Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance is an annual series of volumes that publishes scholarly work in criminology and criminal justice studies, sociology of law, and the sociology of deviance and social control. These are very broad topics, and the series reflects this breadth. The series includes theoretical contributions, critical reviews of literature, empirical research, and methodological innovations. The series especially showcases "big picture" pieces that review and critically reconceptualize what is known and what remains to be understood about broad directions of research and theorizing about crime, justice, law, deviance, and social control. In addition, the series showcases a diversity of methodological approaches.
Volume 2 demonstrates such methodological diversity by presenting quantitative studies, ethnographies and discourse analyses. Through an application of these methodologies, the authors examine sanctions, crime and fear and legal and social control organizations and processes. The volume concludes with four chapters contributing to theory development.

Recognize the con artist before you get taken! Schulte exposes dozens of telephone, mail, and computer-based scams, explaining how they work and how you can avoid becoming their next victim.

"... a must for anyone who wants to be informed about ways consumers can be fleeced by phone-room sharpies". -- Chicago Tribune

In a Ponzi scheme, new investments are used to pay existing investors, to cover the cost of salespersons, and to finance the Ponzi schemer's satisfying lifestyle. Although Charles Ponzi recruited investors in Boston in 1919 and died in 1949, his design and mode of operation are alive and well today. Indeed, losses from Ponzi schemes in the United States are equal to losses from shoplifting. Ponzi schemes catch in their net highly sophisticated individuals and institutions as well as low-income and middle-income investors, and these schemes have attracted investors all over the world, in Russia, England, India, Albania, Romania, Portugal, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. Looking into the innumerable cases of Ponzi schemes throughout the years, Tamar Frankel observes that even though patterns began to emerge in the stories of con artists and their victims' behavior, the main puzzles still remain: How do con artists dazzle and lure wealthy and educated individuals and representatives of large institutions to hand over huge sums of money? How do con artists divert investors' attention from the soft spots of their stories? And while there are so many books and articles about Ponzi schemes, their warnings and constant advice on how to detect and avoid con artists go unheeded. In The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle, Frankel explores con artists' fascinating power of persuasion and deception, and analyzes their subtle signals that mimic truth and honesty. She identifies the reasons for the local and global success and longevity of such schemes and seeks to understand the nature of the con artists and their victims. She combines the many stories of Ponzi schemes, derived mostly from court cases and newspaper articles, to show the patterns of such frauds, the nature of the con artists, and character of their victims. These patterns tell us much about human nature, about our society, and about ourselves. The book first analyzes the design and pattern of the con artists' attractive offers and how they hide deceptions, then deals with the ways in which schemes are advertised and sold. Next, it focuses on the core of con artists' success, then discusses the characters of con artists and their victims. Finally, Frankel offers a number of observations on the lessons we can learn from these stories and analyses. She concludes that our attitude to con artists is ambivalent and uncertain perhaps because their behavior is so close to the behavior of honest people; or perhaps because they act like the social leaders with whom they are likely to mingle, or perhaps their actions are necessary to shake up a complacent society. Therefore, she writes, self-protection from charming, dangerous con artists must involve self-examination: once we recognize our own tendencies we can better protect ourselves from their toxic attraction.

American legal scholars have debated for some time the need for a cultural defense in criminal proceedings where minority cultural information seems perti nent to a finding of criminal responsibility in situations where a minority cultural defendant has violated a valid criminal statute. This work presents a systematic analysis of this issue. Drawing from sociological, anthropological, and philosophical materials, as well as traditional legal discussions, the authors develop a scheme that indicates when cultural factors can be used as the basis for such a defense and when they are irrelevant to a finding of criminal responsibility. The argument moves from general concerns of social justice that apply under conditions of social and cultural pluralism to practical policy recommendations for the operation of American criminal justice. It thus connects more theoretical materials with the practical concerns of jurisprudence. The justification for legal recognition of a cultural defense in American criminal law is anchored firmly in American constitutional law.

The State and the police are traditionally seen as closely connected phenomena. Today, however, rapid EU legal developments mean that European police forces are no longer tied to a specific national legal context or a specific territory in the way they used to be. Norway is not a member of the EU. Or is it? This book shows that although it lacks formal membership status, Norway has become part of almost all of the major EU police cooperation measures and agreements. Not only does this mean that foreign police forces may operate on Norwegian territory and vice versa, but in addition, a wide range of EU regulations and cooperation instruments are incorporated directly into Norwegian law. With the increased focus on international and transnational police cooperation in mind, what does it mean to be a sovereign state in Europe today? This book combines strong legal and theoretical analyses of a specific national system to show how this country is tied to and dependent on a wider international and supranational system of legal rules, technologies and concepts. This makes the book relevant not only for the Norwegian prosecution and police authorities, but also for readers outside Norway interested in exploring how and whether the police as a modern state function has changed through the implementation of international cross-border cooperation mechanisms.

This work is a cross-sectional analysis of school disturbance as it has evolved from the inception of schools in colonial America. In their introduction, the authors provide a general overview of American school disturbance, the extent of their disturbances, and possible causes. They then examine the topic in detail, with chapters on disturbances in the Colonial period, the Early National period, the Common School period, the Progressive period, and the Kaleidoscopic period. By examining how school disturbances relate to social and educational developments, Crews and Counts provide a valuable research and teaching tool for courses in criminal justice foundations, juvenile issues, and educational foundations.

The notion that women lie about rape is a prevalent belief with pervasive influence. This book is unique in combining police file data with interviews obtained from both rape survivors and detectives in order to critically explore how this belief affects police officers' responses to women who report rape. Examination of this material is located within a broader analysis of the historical and socio-cultural environment, and illustrates how rape investigations continue to be conducted within the context of pervasive beliefs and stereotypes regarding both the nature of rape and the nature of women. Upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers in departments of sociology; gender studies; women's studies; criminology; law and police studies Professionals working within criminal justice research and policy-making; lawyers and prosecutors; police departments; rape and sexual assault agencies

Focusing on a highly controversial and fiercely debated subject, this survey tracks the social and economic consequences of the production, trafficking, and consumption of cocaine, heroin, and cannabis. From a growing body of literature, LaMond Tullis has extracted the most salient economic, social, and political themes currently under discussion in both scholarly publications and in the responsible press. The two-part volume consisting of a lengthy review of relevant literature and an annotated bibliography helps its users understand the major issues: Can and should consumption be curtailed, supplies suppressed, and traffickers eliminated? Can the unintended economic, social, and political consequences of curtailing, suppressing, and eliminating somehow be mitigated? Should these drugs be legalized? Would legalization produce its own array of unintended and largely unacceptable consequences? Although tentative answers to these questions abound, this excellent resource is testimony to the fact that there is still little agreement on how to deal with these powerful substances and the problems they generate. Tullis's compilation presents the best overview of this complex subject to date.

The first half of this two-part reference consists of a survey of the published literature on the production and consumption of the three illicit drugs. Chapters are devoted to the global patterns of production and consumption of cocaine, heroin, and cannabis, to the consequences, both positive and negative, of drug consumption and production, and to the policy measures that have been adopted (or are under consideration) in both consuming and producing countries. These chapters will be of interest to those wishing to obtain an overall view of the subject and to specialists seeking a guide to the literature outside their particular area of knowledge. The second half of the book contains an annotated bibliography of about 2,000 items covering works published in English--plus a few in Spanish--as books, articles, or press reports. This section will be invaluable to researchers working on the frontiers of the subject and to general readers who wish to pursue particular topics in greater depth. The volume should be at the fingertips of policy makers, legislators, law enforcement officials, judges, and social workers, as well as students and teachers.

This book explores in depth the origins, development, and prospects of outlawry and of the relationship of outlaws to the social conditions of changing times.

Throughout American history you will find larger-than-life brigands in every period and every region. Often, because we hunger for simple justice, we romanticize them to the point of being unable to separate fact from fiction. Frank Richard Prassel brings this home in a thorough and fascinating examination of the concept of outlawry from Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and Blackbeard through Jean Lafitte, Pancho Villa, and Billy the Kid to more modern personalities such as John Dillinger, Claude Dallas, and D. B. Cooper. A separate chapter on molls, plus equal treatment in the histories of gangs, traces women's involvement in outlaw activities.

Prassel covers the folklore as well as the facts, even including an appendix of ballads by and about outlaws. He makes clear how this motley group of bandits, pirates, highwaymen, desperadoes, rebels, hoodlums, renegades, gangsters, and fugitives--who stand tall in myth--wither in the light of truth, but flourish in the movies. As he tells the stories, there is little to confirm that Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Daltons, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Belle Starr, the Apache Kid, or any of the so-called good badmen, did anything that did not enrich or otherwise benefit themselves. But there is plenty of evidence, in the form of slain victims and ruined lives, to show how many ways they caused harm.

"The Great American Outlaw "is as much an excellent survey on the phenomenon as it is a brilliant exposition of the larger than-life figures who created it. Above all, it is a tribute to that aspect of humanity that Americans admire most and that Prassel describes as a willingness "to fight, however hopelessly, against exhibitions of privilege."

The book focuses on one of the most problematic areas of Turkish penal justice: the overreliance on custodial measures and a corresponding growth in the prison population, and compares Turkey with two major European countries in this respect: England and Wales and Germany. The underlying question throughout the study is the extent to which prison alternatives can be seen as genuine alternatives to immediate custodial sentences.

This comprehensive collection contributes to, advances and consolidates discussions of the range of research methods in criminology through the presentation of diverse international case studies in which contributors reflect upon their experiences with powerless and powerful individuals or groups.

Coercive medico-legal interventions are often employed to prevent people deemed to be unable to make competent decisions about their health, such as minors, people with mental illness, disability or problematic alcohol or other drug use, from harming themselves or others. These interventions can entail major curtailments of individuals' liberty and bodily integrity, and may cause significant harm and distress. The use of coercive medico-legal interventions can also serve competing social interests that raise profound ethical, legal and clinical questions. Examining the ethical, social and legal issues involved in coerced care, this book brings together the views and insights of leading researchers from a range of disciplines, including criminology, law, ethics, psychology and public health, as well as legal and medical practitioners, social-service 'consumers' and government officials. Topics addressed in this volume include: compulsory treatment and involuntary detention orders in civil mental health and disability law; mandatory alcohol and drug treatment programs and drug courts; community treatment orders; the use of welfare cards with Indigenous populations; mandated treatment of seriously ill minors; as well as adult guardianship and substituted decision-making regimes. These contributions attempt to shed light on why we use coercive interventions, whether we should, whether they are effective in achieving the benefits that are offered to justify their use, and the impact that they have on some of society's most vulnerable citizens in the names of 'justice' and 'treatment'. This book is essential reading for clinicians, researchers and legal practitioners involved in the study and application of coerced care, as well as students and scholars in the fields of law, medicine, ethics and criminology. The collection asks important questions about the increasing use of coercive care that demand to be answered, and offers critical insights, guidance and recommendations for those working in the field.

Understanding and Applying Restorative Justice: Critical Readings on Why it's Needed and How it's Practiced provides students with carefully selected readings that emphasize restorative justice as an alternative approach to punishment or vengeance. The volume highlights the differences between restorative justice and criminal justice and demonstrates how to apply its key concepts and principles in real-world situations. Opening chapters explain the meaning and significance of restorative justice and also provide a brief historical overview. In Unit II, students learn about the conceptual and practical impacts of restorative justice. Units III, IV, and V cover the practice of restorative justice in criminal justice settings, educational settings, and within the community. Closing readings help readers thoughtfully reflect upon opportunities, challenges, and methodologies related to restorative justice. Throughout, guiding questions, insightful introductions, and post-reading questions encourage critical thought and support retention. Demonstrating the possibilities and realities of cultural and institutional changes aimed at building and restoring healthy relationships, Understanding and Applying Restorative Justice provides students with strong, foundational knowledge on a critical topic. The anthology is an excellent supplementary text for courses in sociology, criminal justice, social work, and education.

We all seem to think that we do the acts we do because we consciously choose to do them. This commonsense view is thrown into dispute by Benjamin Libet's eyebrow-raising experiments, which seem to suggest that conscious will occurs not before but after the start of brain activity that produces physical action.
Libet's striking results are often claimed to undermine traditional views of free will and moral responsibility and to have practical implications for criminal justice. His work has also stimulated a flurry of further fascinating scientific research--including findings in psychology by Dan Wegner and in neuroscience by John-Dylan Haynes--that raises novel questions about whether conscious will plays any causal role in action. Critics respond that both commonsense views of action and traditional theories of moral and legal responsibility, as well as free will, can survive the scientific onslaught of Libet and his progeny. To further this lively debate, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Lynn Nadel have brought together prominent experts in neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and law to discuss whether our conscious choices really cause our actions, and what the answers to that question mean for how we view ourselves and how we should treat each other.

Critical criminological theories and perspectives are typically major components of Criminology degree courses. An Introduction to Critical Criminology is the first accessible text on these topics for students of criminology, sociology and social policy. Written by an experienced lecturer who specialises in the topic, it offers an in-depth but accessible introduction to foundational and contemporary theories and perspectives in critical criminology. In doing so, it introduces students to theories and perspectives that challenge mainstream criminological theories about the causes of crime, and the operation of the criminal justice system. With the inclusion of boxed examples, key points and sample essay questions An Introduction to Critical Criminology is ideal for students of Criminology because it explores in detail a vast array of critical criminological theories and perspectives.

Insured for Murder has all the ingredients of a first-rate thriller: a murder, an insurance scam with a multimillion-dollar payoff, a playboy businessman, a sinister neurologist wielding a stun gun, false identities, and an international manhunt. Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky, two reporters with The Columbus Dispatch, describe how they unravelled a con game that was three years in the making. On the morning of April 16, 1988, the emergency squad was called to the office of Dr. Richard P. Boggs, a respected neurologist in Glendale, California. On the floor of the examining room was the alleged body of Melvin E. Hanson, the vice president of the Just Sweats athletic clothing store chain, based in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he had collapsed and died of heart failure during a routine examination. Early next morning, Hanson's business partner and the company president, John B. Hawkins, arrived from Columbus and had the body unceremoniously cremated. The coroner ruled that Hanson had died of natural causes, so there was nothing to be investigated, and the Glendale police did not pursue the case further. Behind the facade of just another mortality statistic, however, was the yet-undiscovered fact that the body lying on the floor was not Hanson's. The corpse was an anonymous double who had been murdered in a scheme to fraudulently collect on Hanson's life insurance policy. The deception was eventually uncovered by an insurance investigator, but only after one million dollars had been paid to John Hawkins, the sole beneficiary of Hanson's life insurance policy. But the full extent of the scam might never have been discovered except for the hard-nosed efforts of Yocum and Candisky, whodoggedly pursued the story and published the results of their investigation in a series of articles in The Columbus Dispatch. Piece by piece they revealed what was intended to be a five-million-dollar scheme of fraud and murder, and unmasked Hanson and Hawkins as con men with a history of perpetrating insurance scams. Their reports finally moved the Los Angeles County District Attorney to launch an investigation that resulted in Boggs being convicted of murder and Hanson and Hawkins awaiting trials that are scheduled to start before the end of 1993. Insured for Murder takes the reader beyond the facts of the investigation and explores the characters of three thoroughly corrupt individuals: Dr. Richard P. Boggs, who committed murder for a share of the insurance money; Melvin E. Hanson, the enigmatic schemer, who faked his own death and engineered the death of an unwitting imposter; and John B. Hawkins, the young stud willing to gamble his business and his life on a conspiracy for easy money.

London, 1716. Revenge is a dish best served ice-cold...The city is caught in the vice-like grip of a savage winter. Even the Thames has frozen over. But for Jonas Flynt - thief, gambler, killer - the chilling elements are the least of his worries... Justice Geoffrey Dumont has been found dead at the base of St Paul's cathedral, and a young male sex-worker, Sam Yates, has been taken into custody for the murder. Yates denies all charges, claiming he had received a message to meet the judge at the exact time of death. The young man is a friend of courtesan Belle St Clair, and she asks Flynt to investigate. As Sam endures the horrors of Newgate prison, they must do everything in their power to uncover the truth and save an innocent life, before the bodies begin to pile up. But time is running out. And the gallows are beckoning... A totally enrapturing portrayal of eighteenth-century London, and a rapier-like crime thriller, perfect for fans of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Antonia Hodgson and Ambrose Parry.

Just like Scheherazade, undercover agents talk to save their lives. If they put in a poor performance, they don't see the curtain rise again. ART OF DARKNESS pries open the virtuoso identity techniques practiced by undercover operatives, fugitives, disguise artists, pranksters, con artists, and federally protected witnesses. It draws on original interviews with undercover operators in order to show how identity artists on both sides of the law obtain fake ID, develop a disguise, build a cover story, maintain believability in street performances, and deal with threats to their identities-all without formal acting training. ART OF DARKNESS inhabits the grey areas of morality as it exposes identity roleplays at the borders of lawfulness. In it you'll find stories of: law-enforcement workers who adopt the techniques of criminals in order to catch them but somehow get caught up in their own trick identities; self-defined artists whose work also has a criminal dimension; criminal informants who masterfully play sides and roles against each other; and hoaxsters and impersonators who may perform trick identities primarily for gain but do so with tremendous inventiveness and a directorial consciousness. This book may explode any remaining notion you harbor that you are not at some level a member of the intelligence community, discerning who is "for real" and who is presenting a self for personal gain.

The state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged by non-state actors, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources needed to guarantee security. Yet, non-state actors are not only a cause of problems; they can also contribute to guarantee security. The contributors examine the role of non-state actors in the governance of violence and crime. Current research on non-state actors in security points to the fact that the state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources. In contrast, this volume shows how non-state actors are involved in supporting governmental aims, what they contribute and where the limits are or should be. It demonstrates that even in a core area of the state, transnational governance is possible through the activities of a diverse group of actors, including warlords, rebel groups, criminals, non-governmental organizations and businesses.

Dalton combines the scholarly literature on public law and judicial impact with recent studies of policy implementation at the state level. He emphasizes the underlying constitutional, organizational, psychological, and political factors that shape public policy outcomes, arguing that a sound grasp of these factors can lead to an understanding of the gap between theory and practice in democratic politics. He examines the historical development and revision of the U.S. Supreme Court civil liberties rulings from the 1960s to the early 1980s as well as executive and congressional policy to regulate criminal records privacy. He also underscores the importance of the intergovernmental context in which state officials act as both leaders and intermediaries in the implementation of national policies. Dalton then combines these elements of analysis into a general theory of legitimation in order to render the significance of criminal justice policy for the American political system understandable as a whole.

The war on drugs is a war on ordinary people. Using that premise, historian Richard Lawrence Miller analyzes America's drug war with passion seldom encountered in scholarly writing. Miller presents numerous examples of drug law enforcement gone amok, as police and courts threaten the happiness, property, and even lives of victims-some of whom are never charged with a drug crime, let alone convicted of one. Miller not only argues that criminal justice zealots are harming the democracy they are sworn to protect, but that authoritarians unfriendly to democracy are stoking public fear in order to convince citizens to relinquish traditional legal rights. Those are the very rights that thwart implementation of an agenda of social control through government power. Miller contends that an imaginary drug crisis has been manufactured by authoritarians in order to mask their war on democracy. He not only examines numerous civil rights sacrificed in the name of drugs, but demonstrates how their loss harms ordinary Americans in their everyday lives. Showing how the war on drug users fits into a destruction process that can lead to mass murder, Miller calls for an end to the war before it proceeds deeper into the destruction process. This is a book for anyone who wonders about the value of civil liberties, and for anyone who wonders why people seek to destroy their neighbors. Using voluminous examples of drug law enforcement victimizing blameless people, this book demonstrates how the loss of civil liberties in the name of drugs threatens law-abiding Americans at work and at home.

Since first emerging as an issue of concern in the late 1960s, fear of crime has become one of the most researched topics in contemporary criminology and receives considerable attention in a range of other disciplines including social ecology, social psychology and geography. Researchers looking the subject have consistently uncovered alarming characteristics, primarily relating to the behavioural responses that people adopt in relation to their fear of crime. This book reports on research conducted over the past eight years, in which efforts have been made to pioneer the combination of techniques from behavioural geography with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to map the fear of crime.

The first part of the book outlines the history of research into fear of crime, with an emphasis on the many approaches that have been used to investigate the problem and the need for a spatially-explicit approach. The second part provides a technical break down of the GIS-based techniques used to map fear of crime and summarises key findings from two separate study sites. The authors describe collective avoidance behaviour in relation to disorder decline models such as the Broken Windows Thesis, the potential to integrate fear mapping with police-community partnerships and emerging avenues for further research. Issues discussed include fear of crime in relation to housing prices and disorder, the use of fear mapping as a means with which to monitor the impact of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and fear mapping in transit environments.

The authors take three particular sociological perspectives, and use them to offer a distinct and critical reading of criminology, highlighting the ways that crime is, first and foremost, a matter of social definition. They provide a good intnroductory text which will be of great value to students.

A century's worth of information on the physical, social, and mental effects of child abuse and neglect is gathered together in this extraordinary study. John Money adopts the historical figure of Kaspar Hauser as the paradigm case of the abusive neglect and deprivation that have typified reports of child abuse for more than a century. Hauser was a physically stunted adult with the mind of a child, who was abandoned at the city gate of Nuremburg in 1828, after seventeen years of neglect and isolation in a dungeon. The notoriety of his case gave the impetus to decades of medical investigation and many learned arguments regarding the significance of nature versus nurture. Money summarizes the various theories that have been advanced since Hauser's time by pediatricians, psychologists, and psychiatrists. He underscores recent studies showing that deprivation drastically impairs the normal functioning of the growth hormone, thus causing physical dwarfism, mental retardation, and defective social development. He shows how children from abusive environments can be effectively treated by a move to a new home and affectionate stimulation of the skin senses. Data collected on more than thirty modern cases of the Kaspar Hauser syndrome are presented to support Money's arguments. This groundbreaking work concludes with a review by Joshua Kendall of the Kaspar Hauser figure in nineteenth and twentieth century poetry, prose, and drama. We see how various artists have used the image of Kaspar Hauser as a potent and haunting symbol of our troubled modern society.

This volume approaches the full spectrum of crime as an issue in American society today, describing trends in various types of crime and the more recent rise of computer- and technology-related crime. Crime in America presents different viewpoints on the control of crime, anti-crime efforts through legislation and community action, and the successes and failures of law enforcement and the criminal justice system in dealing with crime in American society today. A chronology detailing historical developments and significant statistical fluctuations in U.S. crime during the 20th century, important figures in the ongoing anti-crime crusade, legislation excerpts, statistics, annotated print and nonprint resource lists, and descriptions of government and private agencies round out this valuable reference tool. A chronology detailing historical developments and significant statistical fluctuations in U.S. crime during the 20th century Provides legislation excerpts, statistics, descriptions of government and private agencies, and lists of annotated print and nonprint resources