With expert evidence used more and more often in criminal jury cases, evaluation of its admissibility and presentation is being increasingly thrust into the spotlight. However, jury room secrecy has long prevented a rigorous analysis of its complexities. Expert Evidence and Criminal Jury Trials draws on an unprecedented study carried out in Commonwealth jurisdictions which have recently granted access to jurors, offering a unique exploration of the presentation and comprehension of expert evidence in criminal jury trials and a critical perspective on parallel UK processes. The authors combine empirical research conducted in the courtroom with expert academic analysis, examining, analysing, and comparing the views of not only real jurors, but also courtroom lawyers, judges, and experts across over 50 trials to gauge how complex and sometimes conflicting expert evidence is perceived and understood by all parties. Examples of modern technologies used in expert evidence, including DNA analysis and facial and body-mapping, are considered, and discussion of the challenges they pose covers not only issues of procedure and approach, but also perceptual issues and those of cognitive evaluation. This innovative study aims to facilitate a broader understanding of the use of expert evidence, what problems exist with it, and how such problems influence the communication of information to jurors. While the survey that informs the book relates to criminal trials in three Australian jurisdictions, the legal and psychological issues explored transcend national boundaries, allowing this book to fill a gap in the market for a practical discussion of expert evidence and its use that will be relevant to practitioners in any jurisdiction which utilises an adversarial trial system or juries in criminal trials.

Taking a multidisciplinary perspective (including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science amongst others) and using examples from across the globe, this book provides a detailed understanding of the complex and highly contested nature of drug policy, drug policy making, and the theoretical perspectives that inform the study of drug policy. It draws on four different theoretical perspectives: evidence-informed policy, policy process theories, democratic theory, and post-structural policy analysis. The use and trade in illegal drugs is a global phenomenon. It is viewed by governments as a significant social, legal, and health problem that shows no signs of abating. The key questions explored throughout this book are what governments and other bodies of social regulation should do about illicit drugs, including drug policies aimed at improving health and reducing harm, drug laws and regulation, and the role of research and values in policy development. Seeing policy formation as dynamic iterative interactions between actors, ideas, institutions, and networks of policy advocates, the book explores how policy problems are constructed and policy solutions selected, and how these processes intersect with research evidence and values. This then animates the call to democratise drug policy and bring about inclusive meaningful participation in policy development in order to provide the opportunity for better, more effective, and value-aligned drug policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of drug policy from a number of disciplines, including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science.

This book describes various types and sources of crime and explanatory data available to study variation in crime across nations. Problems with the data and appropriate methods for adjusting and analyzing the data are described. A thorough review of theories and past cross-national crime research is included. This book intends to facilitate and stimulate quality cross-national crime research.

The book notes past misuse of data, such as using homicide rates unadjusted for attempts, as well as inconsistencies and contradictions in past research. The major theories and concepts which have been used to explain crime across nations are described in detail and critiqued. Inconsistencies and contradictions in results are noted, and avenues for future research are offered. Methodological techniques, issues, and problems involved in analysis are also presented and new approaches to dealing with the resulting data are projected. Extensive appendixes give information and contacts to researchers, providing a network for research in cross-national crime heretofore lacking.

This book argues that Ann Leckie's novel Ancillary Justice offers a devastating rebuke to the political, social, cultural, and economic injustices of American imperialism in the post 9/11 era. Following an introductory overview, the study offers four chapters that examine key themes central to the novel: gender, imperial economics, race, and revolutionary agency. Ancillary Justice's exploration of these four themes, and the way it reveals how these issues are all fundamentally entangled with the problem of contemporary imperial power, warrants its status as a canonical work of science fiction for the twenty-first century. The book concludes with a brief interview with Leckie herself touching on each of the topics examined during the preceding chapters.

This book brings together research on personal robbery from psychology, criminology, group dynamics, and youth justice, to provide a comprehensive resource on this crime type. Although robbery is a pressing issue affecting a very high volume of people, it has been under-researched in recent years. This book explores the motivations of offenders, methods of committing personal robbery and the group dynamics involved. The author discusses behavioural crime linkage as a method to help police forces identify serial offences, as well as how profiling has been used in robbery cases. The author concludes by summarising the policing tactics used to prevent and detect robbery, to show how understanding robbery can help in creating workable initiatives around this crime type.

This volume analyzes the development of the reactions to Covid-19 by governments, the public and the crime patterns in 16 European countries. All countries are members of the European Union and share common European norms and values, but the Covid-19 pandemic can serve as an example of how these norms and values are interpreted differently with regard to people's trust in public institutions, governmental control strategies, dealing with fear, anxiety and other emotional responses to the new virus, crime patterns and law enforcement priorities to prevent and combat them. The volume provides empirical data based on available statistics, media analysis and qualitative data from interviews and observations, and examines the similarities and differences in crime patterns and the consequences for local communities and law enforcement priorities.

"Cooney raises fundamental issues concerning the nature of the sociological enterprise in general and of the understanding of violence and conflict within society in particular. [He] is convincing in his demonstration that any understanding of violence and conflict within society must take into account the role of third parties (e.g., relatives, friends, neighbors, strangers, or legal officials) as a force for violence or peace."
--"Choice"

Why do some conflicts escalate into violence while others dissipate harmlessly? Under what circumstances will people kill, and why?

While homicide has been viewed largely in the pathological terms of "crime" and "deviance," violence, Mark Cooney contends, is a naturally-occurring form of conflict found throughout history and across cultures under certain social conditions. Cooney has analyzed the social control of homicide within and across over 30 societies and interviewed several dozens of prisoners incarcerated for murder or manslaughter, as well as members of their families. Violence such as homicide can only be understood, he argues, by transcending the traditional focus on the social characteristics of the killer and victims, and by looking at the role played by family members, friends, neighbors, onlookers, police officers, and judges. These third parties can be a source of peace or violence, depending on how they are configured in particular cases. Violence flourishes, Cooney demonstrates, when authority is either very strong or very weak and when third-party ties are strong and boundaries between groups sharply defined.

Drawing on recent theory in the lively new sociological speciality of conflict management, Mark Cooney hasculled a vast array of evidence from modern and preindustrial societies to provide us with the first general sociological analysis of human violence.

This book provides an authoritative overview of the contemporary phenomenon widely labelled as 'acid attacks'. Although once thought of as a predominantly 'gendered crime', acid and other corrosive substances have been used in a range of violence crimes. This book explores the historical use of corrosives in crime, legal definitions of such attacks, the contexts in which corrosives are used, victim characteristics, offender motivations for carrying and decanting corrosives, and preventative strategies. Data is drawn from the international literature and the analysis of primary data collected in the UK (which is thought to have one of the highest rates of acid attacks in the world) from interviews with over 20 convicted offenders and from police case files relating to over 1,000 crimes involving corrosive substances. This book adds significantly to the international literature on weapons carrying and use, which to date has predominantly focused around the possession and use of guns and knives.

This edited book demonstrates a new multidimensional comprehension of the relationship between war, the military and civil society by exploring the global rise of paramilitary culture. Moving beyond binary understandings that inform the militarization of culture thesis and examining various national and cultural contexts, the collection outlines ways in which a process of paramilitarization is shaping the world through the promotion of new warrior archetypes. It is argued that while the paramilitary hero is associated with military themes, their character is in tension with the central principals of modern military organization, something that often challenges the state's perceived monopoly on violence. As such paramilitization has profound implications for institutional military identity, the influence of paramilitary organizations and broadly how organised violence is popularly understood

Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth is the first systematic examination of how Tolkien understood racial issues, how race manifests in his oeuvre, and how race in Middle-earth, his imaginary realm, has been understood, criticized, and appropriated by others. This book presents an analysis of Tolkien's works for conceptions of race, both racist and anti-racist. It begins by demonstrating that Tolkien was a racialist, in that his mythology is established on the basis of different races with different characteristics, and then poses the key question "Was Tolkien racist?" Robert Stuart engages the discourse and research associated with the ways in which racism and anti-racism relate Tolkien to his fascist and imperialist contemporaries and to twenty-first-century neo-Nazis and White Supremacists-including White Supremacy, genocide, blood-and-soil philology, anti-Semitism, and aristocratic racism. Addressing a major gap in the field of Tolkien studies, Stuart focuses on race, racisms and the Tolkien legendarium.

This book examines the ways that brothels are managed under decriminalisation in New Zealand. New Zealand decriminalised sex work in 2003 with the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act, making it the first country to do so. Decriminalisation situates brothels as 'businesses like any other' and creates a legislative platform for better working conditions for sex workers. Nevertheless, we have limited understanding of how brothels are managed in New Zealand. Drawing on interviews with brothel operators and sex workers, this book explores how the law is understood and implemented, how brothel operators position their businesses, and how they seek legitimacy in a historically stigmatised sector. It also examines the rules and norms by which operators manage their businesses and the possibilities for sex workers to consent to commercial sexual services in the context of neoliberal norms of work and of managers who expect them to be professionalised, responsibilised and productive.

This book is the first longitudinal study of the language surrounding rape in the British press. Through a diachronic analysis informed by corpus linguistics and feminist theory, Tranchese examines how rape discourse has (or has not) changed over the past decade. With its detailed investigation of media representations, the book explores how age-old rape myths re-emerge with new forms in news narratives. Against the backdrop of twelve years of newspaper coverage of rape, including many high-profile cases, this study also traces the rise of "celebrity culture", the emergence of #metoo, and the subsequent aggressive reaction against it. The author places these historical events and recent trends within broader debates on feminism, and the role of (social) media in the backlash against it. This book provides a much-needed linguistic analysis which will be of particular interest to scholars and students of feminist studies, language and gender, corpus-assisted discourse studies, and gendered crime.

Journalists have often put themselves in danger to convey crucial information to the public. Many journalists have even died doing their jobs, investigating crimes or traveling to battle zones-and sometimes documenting events in their own communities. Recently, reporters have been assaulted, mocked and silenced, their reports dubbed "fake news" and them, "enemies of the people." A free press is one of the country's most reliable foundations for ensuring a democracy for current and future generations. With a focus on American journalism, this book tackles issues affecting today's news through profiling journalists killed on the job, whether from violent conspiracy, terrorism or mass shootings.

Domestic violence continues to be a social problem that is rarely understood or discussed in many parts of the world. The same holds true in the Anglophone Caribbean. The Caribbean context is unique as it was birthed out of colonization, which was violent and brutal for those who were forced to migrate from another country as enslaved labor, as well as for those who were conquered out of their lands. Most Caribbean islands' societies were created and developed by slaves, colonizers, and indentured servants. This history has left an indelible scar on all involved, which is exemplified by the antagonistic way people interact, whether it is between races, ethnicities, religions, or gender. Traditionally, domestic relationships and causal factors for domestic violence has been investigated from a myriad of perspectives including the ethnic lineage of the participants. However, in the Caribbean due to its historic origins, domestic violence should also be examined through the lens of its colonial past. This book examines the consequences of allowing domestic violence to perpetuate in the region. It then looks at some of practices used to provide support and find justice for victims and perpetrators in a Caribbean cultural context.

This book explores global drug trafficking networks' impact on international security and provides an in-depth analysis of drug trafficking networks globally by integrating international relations and security studies theories. The book acts as a primer, simplifying the complicated world of narcotics and insecurity, while also providing policy recommendations for policy-makers hoping to reduce the power of organized criminal and terrorist networks globally. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduates taking courses in International Relations, Global Politics, Defense Studies, Security Studies, and International Political Economy, as well as Criminal Justice, Sociology, and other social science disciplines that cover issues related to drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence.

As the youth gang phenomenon becomes an important and sensitive public issue, communities from Los Angeles to Rio, Cape Town to London are facing the reality of what such violent groups mean for their children and young people. Complex dangers and instabilities, as well as high levels of public fear and anger, fuel an amplification of anxious public and political rhetoric in relation to gangs, in which the stereotype of the American street-gang - a ruthless, hierarchical, street-based criminal organisation capable of corrupting youth and fracturing communities - looms large. Set against this backdrop, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City tells a unique and powerful story of young people, gang identity, and social change in post-industrial Glasgow, challenging the perceptions of gangs as a novel, universal, or pathological phenomenon. Though territorial gangs have been reported in Glasgow for over a century, with striking continuities over this time, there are similarities with street-based groups elsewhere. Using this similarity as the foundation, the book goes on to argue that Glaswegian gangs have a specific historical trajectory that is particular to the city. Drawing on four years of varied ethnographic fieldwork in Langview, a deindustrialised working-class community, the book spotlights the everyday experiences and understandings of gangs for young people growing up in the area, reasoning that - for some - gang identification represents a root of identity and a route to masculinity, in a post-industrial city that has little space for them.

"Profiling the Criminal Mind" is, as the subtitle indicates, is a text and reference on behavioral science and criminal investigative analysis for investigators, forensic scientists, prosecutors, behavioral scientists, and academics. This compilation combines crime scene forensics and experience with behavioral science to get into the criminal's mind and interpret crime scenes.

A practical guide to applied criminology, the author brings together his years of experience as a detective/investigator and professor of criminology and criminal justice to outline an inter-disciplinary approach to analyzing crime scenes and crime scene behavior.

Multi-discipline sleuths and researchers into the criminal mind will find this combined approach to analysis a valuable strategic approach to the study of violent criminal behavior.

The arduous, confusing and fraught journey that immigrants take through immigration court Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the "Northern Triangle" (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large. Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.

This book considers the law, policy and procedure for child witnesses in Australian criminal courts across the twentieth century. It uses the stories and experiences of over 200 children, in many cases using their own words from press reports, to highlight how the relevant law was - or was not - applied throughout this period. The law was sympathetic to the plight of child witnesses and exhibited a significant degree of pragmatism to receive the evidence of children but was equally fearful of innocent men being wrongly convicted. The book highlights the impact 'safeguards' like corroboration and closed court rules had on the outcome of many cases and the extent to which fear - of children, of lies (or the truth) and of reform - influenced the criminal justice process. Over a century of children giving evidence in court it is `clear that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same'.

This book adds to knowledge about chief police officers in England and Wales by exploring their understandings of the right of police to exercise power. Their beliefs, motivations, backgrounds, and cultures are examined. Light is cast on how they perceive power, coercion, control, policing purpose, gendered understandings, protecting people, vulnerability, policing by consent, discretion, operational independence, law and the oversight and political direction (or governance), and accountability of police. Chief officers used three legitimating narratives based on: protecting people - particularly the most vulnerable - policing by consent, and law and the oversight and political direction of police. These accounts are assessed. Damaged processes of police governance that risk undermining police leadership and legitimacy are revealed. Critically, chief officers' understandings of legitimacy are found to be confused, conflicted, and, above all, convenient in supporting them in asserting a privileged position from which they can pursue their preferences for the use of power.

Cyberhate: The Far-Right in the Digital Age explores how right-wing extremists operate in cyberspace by examining their propaganda, funding, subcultures, movements, and ideologies, as well as the legal and cultural responses offline far-right violence. Scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines provide extensive analysis of how the far-right operates on the internet and why this particular type of hate often progresses to extreme violence. Specific topics include far-right propaganda, bitcoin funding, online subcultures such as the manosphere, theories that explain why some take the path of violence, and specific movements including the alt-right and the terroristic Atomwaffen Division. Relying on manifestos and other correspondence posted online by recent perpetrators of mass murder, this book focuses on specific groups, individuals, and acts of violence to explain how concepts like "white genocide" and incel ideology have motivated recent deadly violence. This book would be of interest to anyone studying criminal justice, criminology, psychology, cybersecurity, religion, law, education, or terrorism studies.

Outlining the different types of financial crime and their impact, this book is a user-friendly, up-to-date guide to the regulatory processes, systems and legislation which exist in the UK. Each chapter has a similar structure and covers individual financial crimes including money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, insider dealing, market abuse, bribery and corruption and finally tax avoidance and evasion. Offences are summarized and their extent is evaluated using national and international documents. Detailed assessments of financial institutions and regulatory bodies are made and the achievements of these institutions are analysed. Sentencing and policy options for different financial crimes are included and suggestions are made as to how criminal proceeds might be recovered. This third edition has been fully updated and includes a new chapter on corporate financial crime.

The ultimate new guide to your criminological research project, this introductory textbook supports you through your research journey, providing all the knowledge and skills you need to conduct your own research in criminology, and confidently evaluate published work. It is packed with a wide range of relevant examples supported by helpful discussions on their complexities and ethical implications, giving you a comprehensive understanding of how to research crime. Key features include: A complete look at the research process, from the first steps of deciding your research question to writing up your results, all illustrated with engaging criminological examples 'What is the mistake?' exercises to help you avoid the most common errors A dedicated chapter on key ethical issues Step-by-step guides to analysing both quantitative and qualitative data Follow research processes with ease with this accessible textbook and gain the confidence to conduct sound and credible research every step of the way.

One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native and acclaimed author Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity. In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and gun violence. Tracing the histories of three people whose lives meet in tragedy-victim Pete Fields, likely murderer Major, and Bobby-Dawidoff indelibly describes optimistic families coming north from South Carolina as part of the Great Migration, for the promise of opportunity and upward mobility, and the harrowing costs of deindustrialization and neglect. Foremost are the unique challenges confronted by children like Major and Bobby coming of age in their "forgotten" neighborhood, steps from Yale University. After years in prison, with the help of a true-believing lawyer, Bobby is finally set free. His subsequent struggles with the memories of prison, and his heartbreaking efforts to reconnect with family and community, exemplify the challenges the formerly incarcerated face upon reentry into society and, writes Reginald Dwayne Betts, make this "the best book about the crisis of incarceration in America." The Other Side of Prospect is a reportorial tour de force, at once a sweeping account of how the injustices of racism and inequality reverberate through the generations, and a beautifully written portrait of American city life, told through a group of unforgettable people and their intertwined experiences.