By Ndiva Kofele-Kale

In the last decade a new tool has been developed in the global war against official corruption through the introduction of the offense of "illicit enrichment" in almost every multilateral anti-corruption convention. Illicit enrichment is defined in these conventions to include a reverse burden clause which triggers an automatic presumption that any public official found in "possession of inexplicable wealth" must have acquired it illicitly. …Combating Economic Crimes therefore sets out to address what has been left unanswered by these multilateral conventions, to wit, the level of burden of proof that should be placed on a public official who is accused of illicitly enriching himself from the resources of the State, balanced against the protection of legitimate community interests and expectations for a corruption-free society. The book explores the doctrinal foundations of the right to a presumption of innocence and reviews the basic due process protections afforded to all accused persons in criminal trials by treaty, customary international law, and municipal law. The book then goes on to propose a framework for balancing and ‘situationalizing’ competing human rights and public interests in situations involving possible official corruption.

Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. 248p.

By Chris Mathers

In Crime School: Money Laundering, a twenty-year law enforcement veteran of financial crime explains this felony in simple terms. Written anecdotally, the book describes what money laundering is and how the crimes behind it fit together.

Organized criminals operating both domestically and internationally corrupt bankers and subvert national economies through the use of drug money.

This book examines the history of money laundering from ancient times to the cocaine craze of the 1970s to the sophisticated, brutal techniques employed by today's terrorists and organized crime.

Lively and detailed, this book chronicles the stark realities and deadly dynamics of the lynchpin between organized crime and modern terrorism. It's a rare and fascinating look at a deadly world few have ever witnessed and lived to tell the story.

Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2004. 244p.

By Petter Gottschalk

This book introduces 'convenience' as the key concept to explain financial crime by white-collar criminals. Based on a number of fraud examination- reports from the United States and Norway, the book documents empirical evidence of convenience among white-collar criminals. It advances our understanding of white-collar crime by drawing attention to private investigation reports by fraud examiners and financial crime specialists, who are in the growing business of fraud investigations. Reports of investigations have never before been researched in terms of white-collar criminals nor crime convenience. Reports of investigations by auditing and law firms represent a valuable empirical basis – in addition to court documents and other sources of information about financial crime.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 134p.

Edited by Nic Ryder

This edited collection provides an innovative and detailed analysis of the relationship between the financial crisis, risk and corruption. A large majority of the published research has concentrated on identifying the traditional factors that contributed towards the largest financial crisis since the Wall Street Crash and subsequent Great Depression. This original volume contests this, and provides the alternative view that white collar crime was also an underappreciated, and important factor.

Divided into five parts: bribery and corruption; financial crime; market manipulation; technology and white collar crime; and the financial crisis, and based on contributions by a wide range of experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to policy makers and practitioners, researchers and students alike.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 377p.

By Harold Winter

Since Gary Becker’s seminal article in the late sixties, the economic analysis of crime has blossomed, from an interesting side field within law and economics, into a mature stand-alone sub-discipline that has been embraced by many well-respected academic economists. Wide ranging and accessible, this is the most up-to-date textbook in this area, taking current economic research and making it accessible to undergraduates and other interested readers. Without use of graphs or mathematical equations, Winter combines theory and empirical evidence with controversial examples from the news media.

London; Routledge, 2008. 146p.

By Harald Haelterman

This book positions script analysis as a useful and pragmatic tool, which can guide the selection and implementation of preventive measures in business environments. It illustrates how the concept aligns with the crime-specific orientation found in environmental criminology, and particularly explores the theoretical foundations of situational crime prevention, the approach to which it is deemed most relevant and supportive.

The volume provides clear guidance on how to apply script analysis in daily practice, covering its main building blocks and key features. These are illustrated by a series of case studies into various crime types. Moving beyond the use of script analysis with the intent to disrupt the crime-commission process, the author further explores the wider benefits of the approach to both academics and practitioners. He identifies what is needed most if we want to embrace the full potential of script analysis for preventive purposes.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 262p.

By Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel

Meet the economic gangster. He’s the United Nations diplomat who double parks his Mercedes on a New York street at rush hour, because the cops can’t touch him-he has diplomatic immunity. He’s the dictator, the warlord, the black marketeers, the unscrupulous bureaucrat who bilks the developing world of billions of aid—and keeps many communities in a cycle of violence and poverty.

We can stop this waste of resources as we follow the foreign aid money trail, and find solutions that can make tremendous difference to the developing world, solutions that can range from cash infusions to diffuse violence in times of drought to guiding the World Bank away from programs most susceptible to corruption. Economic data, often found in unexpected places, can become potent tools in understanding how the global market really works and what is getting in the way of economic progress.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 256p.

By J. E. Logan, Tadesse Haileyesus, Allison Ertl, Whitney L Rostad, andJeffrey H Herbst

Since interpersonal violence was recognized as a public health problem in the 1970s, much attention has focused on preventing violence among young persons and intimate partners (1). Violence directed against older adults (≥60 years) has received less attention, despite the faster growth of this population than that of younger groups (2). Using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) and the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), CDC analyzed rates of nonfatal assaults and homicides against older adults during 2002-2016. Across the 15-year period, the nonfatal assault rate increased 75.4% (from 77.7 to 136.3 per 100,000) among men, and from 2007 to 2016, increased 35.4% (from 43.8 to 59.3) among women. From 2010 to 2016, the homicide rate increased among men by 7.1%, and a 19.3% increase was observed from 2013 to 2016 among men aged 60-69 years. Growth in both the older adult population and the rates of violence against this group, especially among men, suggests an important need for violence prevention strategies (3). Focusing prevention efforts for this population will require improved understanding of magnitude and trends in violence against older adults.

MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Apr 5;68(13):297-302.

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.

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 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 Colleen E. Mills

Hate crime proves prevalent in American society, inflicting a variety of harms on victims as well as society at large. Scholars have long sought to understand the motivations and conditions behind hate crime offending. Green and his colleagues conducted the classic neighborhood studies examining the conditions that foster hate crime (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Green, Strolovich, & Wong, 1998; Green, Strolovitch, Wong, & Bailey). Using data from the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, the current study replicates and extends Green's neighborhood studies by investigating hate crime in New York City from 1995 to 2010. This study investigates whether Green, Strolovitch, & Wong’s (1998) findings hold true over an extended period of time in New York City, during which the city underwent major demographic changes. Using a group conflict framework (Blalock, 1967; Tolnay & Beck, 1995), the current study extends prior work by investigating the impact of various "threats, including defended neighborhoods as well as economic, political, terrorist, and gay threat, on different types of anti-minority hate crime, including those against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as well as anti-gay hate crime. The current study also integrates criminological frameworks, testing social disorganization and strain to explain hate crime. Using negative binomial regression analyses with a pooled cross-sectional design, the current study provides a thorough analysis of hate crime in New York City as well as further insight into hate crime in the context of defended neighborhoods.

New York: City University of New York, 2007. 211p.

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.

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 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.

By Brian Loughman and Richard Sibery

As businesses continue to expand globally into new and emerging markets, bribery and corruption risks have increased exponentially. Bribery and Corruption offers a comprehensive look at this growing problem, and at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other international anti-bribery and corruption conventions. Presenting hypothetical examples of situations companies will face, along with practical solutions, the book offers detailed global guidance on a region and country-specific basis.

The FCPA prohibits US companies and their subsidiaries from bribing foreign officials, either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. It also requires companies to keep accurate records of all business transactions and maintain an effective system of internal accounting controls. Internationally, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) anti-bribery convention has been adopted by 38 countries and creates legally binding standards related to bribery of foreign public officials.

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 417p.

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