By Paul Iganski

The impression often conveyed by the media about hate crime offenders is that they are hate-fuelled individuals who, in acting out their extremely bigoted views, target their victims in premeditated violent attacks. Scholarly research on the perpetrators of hate crime has begun to provide a more nuanced picture. But the preoccupation of researchers with convicted offenders neglects the vast majority of hate crime offenders that do not come into contact with the criminal justice system.This book, from a leading author in the field, widens understanding of hate crime by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse hate crime as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. Aimed at academics and students of criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies, the book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. It adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinizing the balance struck by hate crime laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.

Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2008. 168p.

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 Barbara Perry

In The Name of Hate is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory of hate crimes, arguing for an expansion of the legal definitions that most states in the U.S. hold. Barbara Perry provides an historical understanding of hate crimes and provocatively argues that hate crimes are not an aberration of current society, but rather a by-product of a society still grappling with inequality, difference, fear, and hate.

New York: Routledge, 2001. 289p.

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.

By Tom J. Farer

The most destructive forces in the Americas today is not El Nino - it is the criminal enterprises that recognise no geographic, legal or moral boundaries. This book exposes the main characteristics and effects of criminal enterprises in the Americas and considers realistic strategies for combating them. Looking at how crime penetrates private business, government and the everyday lives of the people, this collection examines the impact of criminal enterprises on the legitimate economy and the ability of states to promote the rule of law. It compares criminal enterprises in the Americas with other regions, and considers the foreign policy concerns of the US. With a recent upsurge in the scope, sophistication and cooperation among groups, this book is an essential tool for understanding omne of the greatest challenges to security, peace and democracy in the Americas.

New York: Routledge, 1999. 256p.

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 Anne M. Nurse

Most people get information about child sexual abuse from media coverage, social movements, or conversations with family and friends. Confronting Child Sexual Abuse describes how these forces shape our views of victims and offenders, while also providing an in-depth look at prevention efforts and current research. Sociologist Anne Nurse has synthesized studies spanning the fields of psychology, sociology, communications, criminology, and political science to produce this nuanced, accessible, and up-to-date account. Topics include the prevalence of abuse, the impact of abuse on victims and families, offender characteristics, abuse in institutions, and the efficacy of treatments. Written for people who care for kids, for students considering careers in criminal justice or human services, and for anyone seeking information about this devastating issue, Nurse’s book offers new public policy ideas as well as practical suggestions on how to engage in prevention work. Interactive links to studies, videos, and podcasts connect readers to further resources.

Ann Arbor, MI: Lever Press, 2020. 319p.

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 Jenny DiPlacidi

This book demonstrates that incest was representative of a range of interests crucial to writers of the Gothic, often women or homosexual men who adopted a critical stance in relation to the heteronormative patriarchal world. In repositioning the Gothic, representations of incest are revealed as synonymous with the Gothic as a whole. The book argues that extending the traditional endpoint of the Gothic makes it possible to understand the full range of familial, legal, marital, sexual and class implications associated with the genre's deployment of incest. Gothic authors deploy the generic convention of incest to reveal as inadequate heteronormative ideologies of sexuality and desire in the patriarchal social structure that render its laws and requirements arbitrary. The book examines the various familial ties and incestuous relationships in the Gothic to show how they depict and disrupt contemporary definitions of gender, family and desire. Many of the methodologies adopted in Gothic scholarship and analyses of incest reveal ongoing continuities between their assumptions and those of the very ideologies Gothic authors strove to disrupt through their use of the incest trope. Methodologies such as Freudian psychoanalysis, as Botting argues, can be positioned as a product of Gothic monster-making, showing the effect of Gothic conventions on psychoanalytic theories that are still in wide use today.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2018. 314p.

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 Jyoti Puri

In Sexual States Jyoti Puri uses the example of the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of sexuality is fundamentally tied to the creation and enduring existence of the state. Between 2001 and 2013 activists attempted to rewrite section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which outlaws homosexual behavior. Having interviewed activists and NGO workers throughout five metropolitan centers, investigated crime statistics at the National Crime Records Bureau, visited various state institutions, and met with the police, Puri found that section 377 is but one element of the large and complex systems of laws, practices, policies, and discourses that regulate Indian sexuality. Intended to mitigate sexuality's threat to the social order, this regulation works to preserve the views of the state as inevitable, legitimate, and indispensable. By highlighting the various means through which the regulation of sexuality constitutes India's heterogeneous and fragmented.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 233p;.

By Philip M Stinson, Zachary J. Calogeras, Natalie L. DiChiro, and Ryan K. Hunter

This report was prepared at the request of the California Research Bureau. The data are from a larger study on police crime in the United States. Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers given the general powers of arrest at the time the offense was committed and/or at the time when the officer was arrested. These crimes can occur while the officer is on- or off-duty and include offenses committed by state, county, municipal, tribal, or special law enforcement agencies. Police crimes damage the occupational integrity of police officers, the organizational legitimacy of the employing law enforcement agency, and the overall authority and legitimacy of the law enforcement community. According to Stinson’s (2009) typology of police crime, nearly all crime committed by sworn law enforcement officers is alcohol-related, drug-related, sex-related, violence-related, and/or profit-motivated. This report focuses on the sex-related police crime arrests of sworn law enforcement officers in the State of California during the years 2005-2011.

Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 2015. 25p.

By Adriana Abdenur, Brodie Ferguson, Ilona Szabo de Carvalho, Melina Risso and Robert Muggah

According to the world’s top scientific experts, deforestation and degradation are up 25 percent in the first six months compared to last year. More forests are being cleared in 2020 than at any point in the past 15 years.

Although spectacular levels of illegal burning have occupied global headlines, a host of other less visible but equally significant environmental crimes are being committed throughout the Amazon basin every day. Such crimes not only impact biodiversity and the global climate, but are virtually always associated with social ills ranging from corruption to slavery and violence.

A new paper from the Igarape Institute – Environmental Crime in the Amazon Basin: a Typology for Research, Policy and Action – introduces a typology to help better understand the scope and scale of the problem and its extensive social and environmental impacts. To date, one of the principal barriers to better policing of the Amazon is the confusion and ambiguity of what is, and is not, a crime. Different countries apply different interpretations which can frustrate investigations and the enforcement of existing laws. The new paper is designed to provide greater clarity to policy makers, law enforcement agencies, civil society actors, and companies committed to curbing environmental crime.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2020. 29p.

By Robert Muggah

Climate change is already disrupting cities around the world. Continued greenhouse gas emissions and warming are intensifying heat islands, contributing to water shortages, rising seas, increasing flood-related risks and worsening pollution. With over two thirds of the population expected to live in cities by 2030, the effects are consequential. Large and fast-growing cities in Asia, Africa and the Americas are likely to be hit hardest by more frequent and intense disasters. Coastal cities across North America and Western Europe are likewise on the front-line.

Climate change is influencing all aspects of city life, from labor markets and food security to migration patterns and economic productivity. One critical, if under-examined, way climate change is affecting cities is in relation to crime and victimization. To be sure, the debate about the relationships between climate and security – and in particular the influence of global warming on conflict onset, duration and intensity – has heated-up over the past decade, there is less attention devoted to how climate change stands to influence criminal violence in cities around the world.

Evidence suggests that dramatic climate change will generate a substantial increase in crime in many cities – and especially more vulnerable neighborhoods. In this paper, Robert Muggah, Igarapé Institute co-founder and Research and Innovation Director analyses studies and theories about the link climate-crime and present strategies and preventive measures to avoid violence while protecting the most vulnerable.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2021. 13p.

By The Igarapé Institute and INTERPOL

The Igarapé Institute, in a partnership with INTERPOL, releases the “Guidance note on combating environmental crime: lessons from fighting illegal gold mining in the Amazon Basin”. The publication offers practical guidance for law enforcement, criminal justice and environmental protection authorities to better understand the scope and scale of the challenge. It is designed for national and subnational environmental investigators, police officers and public prosecutors at the forefront of efforts to dismantle environmental crimes in the Amazon.

The guidance note reviews policy and operational strategies meant to prevent, control and reduce illegal small-scale gold mining in the Amazon – with a focus on Brazil, Colombia and Peru. The note offers a catalogue of 12 measures already in place in the three countries that can be valuable for law enforcement, criminal justice and environmental protection authorities to learn from each other, cooperate and coordinate activities within and across countries.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2021. 41p.