Austin Reed Archive The Criminal State in Austin Reed’s The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict Author: Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan | Jan242019 Categories: Critical Essays No comments Austin Reed’s 1858 book evades generic stability, blending memoir with picaresque, bildungsroman, jeremiad, and others to reveal the injustice of the justice system and the perpetuation of a criminal cycle as enforced by a racist state.