If poets are the world's unacknowledged legislators, as Percy Bysshe Shelley suggested, perhaps novelists are its unrecognized sociologists. For those interested in issues of crime and criminal justice, there is no shortage of fictional material. Novels treating these issues are common, particularly those featuring police or courtroom dramas (Newman, 1990). As Posner (1988) suggested, writers are drawn to the topics of crime and justice, to cops and robbers, for theme and setting because of the conflict and drama inherent in these topics. Furthermore, popular culture-television shows, movies, the press, as well as fiction is replete with treatment of these topics, as even a casual review of television programming, newsstands, and book racks would reveal. Works dealing with correctional themes have not been as commonplace. Stories set in prison or community corrections settings are rare, perhaps because it is what gets people behind bars that drives successful plots, not what later becomes of them. In a marked departure, two novels were published in 1991 that featured probation officers as protagonists: Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob and Peter Blauner's Slow Motion Riot. Both were popular successes and one (Blauner's) won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by a mystery writer. As someone who divides his time between working in corrections and teaching about it, this publishing anomaly raised interesting questions for me. What usc to the study of crime and the practice of corrections-might be made of these works? Could they serve purposes beyond entertainment