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CRIME

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The Role of the RCMP During the Indian Residential School System

By Marcel-Eugène LeBeuf

This report is the first complete assessment of the RCMP’s involvement in the Indian Residential School (IRS) system. As the police force of jurisdiction in many areas where Indian Residential Schools were located, the RCMP sought to gain a better understanding of its role during this era. Through researching and publishing this study, the RCMP wishes to document and demonstrate its dedication to the healing and reconciliation process. The contribution of knowledge from a law enforcement and sociological perspective shows the commitment of the RCMP to support the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), former Indian Residential School students, First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities, RCMP members, as well as all Canadians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, in the healing process. This report helps prepare for the future as it permits assessment of past practices, actions and accomplishments, and provides an occasion for the RCMP to improve future ones. … This study does not intend to shed light on the systemic problems that occurred in Indian Residential Schools nor on what the police could have done with regards to the various forms of abuse suffered in the system. The focus, rather, is to explain how police officers were linked with the school system and what actions the police took, if any, if they were aware of abuse. For the study and this report, the word “abuse” refers to improper physical or sexual behavior and actions that contributed to the loss of cultural roots

Ottawa: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2011. 470p.

Classics in Environmental Criminology

Edited by Martin A Andresen, Paul J. Brantingham and J. Bryan Kinney

A careful analysis of environmental factors is key to understanding the causes of crime, to solving crimes, and eventually helping to predict and prevent them. Classics in Environmental Criminology is a comprehensive collection of seminal pieces from legendary contributors who focus on the role that the immediate environment plays in the occurrence of a crime.

Boca Raton : Taylor & Francis/CRC Press, 2010. 552p.

The Myth of the "Crime Decline" : Exploring Change and Continuity in Crime and Harm

By Justin Kotzé

The Myth of the ‘Crime Decline’ seeks to critically interrogate the supposed ­statistical decline of crime rates, thought to have occurred in a number of predominantly Western countries over the past two decades. Whilst this trend of declining crime rates seems profound, serious questions need to be asked. Data sources need to be critically interrogated, and context needs to be provided. This book seeks to do just that. This book examines the wider socio-economic and politico-cultural context within which this decline in crime is said to have occurred, highlighting the changing nature and landscape of crime and its ever deepening resistance to precise measurement. By drawing upon original qualitative research and cutting-edge criminological theory, this book offers an alternative view of the reality of crime and harm. In doing so it seeks to reframe the ‘crime decline’ discourse and provide a more accurate account of this puzzling ­contemporary phenomenon. Additionally, utilising a new theoretical framework developed by the author, this book begins to explain why the ‘crime decline’ discourse has been so readily accepted.

London: Routledge, 2019. 188p.

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Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis. Second Edition.

Edited by Richard Wortley and Michael Townsley

Environmental criminology is a term that encompasses a range of overlapping perspectives. At its core, the many strands of environmental criminology are bound by a common focus on the role that the immediate environment plays in the performance of crime, and a conviction that careful analyses of these environmental influences are the key to the effective investigation, control, and prevention of crime.

Fully updated and including new chapters on crime scripts and offender mobility, a scene-setting introductory overview, and critical thinking questions at the end of each chapter, this text is an essential and comprehensive resource for practitioners and students taking courses on environmental criminology, crime analysis, and crime prevention.

Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2017. 380p.

Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis

Edited by Richard Wortley and Lorraine Mazerolle

Environmental criminology is a generic label that covers a range of overlapping perspectives. At the core, the various strands of environmental criminology are bound by a common focus on the role that the immediate environment plays in the performance of crime, and a conviction that careful analyses of these environmental influences are the key to the effective investigation, control and prevention of crime. Environmental Crime and Crime Analysis brings together for the first time the key contributions to environmental criminology to comprehensively define the field and synthesize the concepts and ideas surrounding environmental criminology. The chapters are written by leading theorists and practitioners in the field. Each chapter will analyze one of the twelve major elements of environmental criminology and crime analysis.

Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2011. 320p.

Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and ‘Deviance’

Edited by Christiana Gregoriou

Crime and criminals are a pervasive theme in all areas of our culture, including media, journalism, film and literature. This book explores how crime is constructed and culturally represented through a range of areas including Spanish, English Language and Literature, Music, Criminology, Gender, Law, Cultural and Criminal Justice Studies.

Cham: Springer, 2012. 256p.

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Crime’s Power: Anthropologists and the Ethnography of Crime

Edited by Philip C. Parnell and Stephanie C. Kane

The changes that are engulfing the world today - the fall of nation-states and dictatorships, migrations and border crossings, revolution, democratization, and the international spread of capital - call for new approaches to the subject of crime. Anthropologists engage a variety of methods to answer that call in Crime's Power . Their view of crime extends into the intimacies of everyday life as war transforms personal identities, the violence of a serial killer inhabits paintings, and as the feel of imprisonment reveals society's potentials. Moving beyond the fixities of law, this book explores the nature of crime as an expression of power across the spectrum of human differences.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 310p.

The Many Colors Of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America

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.

The International Crime Drop: New Directions In Research

Edited by Jan van Dijk, Andromachi Tseloni and Graham Farrell

Drawing on studies from major European countries and Australia, this exciting new collection from a group of internationally-renowned scholars extends the ongoing debate on falling crime rates from the perspective of criminal opportunity or routine activity theory. Considering the trends and discourse of the international crime fall, this book analyses the effect of Post World War II crime booms which triggered a universal improvement in security across the Western world, such as the introduction of mandatory security in motor vehicles in Europe and the US. Preliminary evidence is also presented on the impact of collective improvements in home security, analyzing levels of household burglaries and their distribution amongst the population in The Netherlands, England and Wales.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 333p.

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Re-examining The Crime Drop

By Stephen Farrell

The crime drop is one of the most important puzzles in contemporary criminology: since the early-1990s many countries appear to exhibit a pronounced decline in crime rates. While there have been many studies on the topic, this book argues that the current crime drop literature relies too heavily on a single methodological approach, and in turn, provides a new method for examining the falling rates of crime, based on ideas from political science and comparative historical social science. Farrall’s original new research forwards an understanding of trends in crime and responses to them by questioning the received theoretical assumptions. The book therefore encourages a ‘deepening’ in the nature of the sorts of studies which have been undertaken so far.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 116p.

The Crime Drop in America. Rev. ed.

By Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman

Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991, after which something unprecedented occurred. The crime level declined to a level not seen since the 1960s. This revised edition of The Crime Drop in America focuses first on the dramatic drop in crime rates in America in the 1990s, and then, in a new epilogue, on the patterns since 2000. The separate chapters written by distinguished experts cover the many factors affecting crime rates: policing, incarceration, drug markets, gun control, economics, and demographics. Detailed analyses emphasize the mutual effects of changes in crack markets, a major focus of youth violence, and the drop in rates of violence following decline in demand for crack. The contrasts between the crime-drop period of the 1990s and the period since 2000 are explored in the new epilogue, which also reviews major new developments in thinking about the causes and control of crime.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 375p.

Tobacco Wars: Inside The Spy Games and Dirty Tricks of Southern Africa’s Cigarette Trade

By Johann van Loggerenberg

Warning. Smoking kills. It also corrupts law-enforcement officials and eviscerates state institutions. It devours politicians, professionals, business people and ordinary workers in the chase for big bucks and the battle for a slice of an ever-shrinking cigarette market. Join one of South Africa’s former tax sleuths Johann van Loggerenberg in a wild ride through the double-dealing world of tobacco’s colourful characters and ruthless corporates. Meet the femme fatales, mavericks, mercenaries and grandmasters, and learn how the crime-busting unit led by Van Loggerenberg at SARS and its ‘Project Honey Badger’ became a victim of a war between industry players and a high-stakes political game driven by state capture. This is the tale of a few good men and women who dared to try to hold to account a billion-dollar international industry rife with private spy networks, tax evasion, collusion and corruption – ultimately at great cost to themselves and South Africa.

Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg 2019. 272p.

Peddling Poison: The Tobacco Industry and Kids

By Clete Snell

The social acceptance of tobacco use obscures the fact that it is the single greatest preventable cause of death in the U.S., and approximately 80% of those who use tobacco products began using them before the age of 18. Indeed, tobacco companies in the past routinely targeted youth in their marketing and advertising, hoping to hook kids young and keep them with their original brand. Snell explores the tobacco industry's campaign to attract youth smokers and provides an overview of the FDA's investigation of the tobacco industry and how those investigations revealed the industry's deceptions and their specific intent to target youths….As a result of the Master Settlement with the tobacco industry, many states have developed comprehensive programs that have resulted in a substantial decline in youth tobacco use. While national efforts at tobacco regulation have largely failed, local tobacco control efforts have mostly been successful. Snell shows that the future of youth tobacco policy depends on the continued funding of tobacco prevention programs at the state and local level and illustrates that there is considerable evidence that the tobacco industry is shifting its marketing approach to minority populations and developing nations.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 188p.

Illegal Pathways to Illegal Profits: The Big Cigarette Companies and International Smuggling

By E. LeGresley and E. Lindblom

Each year approximately 400 billion cigarettes, or one-third of all legally exported cigarettes, end up illegally smuggled across international borders. Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. Cigarette smuggling hurts the world’s nations by evading otherwise applicable duty fees and taxes. Even worse, it increases the number of smokers by providing a less-expensive supply of cigarettes, especially for the young and the poor. National efforts to restrict access to cigarettes by children can be undermined by the availability of cheap contraband cigarettes. In addition, cigarette smuggling that steals away public revenues leaves less funding available for public health efforts. At the same time, it reduces available revenues for health care and law enforcement. The major international cigarette companies say that the solution for the world’s governments is to reduce cigarette taxes and duty fees to reduce the incentives to smuggle. But an enormous, growing body of evidence shows that the major cigarette companies, themselves, have knowingly fostered and have consciously supported cigarette smuggling. In doing so, they have been able to penetrate otherwise closed markets, to increase the sales of their brands by making them available at lower prices, and to provide an argument against high or increased levels of cigarette taxes or import duties

Washington, DC: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 2002. 54p.

Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products

By The World Health Organization

The Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products is the first protocol to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), and a new international treaty in its own right. It was adopted by consensus on 12 November 2012 at the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the WHO FCTC (Seoul, Republic of Korea, 12–17 November 2012). The Protocol builds upon and complements Article 15 of the WHO FCTC, which addresses means of countering illicit trade in tobacco products, a key aspect of a comprehensive tobacco control policy. The Protocol was developed in response to the growing international illicit trade in tobacco products, which poses a serious threat to public health. Illicit trade increases the accessibility and affordability of tobacco products, thus fuelling the tobacco epidemic and undermining tobacco control policies. It also causes substantial losses in government revenues, and at the same time contributes to the funding of transnational criminal activities. The objective of the Protocol is the elimination of all forms of illicit trade in tobacco products, in accordance with the terms of Article 15 of the WHO FCTC.

Geneva: WHO, 2013. 68p.

Cannabis Regulation: Lessons from the illicit tobacco trade

By Benoit Gomis

Since 2013, a number of countries and local jurisdictions around the world have legalised and regulated their cannabis supply chains for non-medical use. Lawmakers, regulators, researchers, and advocates continue to design, enact, implement and revise regulatory frameworks for medical and recreational cannabis. And yet lessons from regulating other psychoactive substances, including tobacco products, are not always fully considered. The experience of the illicit tobacco trade is particularly relevant for cannabis regulation. … The global tobacco market is heavily concentrated. China, Brazil, and India accounted for 63% of all tobacco leaf cultivation in 2019 as part of a global cigarette market dominated by a small number of companies.6 China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) accounted for 43.9% of global cigarette retail volume in 2019 – the large majority of it is destined for domestic consumption, though the company has been developing a global expansion strategy. Beyond CNTC, Philip Morris International (PMI) (13.4% of global retail volume in 2019), British American Tobacco (BAT) (12.7%), Japan Tobacco International (JTI) (9.1%) and Imperial Brands (4.2%) accounted for 70% of the rest of the world’s market share in 2019. In contrast, cannabis can be grown indoors and therefore almost anywhere across the world. The illicit cannabis market has been characterised by a high number of small-scale growers, including for personal consumption and local distribution.

International Drug Policy Consortium, 2021. 23p.

Assessment of COVID-19 pandemic impact on illicit medication in East Africa

By ENACT

Weak medical regulations and the lack of regulatory autonomy poses challenges in efforts to address organised criminality in the sector. The COVID-19 global pandemic has had profound social, economic and geo-political impact across the globe. In East Africa, countries have attempted to face this issue in the context of resource challenged national healthcare systems. Organised crime groups (OCGs) however have sought to exploit the vulnerabilities in society, which have developed following fundamental changes in population behaviours as a result of fear and often misinformation concerning the pandemic. Challenges in regulatory authority autonomy combined with widespread adoption in East African of misinformation on COVID-19 create an ideal operating environment for OCGs. This has encouraged OCGs to move into the illicit medications market over other forms of crime. A COVID-19 related hysteria has maximised profits for organised crime in this field, whilst enabling relatively risk free activity for criminals. This activity has included increased importations of counterfeit and substandard medications from Asia as well as the acquisition of powerful painkillers to sell on the black market.

ENACT Africa, 2020. 25p.

COVID-19 and the Drug Supply Chain: from production and trafficking to use

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Research and Trend Analysis Branch

The COVID-19 crisis is taking its toll on the global economy, public health and our way of life. The virus has now infected more than 3.6 million people worldwide, killed 250,000 and led Governments to take drastic measures to limit the spread of coronavirus disease 2019. Roughly half of the global population is living under mobility restrictions, international border crossings have been closed and economic activity has declined drastically, as many countries have opted for the closure of nonessential businesses. Drug trafficking relies heavily on legal trade to camouflage its activities and on individuals being able to distribute drugs to consumers. The measures implemented by Governments to counter the COVID19 pandemic have thus inevitably affected all aspects of the illegal drug markets, from the production and trafficking of drugs to their consumption. Having said that, the impact of those measures varies both in terms of the different business models used in the distribution of each type of drug and the approaches used by different countries to address the pandemic. These range from the closure of international border crossings, while allowing domestic travel, to moderate-to-strict shelter-in-place orders, or a complete lockdown of all activities, including suspension of essential services other than for emergencies. The impact on actual drug production may vary greatly depending on the substance and the geographical location of its production.

Vienna: UNODC Research and Trend Analysis Branch, 2020. 45p.

The Globalization of Hate: Internationalizing Hate Crime?

Edited by Jennifer Schweppe and Mark Austin Walters

The Globalisation of Hate: Internationalising Hate Crime? is the first book to examine the impact of globalisation on our understanding of hate speech and hate crime. Bringing together internationally acclaimed scholars with researchers, policy makers and practitioners from across the world, it critically scrutinises the concept of hate crime as a global phenomenon, seeking to examine whether hate crime can, or should, be conceptualised within an international framework and, if so, how this might be achieved. …. The final part of the book concludes with an examination of the different ways in which hate speech and hate crime is being combatted globally. International law, internet regulation and the use of restorative practices are evaluated as methods of addressing hate-based conflict, with the discussions drawn from existing frameworks as well as exploring normative standards for future international efforts. Taken together, these innovative and insightful contributions offer a timely investigation into the effects of hate crime, offering an interdisciplinary approach to tackling what is now a global issue.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 340p.

The Good Fight: Variations in Explanations of the Tactical Choices Made by Activists Who Confront Organized White Supremacists

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.