In an age of rapid advances in behavioural genetics, this book applies a unique genetic-social framework to the study of crime and criminal behaviour. Drawing upon evidence from evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics, it offers an up-to-date and balanced account of the mutuality between genes and environment.

With the popularity of crime dramas like CSI focusing on forensic science, and increasing numbers of police and prosecutors making wide-spread use of DNA, high-tech science seems to have become the handmaiden of law enforcement. But this is a myth,asserts law professor and nationally known expert on police profiling David A. Harris. In fact, most of law enforcement does not embrace science-it rejects it instead, resisting it vigorously. The question at the heart of this book is why. "" Eyewitness identifications procedures using simultaneous lineups-showing the witness six persons together,as police have traditionally done-produces a significant number of incorrect identifications. "" Interrogations that include threats of harsh penalties and untruths about the existence of evidence proving the suspect's guilt significantly increase the prospect of an innocent person confessing falsely. "" Fingerprint matching does not use probability calculations based on collected and standardized data to generate conclusions, but rather human interpretation and judgment.Examiners generally claim a zero rate of error - an untenable claim in the face of publicly known errors by the best examiners in the U.S. Failed Evidence explores the real reasons that police and prosecutors resist scientific change, and it lays out a concrete plan to bring law enforcement into the scientific present. Written in a crisp and engaging style, free of legal and scientific jargon, Failed Evidence will explain to police and prosecutors, political leaders and policy makers, as well as other experts and anyone else who cares about how law enforcement does its job, where we should go from here. Because only if we understand why law enforcement resists science will we be able to break through this resistance and convince police and prosecutors to rely on the best that science has to offer. Justice demands no less. Visit the author's blog here.

Although the illicit arms trade has evolved over recent years, despite the end of the Cold War it appears to be as vibrant as ever. From Bosnia and Kosovo to Angola and Sierra Leone, illicit arms flows have played a key role in areas of contemporary instability and violence. Against this background, this volume brings together studies of several key issues relating to this trade: the changing nature of the illicit arms trade; the origins of the Iran-Contra affair; the flow of illicit arms from post-communist Russia; the role of France in arming the genocide in Rwanda; the question of the role of private security companies in areas of instability; and the prospects of controlling the illicit trade in small arms. This timely volume will be essential reading for courses in Criminology, War and Peace Studies, International Politics, and African and other Area Studies which deal with arms trafficking and conflict issues.

Aboriginal people are grossly over-represented before the courts and in our gaols. Despite numerous inquiries, State and Federal, and the considerable funds spent trying to understand this phenomenon, nothing has changed. Indigenous people continue to be apprehended, sentenced, incarcerated and die in gaols. One part of this depressing and seemingly inexorable process is the behaviour of police. Drawing on research from across Australia, Chris Cunneen focuses on how police and Aboriginal people interact in urban and rural environments. He explores police history and police culture, the nature of Aboriginal offending and the prevalence of over-policing, the use of police discretion, the particular circumstances of Aboriginal youth and Aboriginal women, the experience of community policing and the key police responses to Aboriginal issues. He traces the pressures on both sides of the equation brought by new political demands.In exploring these issues, Conflict, Politics and Crime argues that changing the nature of contemporary relations between Aboriginal people and the police is a key to altering Aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justice system, and a step towards the advancement of human rights.

As a steady source of juvenile delinquents and an incubator for future adult offenders, the youth gang has long been a focus of attention, from their origins and prevalence to intervention and prevention strategies. But while delinquent youth form gangs worldwide, youth gang research has generally focused on the U.S.

"Youth Gangs in International Perspective" provides a needed corrective by offering significant studies from across Europe, as well as Trinidad-Tobago and Israel. The book spans the diversity of the field in the cultural and scholarly traditions represented and methods used, analyzing not only the social processes under which gangs operate and cohere, but also the evolution of the research base, starting with the Eurogang Program's definition of the term "youth gang." Cross-national and gender issues are discussed, as are measurement concerns and the possibility that the American conception of the youth gang is impeding European understanding of these groups. Among the topics covered:

Gang dynamics through the lens of social identity theory.Defining gangs in youth correctional settings.Gang gender composition and youth delinquency.From Stockholm: a holistic approach to gang intervention.Gang membership as a turning point in the life course.The impact of globalization, immigration, and social process on neo-Nazi youth gangs.

Filling a critical gap in the literature, "Youth Gangs in International Perspective" will find a wide audience among criminologists, policymakers specializing in youth crime, and researchers and graduate students in criminology, political science, and youth studies.

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One of the fastest-growing and most exciting areas of historical research in recent years has been the study of crime and the criminal. The intrinsic fascination of the subject is enhanced by the fact that between the mid eighteenth century and early twentieth century, the English criminal justice system was fundamentally transformed as a new disciplinary state emerged. Drawing on recent research, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of these important changes.

This book offers an alarming inside look at the security preparations of the cruise industry and the potential for cruise ships to be the target for pirates, terrorists, and criminal activity. Cruising for Trouble exposes the acute vulnerability of cruise ships to piracy, terrorism, and crime, both on the high seas and in domestic and foreign ports-of-call. While cruise ships have ramped up in size and passenger capacity to become floating skyscrapers housing as many as 7,000 passengers, and while piracy incidents have increased since 2008 as the world economy has deteriorated, there has been no corresponding increase or enhancement in onboard security personnel, external tactical units, preventive screening, or coordinated response planning to guard against the growing threat of acts of piracy and internal and external terrorist attacks. Commander Gaouette reveals to cruise passengers the very real security dangers they unwittingly face when they saunter up the gangway of a cruise ship for a carefree holiday. He sounds a clarion call to national and transnational security agencies, maritime regulators, legislators, and customers to compel the cruise industry to strengthen and reform its security programs before catastrophe strikes. The author, a longtime cruise industry insider who now serves as a top maritime security official in the Department of Homeland Security, details the many security defects and vulnerabilities of cruise ships, identifies the remedies, and makes the case for their urgent implementation. Extensively documented and illustrated, Cruising for Trouble is a vividly told cautionary for the ten million Americans who taken cruise-ship vacations each year and the millions more who would like to. As well as modeling the potential threats to cruise ships from pirates and maritime terrorists-who mimic each other's methods, overlap each other's territories, and might well find it mutually beneficial to combine their forces and resources-Commander Gaoutte recounts many actual examples of cruise-ship insecurity that have been swept under the carpet or spun by the cruise industry: pirate attacks, fires, onboard crime, mass food poisonings and infections, and the mysterious disappearances of cruise-ship passengers. A combination of photographs from the author, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Coast Guard, and API illustrate innovative security measures found on cruise ships, results of terrorist attacks, fire, piracy, and victims of cruise ship incidents. Provides a list of acronyms found throughout the book, such as the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) codes and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Includes over 500 endnote references Offers a comprehensive index

This book provides a comprehensive and practically minded introduction into serious games for law enforcement agencies. Serious games offer wide ranging benefits for law enforcement with applications from professional trainings to command-level decision making to the preparation for crises events. This book explains the conceptual foundations of virtual and augmented reality, gamification and simulation. It further offers practical guidance on the process of serious games development from user requirements elicitation to evaluation. The chapters are intended to provide principles, as well as hands-on knowledge to plan, design, test and apply serious games successfully in a law enforcement environment. A diverse set of case studies showcases the enormous variety that is possible in serious game designs and application areas and offers insights into concrete design decisions, design processes, benefits and challenges. The book is meant for law enforcement professionals interested in commissioning their own serious games as well as game designers interested in collaborative pedagogy and serious games for the law enforcement and security sector.

Women, Crime and Language examines the relationships between discourses of crime and gender: how women are represented in fiction and reportage, and how they have represented themselves. Frances Gray explores a number of high-profile cases from the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 to the Children's Home scandals of the present day, in which women have been featured as victims, perpetrators or investigators. The author tracks the representation of women through detective stories, plays and novels.

From human trafficking to smuggling small arms to looting antiquities, illicit trade poses significant threats to international order. So why is it difficult to establish international cooperation against illicit trade? Governing Guns, Preventing Plunder offers a novel, thought-provoking answer to this crucial question. Conventional wisdom holds that powerful criminal groups obstruct efforts to suppress illicit trade. In contrast, Asif Efrat explains how legitimate actors, such as arms manufacturers or museums that acquire and display looted antiquities, often act to hinder policing efforts. However, such efforts to evade regulation often fuel intense political conflicts between governments that demand action against illicit trade and others that are reluctant to cooperate. The book offers a framework for understanding the domestic origins of this conflict-and how the distribution of power shapes the conflict's outcome. Through this framework, Efrat explains why the interests of governments vary across countries, trades, and time. In a fascinating empirical analysis, he solves a variety of puzzles: Why is the international regulation of small arms much weaker than international drug control? What led the United States and Britain to oppose the efforts against plunder of antiquities and why did they ultimately join these efforts? How did American pressure motivate Israel to tackle sex trafficking? Efrat's findings will change the way we think about illicit trade, offering valuable insights for scholars, activists, and policymakers.

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Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention

""Underground Codes" is well written and thoroughly researched."--"Black Issue Book Review"

"This book should be taken as a challenge to do our jobs: to assess criticially the 'many issues involving crime and race that are overlooked, misunderstood and falsely linked.' It succinctly and critically sumarizes the extant literature that purports to shed light on the race/crime nexus."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

"Russell-Brown challenges the convetional wisdom of criminology."--"Black Issues in Higher Education"

"Compelling topic."
"Ebony"

Americans fear crime, are rattled by race and avoid honest discussions of both. Anxiety, denial, miscommunication, and ignorance abound. Imaginary connections between minorities and crime become real, self-fulfilling prophecies and authentic links to race, class, gender and crime go unexplored. Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of the highly acclaimed "The Color of Crime," makes her way through this intellectual minefield, determined to shed light on the most persistent and perplexing domestic policy issues.

The author tackles a range of race and crime issues. From outdated research methods that perpetuate stereotypes about African Americans, women, and crime to the over hyped discourse about gangsta rap and law breaking, Russell-Brown challenges the conventional wisdom of criminology. Underground Codes delves into understudied topics such as victimization rates for Native Americans--among the highest of any racial group--and how racial profiling affects the day-to-day lives of people of color.

Innovative, well-researched and meticulously documented, Underground Codes makes a case for greater public involvement in the debate over law enforcement--and our own language--that must be heard if we are to begin to have a productive national conversation about crime and race.

This history of American crime policy at the federal level compiles and examines for the first time the record of recent presidential administrations in the area of crime control--their agendas and the legislation actually enacted by the Congress. Nancy Marion analyzes the relationship between politics and criminal justice and concludes, after reviewing the administrations of Kennedy through Clinton, that the federal response to crime has been largely symbolic, and that federal policies tend to have provided political benefit to elected officials while not actually reducing crime by any significant amount. This study and its findings will be of interest to scholars in political science, government, criminology, and criminal justice.

"This book is informative and interesting and would be useful both in academic and professional settings."--"Feminism & Psychology"

A special kind of horror is reserved for mothers who kill their children. Cases such as those of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by driving her car into a lake, and Melissa Drexler, who disposed of her newborn baby in a restroom at her prom, become media sensations. Unfortunately, in addition to these high-profile cases, hundreds of mothers kill their children in the United States each year. The question most often asked is, why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child?

Those who work with such cases, whether in clinical psychology, social services, law enforcement or academia, often lack basic understandings about the types of circumstances and patterns which might lead to these tragic deaths, and the social constructions of motherhood which may affect women's actions. These mothers oftentimes defy the myths and media exploitation of them as evil, insane, or lacking moral principles, and they are not a homogenous group. In obvious ways, intervention strategies should differ for a teenager who denies her pregnancy and then kills her newborn and a mother who kills her two toddlers out of mental illness or to further a relationship. A typology is needed to help us to understand the different cases that commonly occur and the patterns they follow in order to make possible more effective prevention plans.

Mothers Who Kill Their Children draws on extensive research to identify clear patterns among the cases of women who kill their children, shedding light on why some women commit these acts. The characteristics the authorsestablish will be helpful in creating more meaningful policies, more targeted intervention strategies, and more knowledgeable evaluations of these cases when they arise.

Packed with new examples and material, this second edition provides a fully up-to-date exploration of the genesis, dynamics, and demise of moral panics and their impacts on the societies in which they take place. * Packed with updated and recent examples including terrorism, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers, school shootings, flag burning, and the early-2000s resurgence of the "sex slave" scare* Includes a new chapter on the media, currently regarded as a major component of the moral panic* Devotes a chapter to addressing criticisms of the first edition as well as the moral panics concept itself* Written by long-established experts in the field* Designed to fit both self-contained courses on moral panics and wider courses on deviance

Ubelaker, curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, is one of America's very top 'bone-men', often called upon by the FBI to investigate and help to identify the corpses and body parts of possible victims of foul play. Upon the dozens and dozens of true stories in this book, there are accounts of homicide, cannibalism, ritual sacrifice and other horrific crimes, solved and unsolved, from Ubelaker's own personal casebooks and those of the Smithsonian. Illustrated with over seventy-five photographs and drawings, reconstructions, computer sketches, and photographic super-impositions, this book fascinatingly reveals the indelible stories that bones have to tell.

This book proposes a new conceptual framework for theorising young people's relationship with crime. It emerges from a critique of the narrow approach advocated by developmental criminology and argues for an analysis that recognises and includes the important contribution that the young themselves can make to the theorising and understanding of their relationship with crime. Explicitly using the voices of a group of working class young people who are defined as 'a social problem', this approach emphasises how criminal identities and pathways are strongly influenced by the interactions embedded in political ecological systems and relationships.
Drawing upon the work of the social psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this book explores young people's 'nested' and 'political' ecological relationships with crime. A Political Ecology of Youth and Crime examines the impacts of these relationships through an empirical investigation of the important 'places' and 'spaces' in young people's lives; in their social relationships with peers and family members; and within formal institutional systems such as education, youth justice and social care. This book makes an important new contribution to how we understand the relationship between youth and crime in the contexts of sociology, criminology, social psychology and education.

The book focusses on questions of individual and collective action, the emergence and dynamics of social norms and the feedback between individual behaviour and social phenomena. It discusses traditional modelling approaches to social norms and shows the usefulness of agent-based modelling for the study of these micro-macro interactions. Existing agent-based models of social norms are discussed and it is shown that so far too much priority has been given to parsimonious models and questions of the emergence of norms, with many aspects of social norms, such as norm-change, not being modelled. Juvenile delinquency, group radicalisation and moral decision making are used as case studies for agent-based models of collective action extending existing models by providing an embedding into social networks, social influence via argumentation and a causal action theory of moral decision making. The major contribution of the book is to highlight the multifaceted nature of the dynamics of social norms, consisting not only of emergence, and the importance of embedding of agent-based models into existing theory."

The rules governing who will be punished and how much determine a society's success in two of its most fundamental functions: doing justice and protecting citizens from crime. Drawing from the existing theoretical literature and adding to it recent insights from the social sciences, Paul Robinson describes the nature of the practical challenge in setting rational punishment principles, how past efforts have failed, and the alternatives that have been tried. He ultimately proposes a principle for distributing criminal liability and punishment that will be most likely to do justice and control crime.
Paul Robinson is one of the world's leading criminal law experts. He has been writing about criminal liability and punishment issues for three decades, and has published dozens of influential articles in the best scholarly journals. This long-awaited volume is a brilliant synthesis of social science research and legal reasoning that brings together three decades of work in a compelling line of argument that addresses all of the important issues in assessing liability and punishment.

Over the last twenty-five years the significance of criminal justice has dramatically changed. In a "post-modern" culture, criminal law serves more and more as a focal point in public morality. The "discovery" of the victim of crime can be seen as the marking point by which criminal justice got its central position in the maintenance of social order. It is the result of a general "victimalization" of today's morality.

This ingenious book - according to Michael Tonry - combines insights from criminology, sociology and moral philosophy. It is especially inspired by the work of Richard Rorty, who stresses the sensibility for suffering as the major source of morality in post-modern times. It describes the arousal of attention for victims and the development of crime prevention. More specifically, it analyzes child sexual abuse and prostitution.

This "illuminating" book will be an eye-opener for theorists in criminology and moral philosophy, but will also be an inspiring work for policy makers in the area of criminal justice.

Drawing together a diverse but focused group of international researchers for the first time in a single volume, "The Language of Sexual Crime" explores the role of language in the construction of identity of both perpetrators and victims of sexual violence, the ways in which language is used in the detection of sexually-motivated crime, and the articulation/manipulation of language in police interviews, the courtroom and the media.

Revealing the shocking and detailed accounts of how adult women stalk, sexually assault, and even rape adult men, this book portrays an eye-opening reality: women can act as aggressive predators and victimize men. Crimes of a sexual nature perpetrated by adult females against males constitute a serious problem in our society. A woman can rape a man, and this crime occurs far more often than most imagine. This book addresses an entire range of crimes beyond rape, however; stalking, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are all covered in detail. When Women Sexually Abuse Men: The Hidden Side of Rape, Stalking, Harassment, and Sexual Assault illuminates the long-overlooked subject of adult female against adult male sex crimes. Combining personal accounts, information on criminal cases, relevant research on adult female against adult male sexual offenses, and statistical data from the FBI and other government sources, the authors comprehensively document how some women can be aggressive sexual predators, just like their male counterparts; highlight the changes in the criminal behavior of women; and provide fascinating stories of true crime as well as shocking revelations about human behavior. Details the rape trials of two women as well as other personal accounts and interviews Utilizes careful analysis of research to determine the extent of this crime by adult women against adult men Addresses a range of actions in which adult women sexually abuse or assault adult men, and offers advice and counsel to these victims Provides surprising information that will be of value to law enforcement and corrections practitioners, social workers, business administrators, human resources personnel, academics in the fields of sociology, psychology, gender issues, and criminology, as well as general readers

Rule by Aesthetics offers a powerful examination of the process and experience of mass demolition in the world's second largest city of Delhi, India. Using Delhi's millennial effort to become a 'world-class city,' the book shows how aesthetic norms can replace the procedures of mapping and surveying typically considered necessary to administer space. This practice of evaluating territory based on its adherence to aesthetic norms - what Ghertner calls 'rule by aesthetics' - allowed the state in Delhi to intervene in the once ungovernable space of slums, overcoming its historical reliance on inaccurate maps and statistics. Slums hence were declared illegal because they looked illegal, an arrangement that led to the displacement of a million slum residents in the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing on close ethnographic engagement with the slum residents targeted for removal, as well as the planners, judges, and politicians who targeted them, the book demonstrates how easily plans, laws, and democratic procedures can be subverted once the subjects of democracy are seen as visually out of place. Slum dwellers' creative appropriation of dominant aesthetic norms shows, however, that aesthetic rule does not mark the end of democratic claims making. Rather, it signals a new relationship between the mechanism of government and the practice of politics, one in which struggles for a more inclusive city rely more than ever on urban aesthetics, in Delhi as in aspiring world-class cities the world over.

An historical and contemporary account of migrant crime in Australia, this book explores a range of issues from mental health and victimology to immigration policy and legal analysis, arguing that it is birthplace, not race, which impacts upon crimes committed by migrants.