In 2017, late Tanzanian President John Magufuli publicly declared a war on drug users in Tanzania, an unprecedented change in policy in a country leading harm-reduction initiatives in East Africa. In the fall of 2018, Dane Degenstein travelled to Dar es Salaam to learn about these policy changes from those directly impacted, on the ground in Tanzania's largest city. The War on Drugs in Tanzania: Prohibition and Punishment examines the impact of crackdowns on people who use drugs and the impact of policy changes that curtail progressive and humane approaches to improving services for drug users. Degenstein explores how the Tanzanian government sidelined donors and NGOs, undertook a project that directly impinged on human rights, and produced narratives contributing to a global war on drugs. Using the case study of Tanzania, Degenstein draws out larger lessons on the continued international commitment to the war on drugs, how old ideologies that see drug users as criminals and failures continue to be produced, and how the war on drugs erases the perspectives of drug users themselves. Focusing on the experiences of drug activists themselves, the author argues for a radical rethinking of global drug policy.

Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks examines the effects of technology on three criminal organizations: the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas, and the Caballeros Templarios. Using social network analysis, and analyzing the use of web platforms Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Nilda M. Garcia provides fresh insights on the organizational network, the central nodes, and the channels through which information flows in these three criminal organizations. In doing so, she demonstrates that some drug cartels in Mexico have adopted the usage of social media into their strategies, often pursuing different tactics in the search for new ways to dominate. She finds that the strategic adaptation of social media platforms has different effects on criminal organization's survivability. When used effectively, coupled with the adoption of decentralized structures, these platforms do increase a criminal organization's survival capacity. Nonetheless, if used haphazardly, it can have the opposite effect. Drawing on the fields of criminology, social network analysis, international relations, and organizational theory and featuring a wealth of information about the drug cartels themselves, Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks will be a great source for all those interested in the presence, behavior, purposes, and strategies of drug cartels in their forays into social media platforms in Mexico and beyond.

This book examines the political and social entrepreneurs that champion marijuana decriminalization efforts, their constituents' attitudes toward legalization, the specific successful reform measures at the state level, and the consequent market dynamics in cannabis commerce. Each chapter presents a unique dataset with specific contributions in understanding local and national trends and outcomes of over two decades of cannabis legalization efforts. Using detailed analyses of user data, the contributors tackle social issues like legalization activism in the context of calls to defund the police, the impact of reforms on immigrant communities, the demographic and economic characteristics of legal dispensary customers, medical administrative structures, youth usage, and mortality related to marijuana and other drug use. Combining examples of the interplay of the benefits and costs of decriminalization implementation with an honest discussion of the possible negative aspects of recreational legalization and whom it most harms, this book offers policy makers information for future policy designs with a goal to decrease negative externalities and social inequity.

Gabriel Ferreyra presents a comprehensive analysis of drug trafficking in Mexico and the United States by examining the roots, development, consolidation, and cultural ramifications of this phenomenon in the past century as well as its negative consequences in contemporary Mexico. Ferreyra discusses the most devastating effects correlated to drug trafficking such as high murder rates, gruesome violence, disappearances, and mass graves to emphasize how Mexican society bears the brunt of this phenomenon while the United States insists on the futility of drug prohibition. Unlike other publications, this book provides an interdisciplinary social science approach where drug trafficking is conceptualized as a multifaceted social, political, economic, and cultural problem, rather than just a criminal justice issue. Drug Trafficking in Mexico and the United States also revisits the war on drugs and provides an argument how drug control is the primary force behind drug trafficking. In that respect, there is an analysis on how the DEA has reinforced the war on drugs model and why it became a reactionary agency that opposes any comprehensive alternative to the American drug problem besides drug control. The author concludes with recommendations to implement forward-thinking measures such as decriminalization, reclassification, and legalization of drugs to effectively address the illicit drug trade.

Welcome to the city shadows in Valdemingomez: a lawless landscape of drugs and violence. Through vivid testimonies and images, Briggs and Monge tell the stories of the people who live there, placing them in a political, economic and social context of spatial inequality and oppressive mechanisms of social control.

Learning behind Bars is an oral history of former Irish republican prisoners in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1971, the year internment was introduced, and 2000, when the high-security Long Kesh Detention Centre/HM Prison Maze closed. Dieter Reinisch outlines the role of politically motivated prisoners in ending armed conflicts as well as the personal and political development of these radical activists during their imprisonment. Based on extensive life-story interviews with Irish Republican Army (IRA) ex-prisoners, the book examines how political prisoners developed their intellectual positions through the interplay of political education and resistance. It sheds light on how prisoners used this experience to initiate the debates that eventually led to acceptance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Politically relevant and instructive, Learning behind Bars illuminates the value of education, politics, and resistance in the harshest of social environments.

Cocaine Hoppers provides empirical evidence to explain the involvement of Nigerians in the global cocaine trade. Investigating the criminogenic environment created by the Nigerian 'state crisis,' Oboh traces the geographic, demographic, economic, historical, political, and cultural factors enhancing cocaine culture in Nigeria. Based on years of research, Oboh reveals this social network that relies on "reverse social capital" wherein wealth and power are achieved through illegal means solely to benefit the individual. This lively, theoretically grounded study examines the new trend of traffickers dominating the illicit cocaine trade through West Africa to destinations across the globe to provide an account of Nigerian involvement in international drug trafficking as it has never been divulged before. This book will be appreciated by criminologists, social scientists, policymakers, drug researchers and organized crime scholars. And eagerly be read by those interested in Nigeria, and problems of African immigrants, and in the international drug trafficking.

The 'ndrangheta - the Calabrian region of Italy's mafia - is one of wealthiest and most powerful criminal organizations today. It is considered Italy's most powerful mafia; it's not only the main object of concern for anti-mafia units in Italy, but also for joint investigative teams in Europe and beyond. Combining autobiography, travel ethnography, memoir, academic rigour and investigative journalism, this book provides a global outlook on the 'ndrangheta, taking the reader to small villages and locations in Italy and abroad to Australia, Canada, United States and Argentina.

This collection of essays demonstrates how the security of Americans is potentially threatened by individuals and governments who are engaged in the illicit trade in arms, drugs, and human beings in distant parts of the globe. More than just a threat to Americans, the essays underscore that these activities are often detrimental to the United States interests around the world due to the destabilizing impact that each activity can have on a nation or region. More revealing is how terrorists benefit from this illegal trade, generating critical sources of funding used for everything from recruiting to procurement of weapons and explosives of all types to extend and expand the scope of their struggle. The scope of this work is truly global. Fourteen essays touch on prevailing problems from the Balkans to Southeast Asia and the Pacific; from Africa to the Caribbean, and more. In each essay, the authors explore a problem that not only has direct regional repercussions, but larger international ones as well. The essays present problems that result from these illegal activities as a global epidemic, not simply regionalized problems.

[An] engrossing literary debut...Writing in Adolfo's voice gives this suspenseful narrative candor and immediacy. - Kirkus Reviews Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger's Life is "worthy of the best spy novels" and tells the story of Sarah Kaminsky's father, "the genius-forger who committed his know-how and convictions to serve the French Resistance during World War II, saving thousands of Jewish families, and many others over the course of 30 years for various causes around the world." - TED.com A detailed and touching story traversing a century in clandestine shadow crossings, where Adolfo's skill meant life...or death. - Liberation, France Riveting. - Haaretz, Israel Technical prowess, creativity, and self-denial drive the plot in the incredibly lucky life of Adolfo Kaminsky narrated in this exciting historical document. - Elle Magazine, France; 2010 Reader's Choice Award Undoubtedly one of the most captivating books of the season. - Paris Today A pointed, sober biography ...of one of the world's best forgers. - Der Spiegel If made into a film, the life of Adolfo Kaminsky would have the ingredients of suspense thriller, war movie, historical tragedy, intimate drama, romantic comedy and scenes of terror. - O Globo, Brazil A thrilling book. - la Repubblica Federal, Italy Kaminsky has lived, in the shadows, the brightest hours of the Resistance. - Le Monde Best-selling author Sarah Kaminsky takes readers through her father Adolfo Kaminsky's perilous and clandestine career as a real-life forger for the French Resistance, the FLN, and numerous other freedom movements of the twentieth century. Recruited as a young Jewish teenager for his knowledge of dyes, Kaminsky became the primary forger for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Then, as a professional photographer, Kaminsky spent the next twenty-five years clandestinely producing thousands of counterfeit documents for immigrants, exiles, underground political operatives, and pacifists across the globe. Kaminsky kept his past cloaked in secrecy well into his eighties, until his daughter convinced him to share the details of the life-threatening work he did on behalf of people fighting for justice and peace throughout the world.

In the 1960s, the governments of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia launched agricultural settlement programs in each country's vast Amazonian frontier lowlands. Two decades later, these exact same zones had transformed into the centers of the illicit cocaine boom of the Americas. Drawing on concepts from both history and anthropology, The Origins of Cocaine explores how three countries with divergent different mid-century political trajectories ended up with parallel outcomes in illicit frontier economies and cocalero cultures. Bringing together transnational, national, and local analyses, the volume provides an in-depth examination of the deep origins of drug economics in the Americas. As the first substantial study on the shift from agrarian colonization to narcotization, The Origins of Cocaine will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students of Latin American history, anthropology, globalization, development and environmental studies.

From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases. Wherever death has been set as the ultimate criminal penalty, the poor, minority groups, and stigmatized peoples have been more likely to be accused, convicted, and executed. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada's racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. In debates about capital punishment, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions. Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present.

Wild Horses is a brutally powerful, unflinching account of the heroin epidemic that swept across Catalonia in the 1980s. The novel, told from a variety of points of view, tells the story of a group of friends as they buy, sell, and consume heroin and other drugs in their home town. Wild Horses is a kaleidoscope of voices, stories, song lyrics and heartbreakingly all-too-real characters. It is a true classic of modern story-telling that is both shocking and captivating at the same time.

Nigerian drug lords in UK prisons, khat-chewing Somali pirates hijacking Western ships, crystal meth-smoking gangs controlling South Africa's streets, and narco-traffickers corrupting the state in Guinea-Bissau: these are some of the vivid images surrounding drugs in Africa which have alarmed policymakers, academics and the general public in recent years. In this revealing and original book, the authors weave these aspects into a provocative argument about Africa's role in the global trade and control of drugs. In doing so, they show how foreign-inspired policies have failed to help African drug users but have strengthened the role of corrupt and brutal law enforcement officers, who are tasked with halting the export of heroin and cocaine to European and American consumer markets. A vital book on an overlooked front of the so-called war on drugs.

"You are about to enter a world of drug smuggling, drug greed, and drug murder." With those words, the West Palm Beach assistant district attorney began the capital murder trial of Judy "Haas" McNelis. The only woman on the U.S. Federal Marshal's 15 Most-Wanted List, Judy had risen to the height of infamy as head of the "Haas Organization," a reputed $267 million dollar-a-year marijuana smuggling empire. But the real story was not what it would seem. Long before the mountains of cash and the jet-set lifestyle of a marijuana smuggling "queen-pin," Judy was simply a divorcee with two young children and a penchant for growing pot. In the tradition of The Glass Castle, My Most-Wanted Marijuana Mom is a son's candid and dynamic memoir of growing up in an eccentric dysfunctional family as his brash free-spirited mother struggles to succeed in the male-dominated world of international marijuana smuggling. A studious guitar-playing kid striving for normalcy, David Michael is thrust into an extraordinary adventure where dealers and smugglers, daredevil pilots, federal agents and hit men-even an accused KGB spy-are the norm and all part of an unconventional upbringing that provides a revelatory glimpse into a bygone era.

Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a unique perspective on the complexities of being a Black mother addicted to crack, powder cocaine, heroin, and crank. Qualitative interviews provide rich narratives from five Black mothers challenging negative controlled images and stereotypes of Black motherhood and drug addiction. Using Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Feminism, and Resilience as conceptual frameworks, this book confronts hegemonic constructions of Black mothers and their children within the context of drug addictions. Particular attention is focused on using the mothers' self-definitions of struggles and family resilience to dismantle the negative controlled images of the junkie and the crack ho' and her crack baby. The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.

Challenging the U.S.-Led War on Drugs explores the cases that have resisted the U.S. pressure to adopt a militarized approach to fight against drug trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through a sweeping narrative history from the recovery of democracy in 1983 to the present, Cutrona applies international relations and comparative politics theories to understand Argentina's different trajectory vis-a-vis the rest of the region. The author demonstrates that in broad questions of vulnerability to U.S. pressure, external factors often play a secondary role in explaining either balancing/resistance or bandwagoning/acceptance of the U.S. security agenda in the Americas. Emphasizing the role of domestic-level politics, Cutrona identifies the subordination of the military to civilian oversight, the transition outcome, the system of check and balances, and the role of civil society actors such as social movements, epistemic communities, and norm entrepreneurs as Argentina's most relevant sources explaining defection from Washington's main dictates to combat drug trafficking.

From the local to the global, the governance of illegal drug use is becoming increasingly fragmented. In some contexts, prohibitive regimes are being transformed or replaced, while in others there are renewed commitments to criminalized control. But what gives rise to convergence and divergence in processes of policy making, both across different countries as well as within them? Based upon empirical qualitative research with 'elite' insiders, David Brewster explores a diverse range of cannabis policy approaches across the globe. His original analysis reveals the factors which facilitate or hinder punitive or liberalising tendencies in cannabis policy processes, concluding with future directions for policy making and comparative criminology.

Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico: The Transition from Felipe Calderon to Enrique Pena Nieto examines the major trends in organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico. The book provides an exhaustive analysis of drug-related violence in the country. This work highlights the transition from the Felipe Calderon administration to the Enrique Pena Nieto government, focusing on differences and continuities in counternarcotics policies as well as other trends such as violence and drug trafficking.

Global drug trafficking intersects with a vast array of international security issues ranging from war and terrorism to migration and state stability. More than just another item on the international security agenda, drug trafficking in fact exacerbates threats to national and international security. In this light, the book argues that global drug trafficking should not be treated as one international security issue among many. Rather, due to the unique nature of the trade, illegal drugs have made key threats to national and international security more complex, durable, and acute. Drug trafficking therefore makes traditional understandings of international security inadequate. Each chapter examines how drug trafficking affects a particular security issue, such as rogue nations, weak and failing states, protracted intrastate conflicts, terrorism, transnational crime, public health, and cyber security. While some texts see drug trafficking as an international threat in itself, others place it under the topic of transnational organized crime, arguing that the threats emanate from criminal groups. This book, on the other hand, provides a thorough understanding of how a vast array of threats to international security are exacerbated by drug trafficking.

Global drug trafficking intersects with a vast array of international security issues ranging from war and terrorism to migration and state stability. More than just another item on the international security agenda, drug trafficking in fact exacerbates threats to national and international security. In this light, the book argues that global drug trafficking should not be treated as one international security issue among many. Rather, due to the unique nature of the trade, illegal drugs have made key threats to national and international security more complex, durable, and acute. Each chapter examines how drug trafficking affects a particular security issue, such as rogue nations, weak and failing states, protracted intrastate conflicts, terrorism, transnational crime, public health, and cyber security. While some texts see drug trafficking as an international threat in itself, others place it under the topic of transnational organized crime, arguing that the threats emanate from criminal groups. This book, on the other hand, provides a thorough understanding of how a vast array of threats to international security are exacerbated by drug trafficking.

This anthology explores the political nature of making order through policing activities in densely populated spaces across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Based on ethnographic research, the chapters analyze this complex with respect to marginalized young men in Haiti, community policing members and national politicians in Swaziland as well as other individual and collective actors engaged in policing and politics in Indonesia, Swaziland, Ghana, South Africa, Mexico, Bolivia, Haiti and Sierra Leone. What these contexts have in common is a plurality of order-making practices. Not one institution monopolizes the means of violence or a de facto sovereign position to do so. A number of interests are played out simultaneously, entailing re-negotiations over the very definition of what 'order' is. How and by whom a particular order is enforced is contested, at times violently so, and is therefore inherently political. In the existing literature on weak states, legal pluralism and policing in the Global South it is seldom made explicit that making order is a route to power and positions of political decision-making. It is this gap in the literature that this anthology fills, as it analyses the politics at stake in processes of order-making.

Los Zetas represent a new generation of ruthless, sadistic pragmatists in Mexico and Central America who are impelling a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas. Mexico's marines have taken down the cartel's top leaders; nevertheless, these capos and their desperados have forever altered how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization before suffering severe losses.

In their heyday, Los Zetas controlled networks of American police, politicians, judges, and businessmen. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol. Despite crippling losses Los Zetas still dominate Nuevo Laredo, the major portal for legal and illegal bilateral commerce. They also work hand-in-glove with the underworld in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as with gangs like the Maras Salvatruchas.

Winner of the 2014 Division of Women and Crime Distinguished Scholar Award presented by the American Society of Criminology Finalist for the 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Compelling interviews uncover why tough drug policies disproportionately impact women in the American prison system Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women's rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. As a result, women's prisons in the US have suffered perhaps the most drastically from the overcrowding and recurrent budget crises that have plagued the penal system since harsher drugs laws came into effect. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women's prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women's detention centers has been deeply altered as a result. Through compelling interviews with prisoners and state personnel, McCorkel reveals that popular so-called "habilitation" drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release. These programs were created as a way to enact stricter punishments on female drug offenders while remaining sensitive to their perceived feminine needs for treatment, yet they instead work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women. The prisoners are left feeling lost and alienated in the end, and many never truly address their addiction as the programs' organizers may have hoped. A fascinating and yet sobering study, Breaking Women foregrounds the gendered and racialized assumptions behind tough-on-crime policies while offering a vivid account of how the contemporary penal system impacts individual lives.

This pioneering study looks across key trafficking crimes to develop a social theory of transnational criminal markets. These include human trafficking, drug dealing, and black markets in wildlife, diamonds, guns and antiquities, The author offers an in-depth analysis of structural similarities and differences within illicit trade networks, and explores the economic underpinnings which drive global trafficking. Revealing how traffickers think of their illegal enterprises as 'just business', he draws broader lessons for the ways forward in understanding criminality in this emerging field.