By Melissa Hope Ditmore

Prostitution and Sex Work is the first book since 1921 to offer a historic overview of this controversial topic—and what our views on it say about American society. Exploring key people, places, and events, the guide includes descriptions of the myriad variations of the sale of sex and of the venues where prostitution occurs, as well as recurring themes such as panics about sexually transmitted diseases and the ever-present issue of violence in the sex trade.After reviewing the history of prostitution and sex work over the past 400 years, the book offers detailed information about the legal context of prostitution in America during the last century. It focuses particularly on the period since prostitution was criminalized during a panic over "white slavery" in the early 20th century, drawing parallels with current "sex trafficking" topics. An appendix of materials produced by sex workers is especially informative for those wishing to truly understand both sides of the issue.

Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011. 201p.

By Joanna Phoenix

This book provides a compelling analysis of the conditions in which women are sustained within prostitution in Britain at the end of the millennium. Based on a major empirical study, it is a unique glimpse into how some women, who live lives completely torn apart by poverty, violence and criminalization, are able to understand their lives in prostitution and make sense of the choices they make (including their involvement in prostitution) in their struggles to survive.

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 211p.

By Leo Markun

Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women, who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us. Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control, and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution in Greek literary sources.

Berlin: De Gruyter., 2018. 500p.

By Lorraine Nencel

A feminist study of prostitution in Peru, this book interrogates the ways in which sexuality, gender and illicit behaviour have been constructed (and deconstructed) over the years. Lorraine Nencel deals with issues such as AIDS, machismo and the regulation of the sex trade. She analyses the question of whether sex workers are victims or agents of control.

London: Pluto Press, 2001. 256p.

By Russell Campbell

Marked Women classifies fifteen recurrent character types and three common narratives, many of them with their roots in male fantasy. The “Happy Hooker,” for example, is the liberated woman whose only goal is to give as much pleasure as she receives, while the “Avenger,” a nightmare of the male imagination, represents the threat of women taking retribution for all the oppression they have suffered at the hands of men. The “Love Story,” a common narrative, represents the prostitute as both heroine and anti-heroine, while “Condemned to Death” allows men to manifest, in imagination only, their hostility toward women by killing off the troubled prostitute in an act of cathartic violence.

The figure of the woman whose body is available at a price has fascinated and intrigued filmmakers and filmgoers since the very beginning of cinema, but the manner of representation has also been highly conflicted and fiercely contested. Campbell explores the cinematic prostitute as a figure shaped by both reactionary thought and feminist challenges to the norm, demonstrating how the film industry itself is split by fascinating contradictions.

Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 464p.

By Sheila Jeffreys

From the white-slave traffic of the 19th century to present-day business practices, this well-researched report examines the changing concept of prostitution, exploring its initial roles as a form of sexual freedom and a way for women to escape poverty to a contemporary role as a human rights violation. Arguing against sexual violence, this record investigates various aspects related to the topic, including male prostitution, military brothels, and pornography. Comparing the act with slavery and marital rape, this new edition explores the claims of the prostitutes’ rights movement and the burgeoning sex industry.

North Melbourne, Vic.: Spinifex Press. 1997 394p.

By Nancy Scheper-Hughes

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing - and controversial - is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 614p.

By Erika Mary Robb Larkins

In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called “big skulls.” Images of these spectacles circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, masking everyday forms of violence, prejudice, and inequality. The Spectacular Favela offers a rich ethnographic examination of the political economy of spectacular violence in Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela. Based on more than two years of residence in the community, the book explores how entangled forms of violence shape everyday life and how that violence is, in turn, connected to the market economy.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. 366p.

By Teresa P. R. Caldeira

Teresa Caldeira's pioneering study of fear, crime, and segregation in São Paulo poses essential questions about citizenship and urban change in contemporary democratic societies. Focusing on São Paulo, and using comparative data on Los Angeles, she identifies new patterns of segregation developing in these cities and suggests that these patterns are appearing in many metropolises.

Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2001. 473p.

By Jennifer Lee

Until recently little attention has been paid - in desistance or gang research - to gang disengagement and desistance. Gang research and literature was heavily focused on the causes of gang membership, the processes involved in joining a gang, and descriptions of gang activity, prevalence, composition and demographics. The Gettin’ Outta the Game study utilises wider desistance theories to present an analysis of the positive and negative influencers in gang-life exiting for the nineteen former-gang members in this study. These findings draw on Sampson and Laub (1993) and Laub and Sampson’s (2003) theories structural turning points; Maruna’s 2001 and 2004 accounts of cognitive transformation and the role of agency; Decker and Lauritsen’s 2002 and Pyrooz and Decker’s 2011 four-fold typology of ex-gang member status, and the latter’s 2011 theories concerning the motives and methods for leaving the gang. This study’s findings are drawn from a quasi-longitudinal dataset of oral history interviews with nineteen former-gang members. This study highlights the complexity of life events, structural constraints, cognitive turning points and labelling forces that have impacted – negatively or positively – on disengagement and desistance from gang-life. That is: The Trajectories, Triggers, Turning Points and Tugs in Gang Disengagement and Desistance. These findings highlight the longer term consequences of gang involvement and the counter-productive effects of some policy and practice measures.

Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2018. 290p.

By C. Greer, J. Rosbrook-Thompson, G. Armstrong, J. Ilan, E. Mclaughlin, Carrie-Anne Myers, C. Rojek, Emmeline N Taylor

This report is the result of research conducted by the Centre for City Criminology at City, University of London, in partnership with Islington’s Integrated Gangs Team (IGT) and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The research was co-funded by MPS and the School of Arts and Social Sciences, City, University of London. Following a collaborative research event in October 2017, City Criminologists were commissioned to carry out a small-scale research project to capture the work of the IGT and to make recommendations regarding its operations, coherence, effectiveness and sustainability. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews over several months with 23 practitioners across the services that constitute the IGT. This report presents the findings and recommendations.

London, UK: Centre for City Criminology, City, University of London, 2019. 35p.

By Daniel J. Losen and Paul Martinez

This national study provides a comprehensive analysis of the instructions days lost due to out-of-school suspensions in 2015-16 for middle and high school students, for every state and district. The study also demonstrates how the frequent use of suspension contributes to stark inequities in the opportunity to learn, especially for those groups most frequently suspended. The descriptive findings will help policymakers understand the impact on every racial group and on students with disabilities.

Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, 2020. 112p.

By Will Flanders and Ameillia Wedward

Federal intervention in school discipline policy became an issue of increasing importance beginning during the Obama administration. Based on the argument that differences in the rates of discipline for students of different racial groups was evidence of racism, the administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter informing school districts that they needed to work to reduce gaps in suspensions for those of different racial backgrounds. A reprieve of sorts occurred during the Trump administration, with the “Dear Colleague” letter eventually being rolled back. But, under President Biden, we are likely to see similar, or even more stringent, federal intervention. What, then, was the result of previous interventions under Obama? This report seeks to answer that question through the prism of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), which was subject to an inquiry from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division, and eventually entered into an agreement with them to reduce disparate suspension outcomes. We combine several data sets in this analysis. Data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on suspension rates at the school level is combined with data from a UW-Milwaukee survey of students on how safe they feel in their school.

Milwaukee, WI: Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, 2021. 16p.

By Daniel J. Losen and Jonathan Gillespie

Since its founding 16 years ago, The Civil Rights Projects central focus has been on racial and ethnic inequalities in educational opportunities, and on policies that could remedy the resulting inequalities in school outcomes,

One thing that has become very clear through our work at the Civil Rights Project is that it is critically important to keep students, especially those facing inequality in other parts of their lives, enrolled in school. This relates directly to the common and often highly inappropriate policy of punishing students who are already at risk of dropping out by suspending them from school. Because suspension increases a young person’s probability of both dropping out and becoming involved with the criminal justice system, it is difficult to justify, except in extreme situations where safety or the educational process of the school is directly and seriously threatened. For the vast majority of cases, however, the challenge is to find a way to address the situation with better practices, more alternatives, and more effective training of school personnel.

Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, 2012. 48p.

By Rhonda Bryant

Discipline in schools, when appropriately used, can help to create structure and establish rules for a well-functioning classroom and school. All students should feel safe, and have a positive environment in which to learn. The underlying empirical data show that the harsh discipline policies that have proliferated for the last 30 years, such as out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, school-based arrests, and transfers to alternative education settings, have had the opposite result. These policies have been unevenly applied to boys of color. The educational experience for boys of color is weakened by these unfair discipline polices that impact them more heavily than their white peers. They find themselves outside of the school doors instead of in the classroom learning, and this loss of precious classroom time difficult, if not impossible, to make up.

“Empty Seats,” provides historical context for school discipline policies, explains how they funnel young people into the justice systems, provides data showing inequitable enforcement against students of color, and provides productive alternative discipline strategies.

Washington, DC: CLASP, 2013. 16p.

By Miner P. Marchbanks III and Jamilia J. Blake

This study identified and assessed the predictors of student contact with school discipline, along with the association of this contact with educational and juvenile justice outcomes for racially and ethnically diverse students; and it also examined the predictors of processing through the various stages of the juvenile justice system, followed by analyses of the link between school strictness and various outcomes, including school achievement and juvenile justice contact. Overall, the study found that extreme school discipline, whether it is too lenient or too strict, is associated with adverse outcomes regarding a student's poor school performance and involvement in the juvenile justice system.

College Station, TX: Texas A&M University, 2018. 72 p.

By Séraphin Alava Divina Frau-Meigs and Ghayda Hassan

This work provides a global mapping of research (mainly during 2012-16) about the assumed roles played by social media in violent radicalization processes, especially when they affect youth and women. The research responds to the belief that the Internet at large is an active vector for violent radicalization that facilitates the proliferation of violent extremist ideologies. Indeed, much research shows that protagonists are indeed heavily spread throughout the Internet.

UNESCO. Paris. 2017. 167p.

Edited by Audrey Alexander

Contributors by: jacob Davey, Julia Ebner, Vese Kelemendi, Sara Mahmood, and Devorah Mrgolin

Policymakers, practitioners, and scholars are increasingly aware of women’s participation in terrorist and violent extremist groups; this affects how members of the international community attempt to mitigate risks tied to these threats. Growing concerns about women’s interactions with groups like the Islamic State (IS) and Boko Haram appear to have instigated this shift, despite a long and dynamic history of women’s participation in terrorism, violent extremism, and insurgencies around the world. Although the intersection of women, gender, and terrorism recently became a higher priority to stakeholders tasked with addressing these threats, international organizations, governments, and civil society groups are still grappling with what it means to pursue this multifaceted agenda. This paper series adds to a small but growing body of research on the topic and highlights some considerations regarding the future of women, gender, and violent extremism.

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism, George Washington University, 2019. 53p.

By Hilary Matfess and Devorah Margolin

This report contextualizes women’s participation in the events of the January 6th Capitol Hill Siege within the broader history of women’s participation in American far-right extremism. This report underscores that women have played, and continue to play, active and important roles in American far-right extremist groups. In this movement, women are often incorporated in complementary, rather than egalitarian, roles. Because they are rarely on the ‘frontlines’ of far-right extremist groups’ activities, women’s contributions have often been marginalized or underplayed. However, women’s participation in support roles and their place in right-wing extremist propaganda have been important contributions to extremist groups’ activities and capabilities. In examining women’s participation in the events of January 6th, this report probes how far-right extremist movements in the United States operationalize gender norms and identifies aspects of commonality and difference between groups.

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism, The George Washington University, 2022. 58p.

By Ivonne Garcia, Margaret Hennessy, Erin Jacobs Valentine, Jedediah Teres and Rachel Sander

Each year in the United States, about 600,000 people are released from state and federal prisons, and millions more are released from local jails. These men and women—known as “returning citizens”—face a tough transition to the community. Often with few financial resources, they must address their day-to-day needs of food, clothing, and housing; obtain identification and access to medical care; and endeavor to find employment and reconnect with family. For those released in 2020 and early 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic made the transition even more difficult. Yet federal emergency relief funds may have done little to help them, since they may not have had access to the funds if they lacked recent work histories or tax returns.

In April 2020, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO—a nonprofit organization that provides services to returning citizens, also known as “reentry services”) launched the Returning Citizens Stimulus program (RCS) in an effort to fill this gap. RCS was a cash transfer program that offered financial support to returning citizens during the critical period just after their release. Participants were eligible for three monthly payments totaling up to $2,750 if they reached milestones such as preparing résumés.

New York: MDRC, 2021. 68p.