature, Charles C. Thomas (Springfield, IL), 2003.

To Defend the Constitution: Religion, Conscientious Objection, Naturalization, and the Supreme Court, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 2003.

MYSTERY NOVELS

Deadly Secrets in the Motor City, Writers Club Press (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

Damning Evidence,iUniverse.com (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

Murder in the Rose City,iUniverse.com (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

When Night Falls, Xlibris (Philadelphia, PA), 2000.

Positive I.D.,iUniverse.com (Lincoln, NE), 2001.

In the Dark of Night,iUniverse.com (Lincoln, NE), 2001.

Scheme of Things, Sadorian Publications (Durham, NC), 2002.

ROMANCE NOVELS

All for a Good Cause, Writers Club Press (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

For Old Times' Sake, Writers Club Press (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

The Loves of His Life,iUniverse.com (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals, including Mystery Readers Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Raised as one of five children in Detroit and educated in criminal justice at Michigan State University, R. Barri Flowers had devoted the bulk of his published work to crime and criminology. In some cases, his focus has been on actions deemed criminal, though not necessarily judged immoral in the view of modern society. Such is the case, for instance, with To Defend the Constitution: Religion, Conscientious Objection, Naturalization, and the Supreme Court. More often, he has focused his attention on persons who, while deemed criminal by authorities, may in turn have been victims themselves—for example, The Adolescent Criminal: An Examination of Today's Juvenile Offender, or the sex workers discussed in books such as The Prostitution of Women and Girls. Flowers has also examined victims and victimology from a number of angles.

Flowers has written not only about the causes of crime in males, females, minorities, and children, but also about some of the most hardened criminal minds of the modern age. In Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century—written with his wife, H. Loraine Flowers—he discusses fifty-three major crimes. These range from the assassinations of presidents William McKinley in 1901 and John F. Kennedy in 1963 to the Manson Family murders of 1969, and from the Columbine school shooting in 1999 to the World Trade Center bombing of 1993.

In addition to Part One, "A Century of Murders," Murders in the United States includes a discussion of perpetrators in Part Two, "A Century of Murderers." These are organized by demographic categories—male, female, juvenile—as well as types or motivations: serial killers, hate-crime killers, caretaker killers, and killers of celebrities. Part Three, "A Century of Victims," looks at well-known victims such as Kennedy and his brother Bobby—killed by assassin Sirhan Sirhan in 1968—as well as singer Marvin Gaye, who was shot by his father in 1983. Subdivided into sections listing adult and child victims, this final third of the book examines both those victims who were known before their killing—for example, Charles A. Lindbergh III, whose father's fame made his 1932 kidnap and murder a national tragedy—as well as those who only became famous after their deaths—for example, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, who was killed in her Colorado home in 1996. Seven pages of bibliographic information, including Web resources, round out the volume.

"Despite its subject matter," wrote Mary Ellen Quinn in Booklist, Murders in the United States "generally manages to avoid sensationalism." "All in all," according to David Harrison in Reference Reviews, "Murders in the United States is a useful contribution to the popular literature of crime in the U.S.A."

Many of Flowers's works have dealt with sex crimes, as well as unlawful activity associated with sex, such as prostitution. The Prostitution of Women and Girls, written on the heels of a World Health Organization report that noted enormous increases in sex-trade activity in all countries studied, examines numerous subjects related to the principal topic. Among these are the roles of the pimp and the john (the steady male customer); juvenile prostitution and the incidence of runaways becoming involved in prostitution; male prostitution, virtually all of which is geared toward the male homosexual trade; the prevalence of childhood abuse in the background of prostitutes; drugs and substance abuse; AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases; and the relationship between prostitution and pornography, as well as that between prostitution and the burgeoning global market in "sex tourism."

The Prostitution of Women and Girls, noted Heather Lee Miller in the Journal of Women's History, "enumerat[es] and discuss[es] both quantitative and qualitative information about sex work and sexploitation." Mary Jane Brustman in Library Journal called it "a very readable study, intelligently presented and well supported with an extensive bibliography."

In Sex Crimes, Predators, Perpetrators, Prostitutes, and Victims: An Examination of Sexual Criminality and Victimization Flowers targets a particularly poignant topic within the larger subject of the sex industry. Of the 2001 book, Carlton W. Parks wrote in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that "This volume will satisfy [the] curiosity and thirst for information about sexual criminality and victimization in a manner that easily captures the attention of the intelligent layperson."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Archives of Sexual Behavior, December, 2002, Carlton W. Parks, review of Sex Crimes, Predators, Perpetrators, Prostitutes, and Victims: An Examination of Sexual Criminality and Victimization, p. 553.

Booklist, March 15, 2002, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century, p. 1277.

Journal of Women's History, summer, 2000, Heather Lee Miller, review of The Prostitution of Women and Girls, p. 222.

Library Journal, August, 1998, Mary Jane Brustman, review of The Prostitution of Women and Girls, p. 113.

Twentieth-Century Reference Reviews, Volume 16, issue 2, 2002, David Harrison, review of Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century, pp. 18-19.