Book Review: Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an after-hours club

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/07340168211012032
• Author: Caitlin A. Dorsch
• Date: 01 September 2024

one’s punishment. Often due to data inaccuracies, expungement itself is evidenced to be a diff‌icult

and complex process. Even when individuals express a desire and have the means to challenge and

correct personal information, Lageson highlights the confrontational and threatening retaliation from

websites and platforms that f‌lood search results. Chapter 7 raises questions about privacy in a digital

age when criminal record data are a substantial business, with a primary concern in this chapter being

the signif‌icance of imagery through what Lageson highlights as the mug shot black market.

Lageson’s concluding remarks succulently draw back to, and ref‌lect upon, not only the traditional

objectives of punishment but also the associated pains to argue how the effects of digital punishment

are in fact dissimilar to those faced by individuals in prison. What is fundamentally questioned here is

the value of digitalizing criminal records when the consequences and harm to the individual can be so

great. What is stark is Lageson’s recognition of how every American can be at risk of digital pun-

ishment. This is determined not by a judge and jury but by the availability of online information

which individuals have very limited control over as anyone and everyone has the power to apply

a criminal label. Digital Punishment provides an insightful resource to a range of audiences interested

in punishment, its impacts, and its changing nature or those interested in exploring the developments

of stigma for individuals caught up in the criminal justice system.

ORCID iD

Natalie Rutter https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0346-3601

Williams, T. (2020).

Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an after-hours club. Columbia University Press. 304 pp. $30.00 (Paperback), ISBN:

9780231177894.

Reviewed by: Caitlin A. Dorsch ,Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/07340168211012032

In Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club, author Terry Williams explores two after-hours

clubs located in New York City, one called “Le Boogie Woogie”and the other called “Murphy’s

Bar”(operating during the 1990s and the 2010s, respectively). Williams is a sociology professor

at the New School for Social Research in New York City and has previously published many

works including Cocaine Kids (1989) and Crackhouse (1992). Through interviews with and obser-

vations of various individuals involved in these scenes, Williams argues that cocaine usage serves to

connect individuals. Because they are hidden from the public eye and based on membership or asso-

ciation, these scenes are vastly understudied. Each scene acts as its own institution and is led through

specif‌ic cultural norms, which are typically associated with illegal activities.

This book is organized into six loose chapters. The f‌irst and last chapters make up the Introduction and

Conclusion portions of this book, respectively. The four middle chapters consist of The Setting, The Scene,

The Characters, and the After-Hours Now. At the end of the book, Williams includes appendices on meth-

odological design and f‌ield notes in addition to an update of the characters and a glossary of terms.

Introduction

Williams uses this section to examine the use of cocaine inside the after-hours club Le Boogie

Woogie. Among other forms of illegal activity (e.g., sex play, gambling), cocaine use was a cultural

norm in the after-hours club scene during the 1980s and 1990s. Williams provides a brief statement

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