Crime and Punishment the two halves of the novel, as David Bethea has argued, is organized according to a mirror-like principle, whereby the "left" half of the novel reflects the "right" half. The seventh part of the novel, the Epilogue, has attracted much attention and controversy. Some of Dostoevsky's critics have criticized the novel's final pages as superfluous, anti-climactic, unworthy of the rest of the work, while others have defended it, offering various schemes that they claim prove its inevitability and necessity. Steven Cassedy argues that "Crime and Punishment" "is formally two distinct but closely related, things, namely a particular type of tragedy
The Color of Crime (1998 book) as a path-breaking book". An edition of the "American Journal of Sociology" states that Russell-Brown makes an "indispensable, intelligent, and practical contribution" to the issues of race and crime. Erica Chito Childs in "Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture" (2009) writes that the book provides an excellent analysis of the media reaction in the O. J. Simpson murder case. However, Russell-Brown, who is African-American, and the book have been criticised for being biased. Critics have said the book downplays the level of black crime and that it over-attributes black crime to a discriminatory justice system. The