The definition of organised crime has long been the object of lively debate, at national and international level. Sociological and legal analysis has not yet led to one definitive answer to the question of what exactly 'organised crime' means. Nonetheless, many instruments adopted both at international and national levels set forth special legal regimes designed to target criminal groups featuring a stable organisation, which are perceived as particularly dangerous to society. Therefore, identifying the notion of organised crime is crucial to establishing the scope of any legal instrument specifically designed for combating it. The aim of this book is to reassess the scope, the effectiveness and the overall coherence of existing definitions of organised crime, and to identify any need for a reconsideration of these definitions, specifically with reference to the EU legal order. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners and legislators working in the sphere of EU criminal law and of organised crime more generally.

Explores the role of stories in criminal culture and justice systems around the world Stories are much more than a means of communication-stories help us shape our identities, make sense of the world, and mobilize others to action. In Narrative Criminology, prominent scholars from across the academy and around the world examine stories that animate offending. From an examination of how criminals understand certain types of crime to be less moral than others, to how violent offenders and drug users each come to understand or resist their identity as 'criminals', to how cultural narratives motivate genocidal action, the case studies in this book cover a wide array of crimes and justice systems throughout the world. The contributors uncover the narratives at the center of their essays through qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and written archives, and they scrutinize narrative structure and meaning by analyzing genres, plots, metaphors, and other components of storytelling. In doing so, they reveal the cognitive, ideological, and institutional mechanisms by which narratives promote harmful action. Finally, they consider how offenders' narratives are linked to and emerge from those of conventional society or specific subcultures. Each chapter reveals important insights and elements for the development of a framework of narrative criminology as an important approach for understanding crime and criminal justice. An unprecedented and landmark collection, Narrative Criminology opens the door for an exciting new field of study on the role of stories in motivating and legitimizing harm.

Revealing the cross utility potential of multiple disciplines to advance knowledge in crime studies, History & Crime showcases new research into crime from across the interdisciplinary perspectives of early modern and modern history, criminology, forensic psychology, and legal studies. Authored by emerging and established scholars from the around the world, the contributions span youth crime, feminist criminology, historic penology and court practices, through to the insanity defence, police corruption, and models for post-conflict governance. The chapters present the breadth of the work currently being undertaken around the world in this ground-breaking field, linking the present to the historic. Through these diverse chapters, the editors illustrate the current scholarship already bridging the oft-asserted divide between history and the social sciences. It is argued that differences in language and methodology may have created a mirage of disciplinary division. The collection consequently offers a unique opportunity for advancing a new framework for trans-disciplinary discourse to allow new research to be more easily interpreted and integrated across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This framework will guide future contributions in everything from histories of crime to future-focused crime scholarship, and by allowing better comprehension, drive ground-breaking new knowledge.

This book is about disconnection. Disconnection gives vision to the City of London as an insulated social arena that, despite creating vast wealth and being the vanguard of the UK's aspirational future, has made objects out of you and me. Building on Foucault's teachings on finance and the ideological force of market competition, this ground-breaking book gives shape and form to how financial markets are sustained, managed and performed, and how they emerge and solidify within the shared cultural imagination and system of knowledge as a single, smooth, frictionless and coherent idea. Tracing the impacts of financialisation on those who enact its harmful logic, the author delves into the spatial disconnection that separates the City from the rest of London and the UK; the ontological disconnection that erects a demarcated boundary of expected outcomes, aspirations and practices; and the social disconnection experienced by finance workers who elevate themselves through a marker of perceived difference and ability. Through emerging narratives and ethnographic encounters, Simpson explores the practical and cognitive relations that underpin the performance of finance as a moral endeavour and analyses what it means to live and work within this extractive industry.

This volume contains two Open Access Chapters. Gender, Criminalization, Imprisonment and Human Rights in Southeast Asia features contributions from activist scholars grappling to understand and alleviate the compound sufferings of women and LGBTIQA+ persons as they encounter Southeast Asian criminal justice systems. The collection demonstrates that it is critical that the drivers of gendered harms and the way gendered needs intersect with other inequalities are better understood and adequately reflected in law, policy and practice.

Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System offers unprecedented access to international theatre and performance practice in carceral contexts and the material and political conditions that shape this work. Each of the twelve essays and interviews by international practitioners and scholars reveal a panoply of practice: from cross-arts projects shaped by autobiographical narratives through to fantasy-informed cabaret; from radio plays to film; from popular participatory performance to work staged in commercial theatres. Extracts of performance texts, developed with Clean Break theatre company, are interwoven through the collection. Television and film images of women in prison are repeatedly painted from a limited palette of stereotypes - 'bad girls', 'monsters', 'babes behind bars'. To attend to theatre with and about women with experience of the criminal justice system is to attend to intersectional injustices that shape women's criminalization and the personal and political implications of this. The theatre and performance practices in this collection disrupt, expand and reframe representational vocabularies of criminalized women for audiences within and beyond prison walls. They expose the role of incarceration as a mechanism of state punishment, the impact of neoliberalism on ideologies of punishment and the inequalities and violence that shape the lives of many incarcerated women. In a context where criminalized women are often dismissed as unreliable or untrustworthy, the collection engages with theatre practices which facilitate an economy of credibility, where women with experience of the criminal justice system are represented as expert witnesses.

I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed some day. If I'm killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know. Reads like a classic thriller, with an everyman hero alone and in danger in a hostile foreign city ... but it's all true, and it's a story that needs to be told. LEE CHILD An unburdening, a witness statement and a thriller all at the same time ... electrifying. THE TIMES A shocking true-life thriller. TOM STOPPARD --- In November 2009, the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight police officers in a freezing cell in a Moscow prison. His crime? Testifying against Russian officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes. Red Notice is a searing expose of the whitewash of this imprisonment and murder. The killing hasn't been investigated. It hasn't been punished. Bill Browder is still campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. This is his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through battles with ruthless oligarchs in turbulent post-Soviet Union Moscow, to the shadowy heart of the Kremlin. With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking political roller-coaster.

"Carrying ahead the project of cultural criminology, Phillips and Strobl dare to take seriously that which amuses and entertains us--and to find in it the most significant of themes. Audiences, images, ideologies of justice and injustice--all populate the pages of Comic Book Crime. The result is an analysis as colorful as a good comic, and as sharp as the point on a superhero's sword."--Jeff Ferrell, author of Empire of Scrounge Superman, Batman, Daredevil, and Wonder Woman are iconic cultural figures that embody values of order, fairness, justice, and retribution. Comic Book Crime digs deep into these and other celebrated characters, providing a comprehensive understanding of crime and justice in contemporary American comic books. This is a world where justice is delivered, where heroes save ordinary citizens from certain doom, where evil is easily identified and thwarted by powers far greater than mere mortals could possess. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl explore these representations and show that comic books, as a historically important American cultural medium, participate in both reflecting and shaping an American ideological identity that is often focused on ideas of the apocalypse, utopia, retribution, and nationalism. Through an analysis of approximately 200 comic books sold from 2002 to 2010, as well as several years of immersion in comic book fan culture, Phillips and Strobl reveal the kinds of themes and plots popular comics feature in a post-9/11 context. They discuss heroes' calculations of "deathworthiness," or who should be killed in meting out justice, and how these judgments have as much to do with the hero's character as they do with the actions of the villains. This fascinating volume also analyzes how class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are used to construct difference for both the heroes and the villains in ways that are both conservative and progressive. Engaging, sharp, and insightful, Comic Book Crime is a fresh take on the very meaning of truth, justice, and the American way.Nickie D. Phillipsis Associate Professor in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.Staci Stroblis Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.In theAlternative Criminologyseries

Forty years after the declaration of the ""war on drugs"" by President Nixon, the debate on the effectiveness and costs of the ban is red-hot. Several former Latin American presidents and leading intellectuals from around the world have drawn attention to the ineffectiveness and adverse consequences of prohibitionism. This book thoroughly analyzes the drug policies of one of the main protagonists in this war. The book covers many topics: the economics of drug production, the policies to reduce consumption and decrease supply during the Plan Colombia, the effects of the drug problem on Colombia's international relations, the prevention of money laundering, the connection between drug trafficking and paramilitary politics, and strategies against organized crime. Beyond the diversity in topics, there is a common thread running through all the chapters: the need to analyze objectively what works and what does not, based on empirical evidence. Presented here for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this book is a contribution to a debate that urgently needs to transcend ideology and preconceived opinions.

Throughout the 1960's and 70's, Abbie Hoffman criss-crossed the country, ferreting out alternative ways of getting by in America-some illegal and all radical. Causing scandals with its advice on how to Survive!, Fight!, and Liberate! in the "prison that is Amerika," Steal This Book is a revolutionary's manual to running a guerilla movement, as well as getting free food, housing, transportation, medical care, and more. This anniversary edition gives a new generation an insider's view into the movements of the sixties and seventies. While many of the holes in the system that Abbie exposed have since been plugged, the spirit of revolution, the dedication to opposing injustice, and the passion of creative activism continue to inspire today.

Be careful who you trust. The Mailer family are oblivious to the terrible danger that enters their lives when seven-year-old Anthony is referred to the child guidance service by the family GP following the breakdown of his parents' marriage. Fifty-eight year old Dr. David Galbraith, a sadistic, predatory paedophile employed as a consultant child psychiatrist, has already murdered one child in the soundproofed cellar below the South Wales Georgian townhouse he shares with his wife and two young daughters. Anthony becomes Galbraith's latest obsession and he will stop at nothing to make his grotesque fantasies reality. A note from the author: While fictional, this book was inspired by true events. It draws on the author's experiences as a police officer and child protection social worker. The story contains content that some readers may find upsetting. It is dedicated to survivors everywhere. *Previously published as White is the Coldest Colour*

An up-to-date examination of Mexico's version of the "War on Drugs" that exposes the evolution of major cartels and their corruption of politicians, law-enforcement agencies, and the Army. What can President Enrique Pena Nieto do to curb the narcotics-induced mayhem in Mexico, and what would be the consequences to the United States if he fails? This book analyzes Mexico's transition from a relatively peaceful kleptocracy controlled by the Tammany-Hall style Institutional Revolutionary Party/PRI (1929-2000) to a country plagued by rural and urban enclaves of grotesque violence. The author examines the major drug cartels and their success in infiltrating American and Mexican businesses; details the response from the Obama administration; assesses the threat that the continuing bloodshed represents for the United States; and emphasizes the constraints on America's ability to solve Mexico's crisis, despite U.S. contributions of intelligence, military equipment, training, and diplomatic support. Documents the origins of Mexico's drug industry to explain today's situation involving a graft-ridden Army, suborned police, ruthless capos, unethical office-holders, and U.S. security forces Emphasizes the threat that the widespread criminality represents to the United States, as well as the constraints on Washington's ability to solve its neighbor's crisis Exposes the linkages between elected officials, particularly governors, and the underworld Illustrates the challenges that will remain, even if the cartels were shattered, by the presence of a human infrastructure of 500,000 men, women, and children skilled in kidnapping, extortion, torture, murder for hire, human smuggling, and dozens of other crimes

In Modernity and Terrorism: From Anti-Modernity to Modern Global Terror Milan Zafirovski and Daniel G. Rodeheaver analyze the nature, types, and causes of contemporary global terrorism. The book redefines modern terrorism in a novel more comprehensive manner compared to the previous literature. It examines counter-state and state terrorism, with an emphasis on the latter in light of its scale, persistence, and intensity as well as its relative neglect in the literature. The book identifies and predicts the general cause of most modern terrorism in anti-modernity as the adverse reaction to and reversal of liberal-democratic, secular, rationalistic, and globalized, modernity. In essence, it discovers and predicts anti-liberalism in the form of conservatism as the main source and force of modern terrorism.