To love and to cherish, till death did them part...Two desiccated bodies are found in each other's arms in the bricked up room of a derelict Victorian warehouse. After six months of work, the police have nothing and Ridpath is finally called in to investigate. Dubbed the Romeo and Juliet murders by the press, so many questions remain unanswered. Who are they? Why were they there? Who killed them? And why was the coroner so keen for him to work on this particular case? Ridpath is plunged into his most difficult investigation yet, in a race against time to discover the truth. Has an unknown serial killer been operating in Manchester for the last twenty years? Fast-paced, vicious and utterly compelling, the latest Ridpath novel is perfect for fans of Mark Billingham and Damien Boyd.

An in-depth look at the consequences of New York City's dramatically expanded policing of low-level offenses Felony conviction and mass incarceration attract considerable media attention these days, yet the most common criminal-justice encounters are for misdemeanors, not felonies, and the most common outcome is not prison. In the early 1990s, New York City launched an initiative under the banner of Broken Windows policing to dramatically expand enforcement against low-level offenses. Misdemeanorland is the first book to document the fates of the hundreds of thousands of people hauled into lower criminal courts as part of this policing experiment. Drawing on three years of fieldwork inside and outside of the courtroom, in-depth interviews, and analysis of trends in arrests and dispositions of misdemeanors going back three decades, Issa Kohler-Hausmann argues that lower courts have largely abandoned the adjudicative model of criminal law administration in which questions of factual guilt and legal punishment drive case outcomes. Due to the sheer volume of arrests, lower courts have adopted a managerial model--and the implications are troubling. Kohler-Hausmann shows how significant volumes of people are marked, tested, and subjected to surveillance and control even though about half the cases result in some form of legal dismissal. She describes in harrowing detail how the reach of America's penal state extends well beyond the shocking numbers of people incarcerated in prisons or stigmatized by a felony conviction. Revealing and innovative, Misdemeanorland shows how the lower reaches of our criminal justice system operate as a form of social control and surveillance, often without adjudicating cases or imposing formal punishment.

When Russia was in the throes of Joseph Stalin's campaign for the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a young boy named Pavlik Morozov informed the OGPU (now called the KGB) that his father was an enemy of the regime. As a result, Pavlik's father was arrested and disappeared in a Soviet concentration camp. Enemies of the party later killed the boy, whereupon people proclaimed him their hero. Informer 001 is the first exhaustive, secret, independent study of the Morozov affair and is Yuri Druzhnikov's search for the truth about his life, death, and the perpetuation of his legacy. Druzhnikov examined documents, visited museums, and interviewed virtually everyone who knew Morozov during his short lifetime. In book after book, he discovered inconsistencies in every fact, from where Morozov was born to how old he was at the time of his death. Photographs of the hero, when compared, turned out to be of different people. Historical archives contained no documents of Morozov. Memorial museums displayed no personal relics; instead they contained pictures, books, and newspaper clippings. Attempts by Druzhnikov to interview living witnesses were met with resistance - he was even followed constantly. The subject of Pavlik Morozov was "officially untouchable". As Druzhnikov pieced together the story about Morozov's life, death, and legacy from interviews, books, court documents, and newspaper reports, it became clear that the campaign to keep Morozov a hero was centrally directed. Informer hero number 001, as Morozov came to be known, remained a fearful reminder to all: to those who inform, and those who become the victims of denunciations. Informer 001 offers Western readers astep-by-step detective story, and at the same time gives a unique glimpse into the behind-the-scenes operations of Soviet political history.

Gives the reader a wider understanding of the role judges play within the criminal justice system. Will be of interest for criminal justice and legal scholars and criminal justice and law students at both the undergraduate and graduate level on criminal justice/criminology and law degree programs. As the book contains interviews with judges from across the globe, it will have an international appeal.

--This text shows students how to organize their work and write gracefully. --Vivid examples show students effective re-writes of example passages. --Classroom and student homework assignments are provided on the book's web site. --Provides examples from both qualitative and quantitative research. --At 150 pages the book is an effective core text for any social science writing course, but brief enough to be assigned in large required courses like social science research methods in sociology and in fields like education, criminology, allied medical health, and other fields where effective research presentation is an important career skill.

Prevention of a chronic societal problem such as sexual victimization requires looking beyond individuals to the systemic factors that maintain the problem. Sexual Assault and Abuse addresses the need to change social and cultural beliefs and practices that permit the sexual victimization of women and children. Potential rapists and victims are viewed within the context of the social and cultural factors that shape sexual behavior. The book discusses rape prevention approaches ranging from changing individuals and groups to changing the social and cultural factors that permit and promote sexual victimization.Research in the social sciences, in education, and in the media documents the promise as well as the problems with efforts to change social and cultural beliefs and practices to create a sexually safe society. Sexual Assault and Abuse integrates recent advances in research on sexual assault and prevention into strategies to prevent sexual victimization, with a focus on the role of sociocultural factors.In Sexual Assault and Abuse, editor Carolyn F. Swift brings together authors who thoughtfully examine the perpetrators and victims of sexual assault/abuse in an effort to change or obliterate sociocultural factors which maintain or promote this behavior. Topics covered include: the sociocultural context of sexual assault/abuse the need to develop multiple-level prevention programs development of sexually abusive behavior in men and boys the relationship between pornography and sexual assault/abuse the need for culturally-sensitive prevention programs the significance of sexual revictimization in the lives of African American women an ecological approach to the prevention of sexual harassment utilization of social science research to develop public policy on pornography use of public information campaigns to prevent intrafamilial child sexual abuse within Hispanic familiesSexual Assault and Abuse identifies sociocultural risks associated with sexual assault/abuse and explores ways to reduce these risks, from a prevention perspective, for diverse populations. Risks addressed include gender inequities, pornography, worksites hostile to women, previous victimization in African American females, sexist and racist beliefs, and media violence against women. Prevention programs range from interventions to stop the development of sexually abusive behavior in boys and men, through programs that take account of ethnic diversity in language, history, and culture, to those that promote empowerment of women. By addressing the environmental context in which sexual assault occurs, the authors in Sexual Assault and Abuse broaden their focus to incorporate both potential perpetrators and potential victims in an ecological perspective which permits new approaches to prevention. This book is of special interest and value to academics and practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, and social work, therapists and counselors, women's studies professionals, sociologists, anthropologists, feminists, rape crisis center staff and volunteers, and battered women center staff and volunteers.

This anthology explores the ways in which today's social problems such as homelessness, sexual assault, or drug abuse can be viewed as politically constructed, ideologically articulated, media-produced events. The readings examine the day-to-day operations of video and print journalists, analyzing how the media contributes to and reflects the dominant cultural ideologies about crime and crime control.

Celluloid Mischief examines the portrayal of wrongdoing and 'deviant' behavior in film. The premise is that films are material products of both individual and collective imagination that reflect the values and norms of the society that produce them. On this basis, it is possible to perceive how society understands and classifies particular kinds of behavior and assigns or designates classes of people and actions as 'good' or 'bad'. So-called 'wrongdoing' in movies, then, tells us about real-life norms, the violation of those norms, and the efforts to punish and control the perpetrators of those violators. Motion pictures embody information about the social world; they constitute a universe of raw particulars that await excavation and analysis. By applying the appropriate approach, what happens on the screen can guide us to an understanding of society and culture. Films are commercial products; the people who make them are members of a society, influenced by that society, who attempt to appeal to lots of other members of that society by producing something that that they want to see. A society's films tell us a great deal about the taste and proclivities of the society that produce and consume them. Using postwar and contemporary Hollywood cinema as case studies, this book demonstrates the complex and evolving nature of modern America's social, economic, and political values.

This book analyses the impact of Integrated Offender Management (IOM) on contemporary policing and separates the rhetoric from the reality. Drawing on a qualitative study within an English police force over two years, this book examines the experiences of prolific offenders, subject to IOM, and sheds light on the culture and practice of the police and staff from other criminal justice agencies, working within the scheme. While IOM has been judged to have had initial successes in reducing the criminal activities of prolific offenders, this book tests the validity of such claims, and considers the apparent disjuncture between policy statements made about the workings of IOM and how IOM policing operations are realized on the ground. It makes a unique contribution to research on police culture and practice, and multi-agency working in the criminal justice system. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to policy makers, as well as students and scholars of criminology, sociology policing, and politics.

This book reviews a range of reports written by fraud examiners after completing internal investigations. These reports are normally kept secret and are the property of client organizations, which do not wish to disclose potential wrongdoing that can harm the reputation of the businesses. Fraud Examinations in White-Collar Crime Investigations was able to retrieve several recent reports, including foreign aid kickbacks, Russian favors to the Biathlon President, and Leon Black's deals with Jeffrey Epstein. While not claiming that the obtained reports are representative for the outcome of the private investigation industry, the reports do provide insights into the variety of issues that fraud examiners address in their internal investigations and the quality of their work. This book identifies convenience themes and assesses investigation maturity across the reports analyzed. It considers the motives of and opportunities for white collar criminals, as well as their willingness to engage in unlawful activity, and assesses to what extent fraud examiners are either efficient or deficient in their work. A compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law politics and all those interested in fraud examinations in relation to white-collar crime.

Leading scholars and policy analysts from around the Americas come together to untangle the factors that have fuelled the implementation of mano dura politics, their rising popularity, and impacts across nine widely heterogeneous countries in Latin America. Beginning with a discussion on the concept of mano dura, the editors move to survey various theoretical approaches to punitivism, and later review of the empirical research evaluating different drivers behind the adoption of tough on crime policies. Since hard-line initiatives often have consequences beyond the general goal of reducing violence, they then analyze the impacts of these policing strategies on crime rates and different democratic institutions. Country chapters on Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina follow a common thematic structure to answer the following questions: What are some of the trends in gangs, organized crime, and violence? How have governments responded to combat crime and violence? What factors have fuelled the implementation of mano dura policies? Why are mano dura policies popular? What have the consequences of these policies been? Mano Dura Policies in Latin America is essential reading to students of Latin American studies, political science, public policy, and criminal justice. It will also interest scholars working on drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence in Latin America.

Criminology is a contemporary, applied, and critical criminology textbook that demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of criminology, and the links between criminological enquiry and wider social and global issues and processes. Concise, focused and engaging, this second edition masterfully conveys the key issues and perspectives within criminology with ease, and it is accompanied by a range of features to support and test student learning in each chapter. Tony Murphy's accessible writing style and valuable expertise enables students to connect with core and emergent topics and themes within the field. This fully updated new edition includes: * A brand new chapter on social harm / beyond criminology (inclusive of social murder, structural violence, social protest and its governance) * More social media focus * Topical examples e.g., material on feminicide in relation to counting crime, the creation of new offences in relation to Covid and how this relates to the various definitions of crime, the Afghanistan debacle and more. This is an essential introductory text that provides the foundation needed for studies in criminology. Tony Murphy is a Staff Tutor in Criminology at the Open University.

What are the theoretical and conceptual framings of rural criminology across the world? Thinking creatively about the challenges of rural crime and policing, in this stimulating collection of essays experts in this emerging field draw from theories of modernity, feminism, climate change, left realism and globalisation. This first book in the Research in Rural Crime series offers state-of-the-art scholarship from across the globe, and considers the future agenda for the discipline.

Investigating Sexual Assault Cases, Second Edition serves as an essential textbook for courses in investigating rape and sexual assault. As with the first edition, this second edition includes the latest research and techniques in coverage of victimology, offender typology, investigative techniques, interviewing, and legal implications. This new, second edition includes chapters on child victims and molestation, sexual homicides as potentially staged events, grooming, interviewing techniques, and same-sex, elder, and special populations as victims of sexual assault. The book fills a current void in the body of literature on the topics of rape and sex crime investigation. Many previous writings, while informative, do not address all the investigative processes necessary for an investigation to be thorough and complete. By providing a fresh approach to the topic, the author aims to augment those writings and, ultimately, improving the reader' awareness by being much more attuned to the needs of-and taking investigative cures from-the victim. Key Features: Outlines the complete investigative process for sexual assault cases, from evidence collection and interviews to court and legal proceedings Addresses victims and victimology, offender typology, the importance of the investigative interviewing process, and working with attorneys Includes new chapters on grooming, sexual homicides, SAFE examinations, and child-specific interviewing techniques Added coverage looks at same-sex crimes, crimes against men, elder victims, and assault of vulnerable populations In addition to being used in coursework in Forensic Science and Criminal justice programs, Investigating Sexual Assault Cases, Second Edition will serve as an essential reference for police detectives, criminal and death investigators, legal professionals, sexual assault nurses, and those who provide health, and mental health, services to populations experiencing sexual assault.

Juvenile crime makes headlines. It is the stock-in-trade of politicians and pundits. But young people are also the victims of crime. They too have demands to make of the police. Drawing upon survey and interview research with 11 to 15 year-olds in Edinburgh, this book examines how crime impacts upon young people's everyday lives. It reveals that young people experience far more serious problems as victims and witnesses of crime, than they cause as offenders. It shows that they report little of their experiences of crime to the police, and are left to find their own ways of managing risk, such as telling cautionary tales about dangerous people and places. The study concludes by examining young people's relations with the police, suggesting they are over-controlled as suspects and under-protected as victims.

Cultural Expertise, Law and Rights introduces readers to the theory and practice of cultural expertise in the resolution of conflicts and the claim of rights in diverse societies. Combining theory and case-studies of the use of cultural expertise in real situations, and in a great variety of fields, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive examination of the field of cultural expertise: its intellectual orientations, practical applications, and ethical implications. This book engages an extensive and interdisciplinary variety of topics - ranging from race, language, sexuality, Indigenous rights, and women's rights to immigration and asylum laws, international commercial arbitration, and criminal law. It also offers a truly global perspective covering cultural expertise in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. Finally, the book offers theoretical and practical guidance for the ethical use of cultural expert knowledge. This is an essential volume for teachers and students in the social sciences - especially law, anthropology, and sociology - and members of the legal professions who engage in cross-cultural dispute resolution, asylum and migration, private international law, and other fields of law in which cultural arguments play a role.

This book examines the evolution of the contemporary crime victim's procedural place within modern western societies. Taking the history of the Irish crime victim as a case study, the work charts the place of victims within criminal justice over time. This evolves from the expansive latitude that they had during the eighteenth century, to their major relegation to witness and informer in the nineteenth, and back to a more contemporary recapturing of some of their previous centrality. The book also studies what this has meant for the position of suspects and offenders as well as the population more generally. Therefore, some analysis is devoted to examining its impact on an offender's right to fair trial and social forms. It is held that the modern crime victim has transcended its position of marginality. This happened not only in law, but as the consequence of the victim's new role as a key socio-political stakeholder. This work flags the importance of victim rights conferrals, and the social transformations that engendered such trends. In this way victim re-emergence is evidenced as being not just a legal change, but a consequence of several more recent socio-cultural transformations in our societies. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy makers in criminal law, human rights law, criminology and legal history.

Women, Trauma, and Journeys towards Desistance: Navigating the Labyrinth provides an examination of women's desistance from crime from a gender-responsive, trauma-informed perspective. The book is based on the reflections of fifty-six women over a three-year period as they transition from custody to the community. With the women, the author examines how experiences of trauma, victimisation, and intersectional oppression constrain access to traditional desistance supporting processes, including supportive relationships, identity construction, the exercise of agency, and engagement with treatment and interventions, reframing these processes from trauma-informed perspective. The book joins together the women's insights and experiences with principles of gender-responsive, trauma-informed principles in a framework through which criminal justice practitioners can support women in their efforts to leave crime behind. The framework for practice is a fusion of concepts from desistance theory, principles of gender-responsivity, and trauma-informed practice designed to help women understand the root causes of the problems they face in the present whilst building on their resilience and strengths to achieve their goals for their futures. This book is ideal reading for scholars and students of criminology and criminal justice, particularly rehabilitation, gender and crime, and feminist criminology. It will also be of interest to academics and practitioners of forensic psychology and social work, as well as probation officers, social workers and prison officers.

Cultural Expertise, Law and Rights introduces readers to the theory and practice of cultural expertise in the resolution of conflicts and the claim of rights in diverse societies. Combining theory and case-studies of the use of cultural expertise in real situations, and in a great variety of fields, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive examination of the field of cultural expertise: its intellectual orientations, practical applications, and ethical implications. This book engages an extensive and interdisciplinary variety of topics - ranging from race, language, sexuality, Indigenous rights, and women's rights to immigration and asylum laws, international commercial arbitration, and criminal law. It also offers a truly global perspective covering cultural expertise in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. Finally, the book offers theoretical and practical guidance for the ethical use of cultural expert knowledge. This is an essential volume for teachers and students in the social sciences - especially law, anthropology, and sociology - and members of the legal professions who engage in cross-cultural dispute resolution, asylum and migration, private international law, and other fields of law in which cultural arguments play a role.

Tom was the only adult who gave me the attention and affection that I so badly needed. I loved his caresses and the times he comforted me. I loved talking to him because he was the only adult who listened and understood. - Neil's Story From Victim to Offender shows how victims of child sexual abuse become juvenile and adult offenders. The stories told by these offenders reveal the vulnerability of boys to paedophiles and pederasts who provide the male attention lacking in some children's home lives. They show how early sexualisation damages children's sexual development, their relationships and their adult lives. The story of a female offender reveals that this problem is not confined to boys. These stories highlight the inadequacy of current child protection programs for the protection of boys. The editor's introduction and the chapter from a psychologist who specialises in the treatment of offenders emphasise the need to improve child protection and treatment programs for offenders.From Victim to Offender offers unique insights into the experiences of victims and offenders of sexual abuse, and is essential reading for professionals who are concerned about child protection and those responsible for the rehabilitation of offenders.

There is no journalistic work more deserving of the designation "story" than news of crime. From antiquity, the culture of crime has been about the human condition, and whether information comes from Homer, Hollywood, or the city desk, it is a bottom about the human capacity for cruelty and suffering, about desperation and fear, about sex, race, and public morals. Facts are important to the telling of a crime story, but ultimately less so than the often apocryphal narratives we derive from them.

The Culture of Crime is hence about the most common and least studies staple of news. Its prominence dates at least to the 1830s, when the urban penny press employed violence, sex, and scandal to build dizzying high levels of circulation and begin the modern age of mass media. In its coverage of crime, in particular, the popular press represented a new kind of journalism, if not a new definition of news, that made available for public consumption whole areas of social and private life that the mercantile, elite, and political press earlier ignored. This legacy has continued unabated for 150 years. The book explores new wrinkles in the study of crime and as a mass cultural activity--from exploring the private lives of public officials to dangers posed by constraints to a free press.

The volume is prepared with the rigor of a scholarly brief but also the excitement of actual crime stories as such. Throughout, the reader is reminded that crime stories are both news and drama, and to ignore either is to diminish the other. The work delves deeply into current problems without either sentimental or trivial pursuits. It will be a volume of great interest to people in communications research, the social sciences, criminologists, and not least, the broad public which must endure the punishment of crime and the thrill of the crime story alike.

In the last decade, serial murder has become a source of major concern for law enforcement agencies, while the serial killer has attracted widespread interest as a villain in popular culture. There is no doubt, however, that popular fears and stereotypes have vastly exaggerated the actual scale of multiple homicide activity. In assessing the concern and the interest, Jenkins has produced an innovative synthesis of approaches to social problem construction. It includes an historical and social-scientific estimate of the objective scale of serial murder; a rhetorical analysis of the construction of the phenomenon in public debate; and a cultural studies-oriented analysis of the portrayal of serial murder in contemporary literature, film, and the mass media.

Using Murder suggests that a problem of this sort can only be understood in the context of its political and rhetorical dimension; that fears of crime and violence are valuable for particular constituencies and interest groups, which put them to their own uses. In part, these agendas are bureaucratic, in the sense that exaggerated concern about the offense generates support for criminal justice agencies. But other forces are at work in the culture at large, where serial murder has become an invaluable rhetorical weapon in public debates over issues like gender, race, and sexual orientation.

Serial murder is worthy of study not so much for its intrinsic significance, but rather for what it suggests about the concerns, needs, and fears of the society that has come to portray it as an "ultimate evil." Using Murder is a highly original study of a powerful contemporary mythology by a criminologist and historian versed in the constructionist literature on the origins of "moral panics."

This study, based on quantitative and qualitative data gathered over a twelve-year period, takes its title from the two predominant styles of gang violence: "drive-bys," which have replaced "rumbles" as the primary form of gang violence; and "gang-bangs"--a generic term for other gang violence that includes assaults, knifings, and beatings.

The author attempts to understand the situations in which a young man would drive up to another human being and, without further ado, blow his head off. By examining hundreds of such situations, and employing both structural and phenomenological analysis, Sanders explores the various configurations of gang violence.

Gangbangs and Drive-bys also examines the routines of gang members and their view of life, the different styles of gangs, and changes undergone by gangs from the early 1980s to the end of the same decade. Over that period, the emphasis shifted from parties and paybacks to big money from the sale of rock cocaine, and from unstructured to organized crime. Along with that shift came an increase in the violence.

Finally, Sanders traces the beginning and evolution of a metropolitan police gang unit over the same decade in order to present an inside view of how the police attempt to deal with and understand gangs.