Edited by Ruth Peterson, Lauren Krivo and John Hagan

In this authoritative volume, race and ethnicity are themselves considered as central organizing principles in why, how, where and by whom crimes are committed and enforced. The contributors argue that dimensions of race and ethnicity condition the very laws that make certain behaviors criminal, the perception of crime and those who are criminalized, the determination of who becomes a victim of crime under which circumstances, the responses to laws and crime that make some more likely to be defined as criminal, and the ways that individuals and communities are positioned and empowered to respond to crime.

New York: New York University Press, 2006. 432p.

By Stanislav Vysotsky

This dissertation seeks to understand the tactical differences between two groups of anti-racist activists who confront white supremacists. I dub these activists non-militant and militant anti-racists based on their tactical preferences. Non-militant anti-racists engage in what are understood to be conventional and demonstrative tactics. While militants are also likely to engage in similar tactics, their tactical repertoire also includes confrontational and violent approaches. I am particularly interested in how the two groups of activists explain the differences in their tactical choices; and therefore, posit that each group will use ideological explanations and perceptions of threat to explain their tactical choices. Using a snowball sampling methodology, I developed a sample of 24 anti-racist activists. These activists were given a quantitative survey in order to establish their tactical preference. The survey consisted of an original index developed to establish the militancy of the respondent. Survey results yielded a bi-modal distribution of scores that suggests a distinct difference in tactical preferences among anti-racist activists and confirms the categorization of activists into non-militant and militant categories. Additionally, interviews were conducted with all of the participants in order to 1) validate the results of the quantitative measure of militancy, 2) establish ideological orientation and test whether it had an influence of discussion of tactical preference, and 3) gauge the level of threat perceived and its influence on tactical preference. The results of the survey and interview data indicate distinct differences in tactical preferences between non-militants and militants.. The interview data demonstrate a clear difference in how non-militants and militants explain their tactical preferences. Non-militants adhered to a liberal ideology, but did not make explicit reference to their ideological position to explain their tactical preferences. I posit that this is a result of hegemonic dominance of liberalism.

Boston, MA: Northeastern University, 2009. 237p.

By Joyce King

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation’s imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.

In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene and extends into the minds of the young men who so casually ended a man’s life. She takes us inside the prison in which two of them met for the first time, and she shows how it played a major role in shaping their attitudes—racial and otherwise. The result is a deeply engrossing psychological portrait of the accused and a powerful indictment of the American prison system’s ability to reform criminals. Finally, King writes with candor and clarity about how the events of that fateful night have affected her—as a black woman, a native Texan, and a journalist given the agonizing assignment of covering the trials of all three defendants.

New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. 248p.

By James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter

In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of hate crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. The book contends that hate crime as a socio-legal category represents the elaboration of an identity politics now manifesting itself in many areas of the law. But the attempt to apply the anti-discrimination paradigm to criminal law generates problems and anomalies. For one thing, members of minority groups are frequently hate crime perpetrators. Moreover, the underlying conduct prohibited by hate crime law is already subject to criminal punishment. Jacobs and Potter question whether hate crimes are worse or more serious than similar crimes attributable to other anti-social motivations. Advancing a provocative argument in clear and persuasive terms, Jacobs and Potter show how the recriminalization of hate crime has little (if any) value with respect to law enforcement or criminal justice. Indeed, enforcement of such laws may exacerbate intergroup tensions rather than eradicate prejudice.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. 224p.

By Jennifer Turner

In the first-ever report on the extent and impact of cooperation between courts and the private debt collection industry nationwide, the American Civil Liberties Union found courts in 26 states and Puerto Rico in which judges issued arrest warrants for alleged debtors at the request of private debt collectors.

This practice violates the many state and federal laws as well as international human rights standards that prohibit the jailing of debtors. It worsens their financial struggles by subjecting them to court appearances, arrest warrants that appear on background checks, and jail time that interfere with their wages, their jobs, their ability to find housing, and more.

An estimated one in three adults in the United States has a debt that has been turned over to a private collection company, according to the Urban Institute. More than 6,000 of these companies operate in the U.S. At the bidding of the private debt collection industry, courts issue tens of thousands of arrest warrants every year when people don’t appear in court to deal with unpaid civil debt judgments.

New York: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 2018. 97p.

Edited by Philip L. Reichel and Jay S. Albanese

Transnational crime and justice will characterize the 21st century in the same way that traditional street crimes dominated the 20th century. In the <strong>Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, Philip Reichel and Jay Albanese bring together top scholars from around the world to offer perspectives on the laws, crimes, and criminal justice responses to transnational crime. This concise, reader-friendly handbook is organized logically around four major themes: the problem of transnational crime; analysis of specific transnational crimes; approaches to its control; and regional geographical analyses. Each comprehensive chapter is designed to be explored as a stand-alone topic, making this handbook an important textbook and reference tool for students and practitioners alike.

Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014. 576p.

Edited by Gerben Bruinsma

In the past two decades, the study of transnational crime has developed from a subset of the study of organized crime to its own recognized field of study, covering distinct societal threats and requiring a particular approach. This volume provides examples of transnational crime, and places them in a broad historical context, which has so far been missing from this field of study. The contributions to this comprehensive volume explore the causes and historical precursors of six main types of transnational crime: piracy, human smuggling, arms trafficking, drug trafficking, art and antique trafficking and corporate crime. The historical contributions demonstrate that transnational crime is not a novel phenomenon of recent globalization and that, beyond organized crime groups, powerful individuals, governments and business corporations have been heavily involved.

New York: Springer, 2015. 201p.

By Jay S Albanese

Organized Crime provides readers with a clear understanding of organized crime, including its definition and causes, how it is categorized under the law, models to explain its persistence, and the criminal justice response to organized crime, including investigation, prosecution, defense, and sentencing.

This book offers a comprehensive survey, including an extensive history of the Mafia in the United States; a legal analysis of the offenses that underlie organized crimes; specific attention to modern manifestations of organized crime activity, such as human smuggling, Internet crimes, and other transnational criminal operations; and the application of ethics to the study of organized crime.

Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2015. 390p.

By Maziyar Ghiabi

Iran has one of the world’s highest rates of drug addiction, estimated to be between two and seven per cent of the entire population. This makes the questions this book asks all the more salient: what is the place of illegal substances in the politics of modern Iran? How have drugs affected the formation of the Iranian state and its power dynamics? And how have governmental attempts at controlling and regulating illicit drugs affected drug consumption and addiction? By answering these questions, Maziyar Ghiabi suggests that the Islamic Republic’s image as an inherently conservative state is not only misplaced and inaccurate, but in part a myth. In order to dispel this myth, he skilfully combines ethnographic narratives from drug users, vivid field observations from ‘under the bridge’, with archival material from the pre- and post-revolutionary era, statistics on drug arrests and interviews with public officials

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 236p.

Edited by Julia Buxton Mary Chinery-Hesse Khalid Tinasti

The 12th volume of International Development Policy explores the relationship between international drug policy and development goals, both current and within a historical per-spective. Contributions address the drugs and development nexus from a range of critical viewpoints, highlighting gaps and contradictions, as well as exploring strategies and opportunities for enhanced linkages between drug control and development programming. Crim-inalisation and coercive law enforcement-based responses in international and national level drug control are shown to undermine peace, security and development objectives. Readership: Academic scholars and researchers, policymakers and development practitioners interested in international development policy, drug policies and their effects on development, global economic and political trends, and local development issues.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. 335p.

Francesco Calderoni,Tommaso Comunale,Gian Maria Campedelli,Martina Marchesi,Deborah Manzi and Niccolò Frualdo

There is relatively strong evidence that being male and having committed prior criminal activity and violence are associated with future organised crime recruitment. There is weak evidence that prior sanctions, social relations with organised crime-involved subjects and a troubled family environment are associated with recruitment. This systematic review examines what individual-level risk factors are associated with recruitment into organised crime. Despite the increase of policies addressing organised crime activities, little is known about recruitment. Existing knowledge is fragmented and comprises different types of organised criminal groups.Recruitment refers to the different processes leading individuals to stable involvement in organised criminal groups, including mafia, drug trafficking organisations, adult gangs and outlawed motorcycle gangs. This systematic review excludes youth (street) gangs, prison gangs and terrorist groups.

Oslo, Norway: Campbell Collaborative, 2022. 68p.

By Anu Koskivirta

"This work explores the quantitative and qualitative development of homicide in eastern Finland in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. The area studied comprised northern Savo and northern Karelia in eastern Finland. At that time, these were completely agricultural regions on the periphery of the kingdom of Sweden. Indeed the majority of the population still got their living from burn-beating agriculture. The analysis of homicide there reveals characteristics that were exceptional by Western European standards: the large proportion of premeditated homicides (murders) and those within the family is more reminiscent of modern cities in the West than of a pre-modern rural society. However, there also existed some archaic forms of Western crime there. Most of the homicides within the family were killings of brothers or brothers-in law, connected with the family structure (the extended family) that prevailed in the region. This study uses case analysis to explore the causes for the increase in both familial homicide and murder in the area. One of the explanatory factors that is dealt with is the interaction between the faltering penal practice that then existed and the increase in certain types of homicide.

Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society / SKS, 2003. 217p.

By Hikmet Karčić

Half a century after the Holocaust, on European soil, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps where they subjected their Bosniak Muslim and Bosnian Croat neighbors to torture, abuse, and killing. Foreign journalists exposed the horrors of the camps in the summer of 1992, sparking worldwide outrage. This exposure, however, did not stop the mass atrocities. Hikmet Karčić shows that the use of camps and detention facilities has been a ubiquitous practice in countless wars and genocides in order to achieve the wartime objectives of perpetrators. Although camps have been used for different strategic purposes, their essential functions are always the same: to inflict torture and lasting trauma on the victims. Torture, Humiliate, Kill develops the author’s collective traumatization theory, which contends that the concentration camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities had the primary purpose of inflicting collective trauma on the non-Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This collective traumatization consisted of excessive use of torture, sexual abuse, humiliation, and killing. The physical and psychological suffering imposed by these methods were seen as a quick and efficient means to establish the Serb “living space.” Karčić argues that this trauma was deliberately intended to deter non-Serbs from ever returning to their pre-war homes. The book centers on multiple examples of experiences at concentration camps in four towns operated by Bosnian Serbs during the war: Prijedor, Bijeljina, Višegrad, and Bileća. Chosen according to their political and geographical position, Karčić demonstrates that these camps were used as tools for the ethno-religious genocidal campaign against non-Serbs. Torture, Humiliate, Kill is a thorough and definitive resource for understanding the function and operation of camps during the Bosnian genocide.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 277p.

By Laura Trajber Waisbich, Terine Husek and Vinicius Santos

The ecosystem of environmental crime in the Amazon is largely to blame for the current levels of deforestation and degradation of the biggest tropical forest on the planet. Several illegal economic activities, representing the main drivers of destruction in the river basin, take a heavy toll on the forest and its inhabitants. Based on an analysis of the spatial distribution of the Federal Police operations to fight environmental crime in the Legal Amazon between 2016 and 2021, this study highlights the hotspots for a range of illicit forest-based economic activities in the region, while also showing how other locations within and outside the Brazilian Amazon form part of a broader nexus of environmental crime. The study reviewed more than 300 Federal Police operations and identified 846 territories that make up the ecosystem of environmental crime in the Amazon. These territories are located in 262 municipalities, both in the Legal Amazon and beyond its borders. Of the cities mapped, 75% are located in the Legal Amazon, 22% are in other regions of Brazil and 3% are in neighboring countries. These territories are where environmental and associated crimes converge to fuel illegal deforestation, illegal logging, public land grabbing (known as grilagem, in Portuguese), agriculture and livestock rife with environmental illegalities and illegal mining.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Igarape, 2022. 58p.

By Thomas Friis Søgaard Marie Højlund Bræmer Michael Mulbjerg Pedersen

This report provides an analysis of current drug supply models and the related violence and exploitation of vulnerable groups in Denmark. Recent years have seen a growth in criminals’ exploitation of vulnerable groups for drug-related crimes. This development appears to be driven by several structural factors, including increased drug market competition and a proliferation of more labour-intensive supply models. Based on the findings of this study, we identify some priorities for future research to understand the impact of digital developments in retail-level drug distribution on vulnerable individuals and to inform responses to reduce criminal exploitation.

Lisbon: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 2021. 55p.

By Simone Haysom, Peter Gastrow and Mark Shaw

This report examines the characteristics of the heroin trade off the East African coast and highlights the criminal governance systems that facilitate drug trafficking along these routes.

In recent years, the volume of heroin shipped from Afghanistan along a network of maritime routes in East and southern Africa appears to have increased considerably. Most of this heroin is destined for Western markets, but there is a spin-off trade for local consumption. An integrated regional criminal market has developed, both shaping and shaped by political developments in the region. Africa is now experiencing the sharpest increase in heroin use worldwide and a spectrum of criminal networks and political elites in East and southern Africa are substantially enmeshed in the trade. This report focuses on the characteristics of the heroin trade in the region and how it has become embedded in the societies along this route. It also highlights the features of the criminal governance systems that facilitate drug trafficking along this coastal route.

ENACT (Africa), 2018. 54p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

This paper explores policy options for responding to the supply of heroin and synthetic opioids from Mexico to the United States. Forced eradication of opium poppy has been the dominant response to illicit crop cultivation in Mexico for decades. Forced eradication appears to deliver fast results in suppressing poppy cultivation, but the suppression is not sustainable even in the short term. Farmers find a variety of ways to adapt and replant after eradication. Moreover, eradication undermines public safety and rule of law efforts in Mexico, both of high interest to the United States….Unless security and rule of law in Mexico significantly improve, the licensing of opium poppy in Mexico for medical purposes is unlikely to reduce the supply of heroin to the United States. Mexico faces multiple feasibility obstacles for getting international approval for licensing its poppy cultivation for medical purposes, including, currently, the inability to prevent opium diversion to illegal supply and lack of existing demand for its medical opioids. In seeking to establish such demand, Mexico should avoid setting off its own version of medical opioid addiction.

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution,2020. 28p.

By Christopher E. Ferrell, Shishir Mathur, Justin Meek and Matthew Piven

There are considerable environmental and public health benefits if people choose to walk, bicycle, or ride transit, instead of drive. However, little work has been done on the effects of neighborhood crimes on mode choice. Instinctively, we understand that the threats posed by possible criminal activity in one’s neighborhood can play a major role in the decision to drive, take transit, walk or ride a bicycle, but so far little empirical evidence supports this notion, let alone guides public infrastructure investments, land use planning, or the allocation of police services. This report--describing Phase 2 of a research study conducted for the Mineta Transportation Institute on crime and travel behavior--finds that high crime neighborhoods tend to discourage residents from walking or riding a bicycle. When comparing a high crime to a lower crime neighborhood the odds of walking over choosing auto decrease by 17.25 percent for work trips and 61 percent for non-work trips. For transit access to work trips, the odds of choosing walk/bike to a transit station over auto decrease by 48.1 percent. Transit trips, on the other hand, are affected by neighborhood crime levels in a similar way to auto trips, wherein high crime neighborhoods appear to encourage transit mode choice.

San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, 2012. 104p.

By Grahame Allen and Megan Harding

“Knife” crime, a crime involving an object with a blade or sharp instrument, is a persistent concern and disproportionately impacts the young and disadvantaged. Various remedies have been tried over the years. The Library Briefing Paper Knives and Offensive Weapons (SN00330) discusses the legislation which governs the carrying (possession) and sale of knives and other offensive weapons.

London: House of Commons Library, 2021. 37p.

Edited by Ravi K. Thiara, Stephanie A. Condon, and Monika Schröttle

This book draws together both: theory and practice on minority/migrant women and gendered violence. The interplay of gender, ethnicity, religion, class, generation and sexuality in shaping the lives, experiences and choices of minority/migrant women affected by violence has not always been adequately theorised within much of the existing writing on violence against women. Feminist theory, especially the insights provided by the concept of intersectionality, are central to the editors’ conceptual frameworks.

Leverkusen-Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich , 2011. 426p.