Contemporary philosophy still lacks a satisfying theory of punishment, one that adequately addresses our basic moral concerns. Yet, as the crisis of incarceration in the United States and elsewhere shows, the need for a deeper understanding of punishment's purpose has never been greater. In Punishment and the History of Political Philosophy, Arthur Shuster offers an insightful study of punishment in the works of Plato, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Kant, and Foucault. Through careful interpretation of their key texts, he argues that continuing tensions over retribution's role in punishment reflect the shift in political philosophy from classical republicanism to modern notions of individual natural rights and the social contract. This book will be vital reading for political theorists, philosophers, criminologists, and legal scholars looking for a new perspective on the moral challenges faced by the modern criminal justice system.

A unique and unbelievable first-hand account of how one man fought his way to the top of the criminal underworld... and what he needed to do to stay there. As you read this, someone somewhere is buying drugs. Across the globe, millions of people are involved in the brutal, cold-blooded world of drug dealing, but only a small number make life-changing money. Only a few get to the top, make the calls, know how it all works and truly become drugs lords. And even fewer survive. I know because I am one of those drug lords. After thirty years, I've decided to retire and tell the story of how I got to the top of this tainted profession, what's involved in being a serious criminal, the tricks of the trade, the art of the deal and what it really takes to stay alive for so long. This will be my last confession. And I hope you learn something.

THE RIVETING TRUE STORY OF HOW THE FBI BROUGHT DOWN THE FEARSOME MIGUEL TREVINO, LEADER OF LOS ZETAS, MEXICO'S MOST VIOLENT DRUG CARTEL. Drugs, money, cartels: this is what FBI rookie Scott Lawson expected when he was sent to the border town of Laredo, but instead he's deskbound writing intelligence reports about the drug war. Then, one day, Lawson is asked to check out an anonymous tip: a horse was sold at an Oklahoma auction house for a record-topping price, and the buyer was Miguel Trevino, one of the leaders of the Zetas, Mexico's most brutal drug cartel. The source suggested that Trevino was laundering money through American quarter horse racing. If this was true, it offered a rookie like Lawson the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the cartel. Lawson teams up with a more experienced agent, Alma Perez, and, taking on impossible odds, sets out to take down one of the world's most fearsome drug lords. In Bloodlines, Emmy and National Magazine Award-winning journalist Melissa del Bosque follows Lawson and Perez's harrowing attempt to dismantle a cartel leader's American racing dynasty built on extortion and blood money. Throwing back the curtain on the inner workings of cartel kingpins and law enforcement agencies, del Bosque turns more than three years of research and her decades of reporting on Mexico and the border into a gripping narrative about greed and corruption. Bloodlines offers us an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the Zetas and US federal agencies, and opens a new vista onto the changing nature of the drug war and its global expansion.

At 12.35 a.m. on the 29th April 2015, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were led out in front of firing squad. Strapped to wooden crosses, they prayed and sang, staring straight ahead at their killers. On that day, the Indonesian government did not execute two drug smugglers, they executed a pastor and a painter. But who were Andrew and Myuran? In 2005, the selfish recklessness of youth and lure of drugs, money, fast cars and a better life led them and seven other Australians into a smuggling plot to import eight kilograms of heroin from Indonesia to Australia. Unbeknownst to them all, the Australian Federal Police knew their plan and tipped off the Indonesian police. Charged with drug trafficking, Myuran and Andrew were found guilty and sentenced to death. Andrew was 22 years old. Myuran was 24. Cindy Wockner was the Indonesian correspondent for News Limited when the Bali Nine were caught. For a decade she covered their story and she got to know Myuran, Andrew and their families very well. She watched them transform from angry, defiant young men into fully rehabilitated good people. This is the intimate, and untold, story of Andrew and Myuran; of their childhoods and what turned them to drugs, what happened in their ten years in Kerokoban Prison, the numerous legal appeals, the political fallout and the growing worldwide pleas for mercy that saw vigils held around Australia. It will show their rehabilitation and their focus on helping others - of Andrew's growing commitment to his faith and Myu's burgeoning artistic talent. It will show the boys they were and the men they became in a potent cautionary tale and a poignant reminder of what we all lose when we ignore the power of mercy.

This book, prepared by the foreign law specialists and analysts of the Law Library of Congress, provides a review of laws adopted in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and Uruguay with regard to legalisation, decriminalisation, or other forms of regulation of narcotics and other psychoactive substances. Individual country surveys included in this study demonstrate varied approaches to the problem of prosecuting drug use, possession, manufacturing, purchase, and sale. Furthermore, the book discusses medical and retail-selected legal issues of marijuana.

January, 2015 will mark a century of the war on drugs in the United States: one hundred years since the first arrests under the Harrison Act. Facing down this anniversary, Johann Hari was witnessing a close relative and an ex-boyfriend bottoming out on cocaine and heroin. But what was the big picture in the war on drugs? Why does it continue, when most people now think it has failed? The reporter set out on a two-year, 20,000-mile journey through the theater of this war--to find out how it began, how it has affected people around the world, and how we can move beyond it.

"Chasing the Scream" is fueled by dramatic personal stories of the people he meets along the way: A transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn who wanted to know who killed her mother, and a mother in Mexico who spent years tracking her daughter's murderer across the desert. A child smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust who helped unlock the scientific secrets of addiction. A doctor who pushed the decriminalization in Portugal of all drugs--from cannabis to crack. The title itself comes from a formative story of Harry Anslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, sent as a boy to the pharmacy for a neighbor screaming in withdrawal--an experience which led him to fear drugs without regard to context. Always we come back to the front lines in the U.S., where we instigated the war and exported it around the globe, but where change is also coming.

Powerful, propulsive, and persuasive, "Chasing the Scream" is the page-turning story of a century-long mistake, which shows us the way to a more humane future.

Drug-Crime Connections challenges the assumption that there is a widespread association between drug use and crime. Instead, it argues that there are many highly specific connections. The authors draw together in a single volume a wide range of findings from a study of nearly 5,000 arrestees interviewed as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme. It provides an in-depth study of the nature of drug-crime connections, as well as an investigation into drug use generally among criminals and the kinds of crimes that they commit. They explore topics that previously have fallen outside the drug-crime debate, such as gender and drugs, ethnicity and drugs, gangs, guns, drug markets, and treatment needs. The book provides both an up-to-date review of the literature and a concise summary of a major study on the connection between drug use and crime.

'The young bloods did not care whether they killed criminals or civilians . . .' The Cartel is Britain's biggest drugs gang, a global corporation employing thousands of criminals and flooding Britain with cocaine and heroin. Yet the established order is under threat: street gangs are overwhelming the old-school Cartel godfathers with a campaign of violence, intimidation and mayhem, heralding a series of events that has had devastating consequences for the whole of society. In Young Blood, the explosive follow-up to The Cartel, bestselling true-crime author Graham Johnson reveals how the brutal assassination of drug baron Colin 'King Cocaine' Smith in 2007 by a group of young bucks triggered the rise of the foot soldier, and exposes the bitter struggle that has spread throughout Europe as various factions battle to seize control of the most lucrative crime syndicate in British history.

Substance abuse takes a terrible toll on the public health, public safety and financial resources of the United States. The Administration's national drug control policy seeks to reduce Americans' drug use and its related health, social and criminal problems. To help meet this goal, the Administration has developed five demand reduction priority areas. The Administration is requesting $151.3 million in new funding across the Federal government to strengthen efforts to detect and prevent and treat illicit drug use in our communities and break the cycle of illicit drug use, crime, and incarceration. This book provides an overview of the National Drug Control Strategy for fiscal year 2011 and an examination of issues for consideration in reauthorising the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The global illegal drug trade represents a multi-dimensional challenge that has implications for U.S. national interests as well as the international community. According to the U.S. intelligence community, international drug trafficking can undermine political and regional stability and bolster the role and capabilities of organised crime in the drug trade. Key regions of concern include Latin American and Afghanistan, which are focal points in U.S. efforts to combat the production and transit of cocaine and heroin, respectively. Drug use and addiction have the potential to negatively affect the social fabric of communities, hinder economic development, and place an additional burden on national public health infrastructures. This book examines U.S. international drug control policy with a focus on the impact of drugs on society, drug trafficking organisations, and the global scope of the problem.

A drug policy most often refers to a government's attempt to combat the negative effects of drug addiction and misuse in its society. Governments try to combat drug addiction with policies which address both the demand and supply of drugs, as well as policies which can mitigate the harms of drug abuse. This book examines various drug policies, with a particular focus on drug trade and trafficking.

This book examines methamphetamines, which have risen to the top of the American drug-policy agenda. For most of its history, it was regarded in law and public opinion as a secondary or regional concern, different from and less damaging than the drugs -- heroin, cocaine, and marijuana -- that have defined the focus of national drug policy. More recently, however, as the production, trafficking, and use of methamphetamine have spread, a gathering consensus has come to regard it as one of the most dangerous substances available in illegal markets.

The President's National Drug Control Strategy describes the Administration's strategic approach for reducing illicit drug use in the United States. The Administration's Synthetic Drug Control Strategy is a companion to the National Strategy. It follows the main principles set out in the National Strategy: that supply and demand are the ultimate drivers in all illicit drug markets and that a balanced approach incorporating prevention, treatment, and market disruption initiatives (such as interdiction, arrests, prosecutions, and regulatory interventions) is the best way to reduce the supply of, and demand for, illicit drugs. The Synthetics Strategy also adheres to the format of the National Strategy by setting ambitious goals for reducing synthetic drug use at a rate approximating 5 percent each year. Specifically, the Synthetics Strategy outlines a strategy for reducing past month methamphetamine use by 15 percent over three years and past month prescription drug abuse2 by 15 percent over three years. Additionally, because the production of methamphetamine poses significant human and environmental risks, the Administration has also set a goal of reducing domestic methamphetamine Labouratories by 25 percent over three years. This and past administrations have traditionally avoided promulgating drug control strategies focused on a single drug or a single category of drugs. However, the unique nature of illicit markets for synthetic drugs warrants a targeted response, partly because those markets contain unique challenges and vulnerabilities. Unlike marijuana or cocaine, for example, either the final synthetic drug (as with prescription drugs) or its ingredients (as with methamphetamine) are designed for legal possession and use. Other reasons include the extreme health and environmental problems associated with the production of drugs such as methampheamine and the indisputably destructive nature of methamphetamine use itself. The Synthetics Strategy adheres to the following outline. Following this introduction, it describes the state of the illicit markets for methamphetamine and controlled substance prescription drugs, including progress made over the last several years. It then sets targets for reduced numbers in three principal categories: illicit methamphetamine use, domestic methamphetamine Labouratories, and the illicit use of controlled substance prescription drugs. This portion explains the fundamental principles and insights guiding the Synthetics Strategy and describes how performance goals will be measured. Next, the document describes the strategy itself, explaining how, given the current state of the illicit synthetic drug market, the Administration will meet targets for use and production by the end of 2008. Here, both supply reduction and demand reduction activities are addressed for both methamphetamine use and controlled substance prescription drug abuse. Finally, the end of the document addresses the problem of responding to the aftermath of methamphetamine production. Improving our knowledge about the health and environmental consequences of methamphetamine labs is critically important toward improving the safety and security of Americans, including the children who are found in or near toxic Labouratories.

The war on drugs is a kind of declared war against a set of often invisible foes which is often fought with toothless policies, uncoordinated campaigns, and resisted by criminal organisations determined to punch two new holes in the dam for every one which is closed. This book presents current issues relevant to an important but far from successful effort to thwart drug flow.

Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts, and Control, Eighth Edition, focuses on the many critical areas of America's drug problem, providing a foundation for rational decision-making within this complex and multidisciplinary field. Lyman offers a comprehensive big-picture examination of the US drug problem, dealing with drugs, abusers, drug enforcement, and public policy. Organized in three sections: Understanding the Problem, Gangs and Drugs, and Fighting Back, topics covered include the business of drugs and the role of organized crime in the drug trade, drug legalization and decriminalization, legal and law enforcement strategies, an analysis of the socialization process of drug use and abuse, and a historical discussion of drug abuse that puts the contemporary drug problem into perspective. Suitable for upper-level undergraduates in Criminal Justice, Criminology, and related programs, Drugs in Society, Eighth Edition, uses logical organization and strong pedagogy (case studies, focused text boxes with related information, critical thinking tasks) to support learning objectives.

Reveals the inside story of the formulation and implementation of the US and UK's counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan Through interviews with key policy practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic, this study reveals the complex picture of counter narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. It highlights the key points of cooperation and contention, and details the often contradictory and competitive objectives of the overall war effort in Afghanistan. Western counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan failed dismally after opium poppy cultivation surged to unprecedented levels. The Anglo-American partnership at the centre of this battleground was divided by competing and opposing views of how to address the opium problem, which troubled the well-established Anglo-American relationship.

Father. Husband. Hitman. He lost it all - he'll kill to get it back. Perfect read for fans of Breaking Bad and Stephen King. *GUARDIAN BEST CRIME AND THRILLER BOOKS OF 2022* "Some of the finest, most terrifying and heartbreaking writing you will read this year. The Devil Takes You Home is not to be missed." S.A. Cosby, New York Times-bestselling author of Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland "The Devil Takes You Home is an unforgettable neo-noir nightmare written with a poet's heart." Steve Cavanagh, bestselling author of the Eddie Flynn series "Complete horror sung by an angel. I was transfixed. This is superb writing." Harriet Tyce, bestselling author of Blood Orange "Gives the genre a welcome shot in the arm." Guardian 'Sometimes God is your copilot, but it's the Devil who takes you home.' It was never just a job. Becoming a hitman was the only way Mario could cover his young daughter's medical expenses. But before long his family is left in pieces, and he's barely even put a dent in the stack of bills. Then he's presented with an offer: one last score that will either pull him out of poverty forever or put a bullet in the back of his skull. A man named Juanca needs help stealing $2 million dollars from a drug cartel. Together, they begin a journey to an underworld where unspeakable horrors happen every day. He's a man with nothing to lose, but the Devil is waiting for him. Wrestling with demons of our world and beyond, this blistering thriller charts the unforgettable quest of a husband and father in search of his lost soul.

Now a major film directed by Idris Elba, Yardie by Victor Headley shines a light on the brutal underworld of 90s London gang culture. At Heathrow Airport's busy immigration desk, a newly arrived Jamaican strolls through with a kilo of top-grade cocaine strapped to his body. And keeps on walking . . . By the time the syndicate get to hear about the missing consignment, D is in business - for himself - as the Front Line's newest don. But D's treachery will never be forgotten - or forgiven. The message filters down from the Yardie crime lords to their soldiers on the streets: Find D. Find the merchandise. And make him pay for his sins . . .

Opium's Orphans is the first full history of drug prohibition and the 'war on drugs'. A no-holds-barred but balanced account, it shows that drug suppression was born of historical accident, not rational design. The war on drugs did not originate in Europe or the US, and even less with President Nixon, but in China. Two Opium Wars followed by Western attempts to atone for them gave birth to an anti-narcotics order that has come to span the globe. But has the war on drugs succeeded? As opioid deaths and cartel violence run rampant, contestation becomes more vocal, and marijuana is slated for legalization, Opium's Orphans proposes that it is time to go back to the drawing board.

This history of US-led international drug control provides new perspectives on the economic, ideological, and political foundations of a Cold War American empire. US officials assumed the helm of international drug control after World War II at a moment of unprecedented geopolitical influence embodied in the growing economic clout of its pharmaceutical industry.
"We Sell Drugs" is a study grounded in the transnational geography and political economy of the coca-leaf and coca-derived commodities market stretching from Peru and Bolivia into the United States. More than a narrow biography of one famous plant and its equally famous derivative products--Coca-Cola and cocaine--this book situates these commodities within the larger landscape of drug production and consumption. Examining efforts to control the circuits through which coca traveled, Suzanna Reiss provides a geographic and legal basis for considering the historical construction of designations of legality and illegality.
The book also argues that the legal status of any given drug is largely premised on who grew, manufactured, distributed, and consumed it and not on the qualities of the drug itself. Drug control is a powerful tool for ordering international trade, national economies, and society's habits and daily lives.
In a historical landscape animated by struggles over political economy, national autonomy, hegemony, and racial equality, "We Sell Drugs" insists on the socio-historical underpinnings of designations of legality to explore how drug control became a major weapon in asserting control of domestic and international affairs.

Canada is actively involved through various agencies in the domestic affairs of countries in the Global South. Over time, these practices - rationalized as a form of humanitarian assistance - have become increasingly focused on enhancing regimes of surveillance, policing, prisons, border control, and security governance. Drawing on an array of previously classified materials and interviews with security experts, Security Aid presents a critical analysis of the securitization of humanitarian aid. Jeffrey Monaghan demonstrates that, while Canadian humanitarian assistance may be framed around altruistic ideals, these ideals are subordinate to two overlapping objectives: the advancement of Canada's strategic interests and the development of security states in the "underdeveloped" world. Through case studies of the major aid programs in Haiti, Libya, and Southeast Asia, Security Aid provides a comprehensive analysis and reinterpretation of Canada's foreign policy agenda and its role in global affairs.

Mainstream commentators claim that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug trade and that the US military is waging a war on drugs in Afghanistan to weaken the insurgency and keep our streets free of heroin. Cruel Harvest lifts the lid on the reality behind the mainstream narrative, showing that the United States in fact shares a large part of the responsibility by supporting drug lords, refusing to adopt effective drug control policies and failing to crack down on drug money laundered through Western banks. Julien Mercille argues that the United States is not concerned about waging a real war on drugs, and that alleged concerns about narco-terrorism mostly act as pretexts to justify occupation. In a powerful conclusion Mercille contends that US intervention in Afghanistan is motivated by power imperatives, not benign intentions.

Again and again British politicians, commentators and celebrities intone that 'The War on Drugs has failed'. They then say that this is an argument for abandoning all attempts to reduce drug use through the criminal law. Peter Hitchens shows that in Britain there has been no serious 'war on drugs' since 1971, when a Tory government adopted a Labour plan to implement the revolutionary Wootton report. This gave cannabis, the most widely used illegal substance, a special legal status as a supposedly 'soft' drug (in fact, Hitchens argues, it is at least as dangerous as heroin and cocaine because of the threat it poses to mental health). It began a progressive reduction of penalties for possession, and effectively disarmed the police. This process still continues, behind a screen of falsely 'tough' rhetoric from politicians. Far from there being a 'war on drugs', there has been a covert surrender to drugs, concealed behind an official obeisance to international treaty obligations. To all intents and purposes, cannabis is legal in Britain, and other major drugs are not far behind. In The War We Never Fought, Hitchens uncovers the secret history of the government's true attitude, and the increasing recruitment of the police and courts to covert decriminalisation initiatives, and contrasts it with the rhetoric. Whatever and whoever is to blame for the undoubted mess of Britain's drug policy, it is not 'prohibition' or a 'war on drugs', for neither exists.

Over the last few decades, debates about policing in poor urban areas have turned from analyzing the state's neglect and abandonment into documenting its harsh interventions and punishing presence. Yet, we know very little about the covert world of state action that is hidden from public view. In The Ambivalent State, Javier Auyero and Katherine Sobering offer an unprecedented look into the clandestine relationships between police agents and drug dealers in Argentina. Drawing on a unique combination of ethnographic fieldwork and documentary evidence, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped phone conversations, they analyze the inner-workings of police-criminal collusion, its connections to drug markets, and how it promotes cynicism and powerlessness in daily life. They argue that an up-close examination of covert state action exposes the workings of an ambivalent state: one that both enforces the rule of law and functions as a partner in criminal behavior. The Ambivalent State develops a political sociology of violence that focuses not only on what takes place in police stations, courts, and poor neighborhoods, but also the clandestine actions and interactions of police, judges, and politicians that structure daily life at the urban margins.

Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a little-known surveillance state in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that should stabilize young lives--family, relationships, jobs--into liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences.
Alice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the pernicious effects of this pervasive policing. Goffman introduces us to an unforgettable cast of young African American men who are caught up in this web of warrants and surveillance--some of them small-time drug dealers, others just ordinary guys dealing with limited choices. All find the web of presumed criminality, built as it is on the very associations and friendships that make up a life, nearly impossible to escape. We watch as the pleasures of summer-evening stoop-sitting are shattered by the arrival of a carful of cops looking to serve a warrant; we watch--and can't help but be shocked--as teenagers teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run from the police (and, crucially, to keep away from friends and family so they can stay hidden); and we see, over and over, the relentless toll that the presumption of criminality takes on families--and futures.
While not denying the problems of the drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it, through her gripping accounts of daily life in the forgotten neighborhoods of America's cities, Goffman makes it impossible for us to ignore the very real human costs of our failed response--the blighting of entire neighborhoods, and the needless sacrifice of whole generations.