The colourful sweets in Stanley Burns’ local candy store belied a sinister threat. The shop in Brooklyn was the headquarters of Murder Incorporated, a national crime syndicate that solved mob disputes and killed enemies.

It was the 1940s, and young Stanley was aware of trouble. “We knew about it at the time because there were a lot of tough guys hanging out,” he says. “We weren’t really scared – I was a small child.”

This was Stanley’s first brush with crime. Through his dad’s interest in boxing he went on to meet prize fighters with gang links, and after deciding to be a doctor he chose to work in a prison as part of his training.

He continued to practice medicine, but in 1975 he began to collect photographs. He’s now a full-time collector with around 1m images – 9,000 of crime. The pictures on these pages, from his new book, document the history of justice, torture and death across the globe. Things have changed, says Stanley:
“In the United States, punishment is no longer swift, sure, or proportionate to the crime. In the old days, people were proud of what they did, admitted their guilt, accepted their punishment and the communities meted it out. That’s long gone. Now, everyone is innocent.”

Stanley hopes these photographs will be an education to those who’ve forgotten the past. “One out of every 99 people in the United States at the moment are in jail,” he says. “It costs almost bn a year to support criminals, and it’s not getting better. One of the reasons I wrote the book is to make people aware of this.”

Deadly Intent: Crime And Punishment Photographs From The Burns Archive by Stanley B Burns, MD and Sara Clearly-Burns, is published by PowerHouse, and costs £25. To find out more, visit Powerhousebooks.com and Burnsarchive.com