Humans are a species that classifies. We arrange the flow of the things and events that we see and experience, place them into categories, and erect boundaries around those categories. Among the boundaries that we erect are those that we put around groups of "other" human beings. The evil side of human classification of other human beings is that we sometimes create false categories of other people, as is often the case in racial, ethnic, and religious stereotypes. This unmindful creation of empty categories of human characteristics is what happened during two periods crucial to the construction of race in America. This is racism. The United States is in a period of deep cultural flux and conflict, much of it seen through the lens of race. This book proposes that the everyday actions of ordinary people, in the context of extreme political and cultural polarization, distort the criminal justice system and betray the lofty ideals expressed in American founding documents and centuries of Anglo-American articulations of basic human rights. These everyday actions range across a spectrum from the armed intervention of private citizens in the forms of individual action, neighborhood watches, and citizen's arrests, to the expectations imposed on law enforcement, in particular, and the criminal justice system in general.

Campus Sexual Violence: A State of Institutionalized Sexual Terrorism conceptualizes sexual violence on college campuses as a form of sexual terrorism, arguing that institutional compliance and inaction within the neoliberal university perpetuate a system of sexual terrorism. Using a sexual terrorism framework, the authors examine a myriad of examples of campus sexual violence with an intersectional lens and explore the role of the institution and the influence of neoliberalism in undermining sexual violence prevention efforts. The book utilizes Carole Sheffield's five components of sexual terrorism (ideology, propaganda, amorality, perceptions of the perpetrator, and voluntary compliance) to describe how the "ivory tower stereotype" and adoption of neoliberal values into education contribute to an environment where victimization is painfully common. Cases such as those from Michigan State University and Baylor University are used as examples to highlight institutional culpability and neoliberal value systems within higher education, as well as illustrating the pervasiveness of rape culture that contributes to a system of sexual terrorism. Crucially, the book focuses on systems of inequality and oppression, and uses an intersectional perspective that recognizes victimization experienced by multiple marginalized groups including women, LGBTQ+, and racially minoritized people. Building on campus violence research and institutional harm research, the authors define campus sexual violence as a serious social problem based in structural inequality and advocate for civic responsibility at the institutional level and the development of institutional advocates. Weaving together theoretical and practical perspectives, the book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sociology, criminal justice, women's and gender studies, social/political policy, victimology, and education. It will also be of use to those working in higher education administration and other student life and student health professions.

Engendered Death: Pennsylvania Women Who Kill is an historical and interdisciplinary study of women who kill in Pennsylvania from the 18th century to the present. It is not an examination of what motivates women to kill, although the reader may deduce that from the case studies included. Instead, it is an examination of how society perceives women who kill and how the gender-lens is applied to them throughout the legal process in the media and in the courtroom. What makes this work particularly unique is its combination of both scholarly analysis and narrative case studies. As such, it will appeal to both the scholar and the reader of true-crime non-fiction. If we are to recognize the complex variables at play in all criminal offenses, we will need to understand that the laws of a community, its social values, its politics, economics, and even geography play a factor in what laws are enforced and against whom they are enforced. The decision to define and label certain behaviors and certain people was based on social, political, and economic considerations of each community. Thus, the commission of murder by a woman in Arizona may have a variety of factors associated with it that are not present in the case of a woman who murdered her husband in Maine. This study, in part because of the volume of cases and in part to limit the variables affecting the cases, has limited its scope of women killers to the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the ideal state to study because of its long and stable legal and political traditions, its historically diverse population, and the large number of newspapers that will help us gauge the public's view of women and women who kill. By limiting our scope to one state, we know that the legal definitions are fairly consistent for all of the women during a certain period and we can more easily identify the shifts in social values regarding women, homicide, and so forth.

This book undertakes a concentrated study of the impact of degraded and low-quality imagery in contemporary cinema and real-world portrayals of violence. Through a series of case studies, the book explores examples of corrupted digital imagery that range from mainstream cinema portrayals of drone warfare and infantry killing, through to real-world recordings of terrorist attacks and executions, as well as perpetrator-created murder videos live-streamed on the internet. Despite post-modernist concerns of cultural inurement during the seminal period of digitalized and virtualized killing in the 1990s, real-world reactions to violent media indicate that our culture is anything but desensitized to these media depictions. Against such a background, this book is a concentrated study of how these images are created and circulated in the contemporary media landscape and how the effect and affect of violent material is impacted by the low-resolution aesthetic.

The Rosewood Massacre investigates the 1923 massacre that devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. The town was burned to the ground by neighboring whites, and its citizens fled for their lives. None of the perpetrators were convicted. Very little documentation of the event and the ensuing court hearings survives today. Edward Gonzalez-Tennant uses archaeology to uncover important elements of the forgotten history of Rosewood. He draws on cutting-edge GIS mapping, geospatial technology, census data, artifacts from excavations at the site, and archaeological theory to explore the local circumstances and broader sociopolitical power structures that led to the massacre. He shows how the event was a microcosm of the oppression and terror suffered by people of African heritage in the United States, and he connects these historic forms of racial violence to present-day social and racial inequality.

In Tackling Rape Culture: Ending Patriarchy, Jan Jordan asks why, despite decades of feminist activism, does rape culture remain so endemic within contemporary society. She argues that, in order to understand the global pandemic of sexual violence, we must view rape culture as a consequence of the social divisiveness that emerges from the logic of patriarchy. In advancing this argument, Jordan offers a comprehensive indictment of the patriarchal system while recognising also women's efforts to resist its edicts. Jordan critically explores two mechanisms that she argues are central to the maintenance and reproduction of rape culture - silencing and objectification. Both are examined as patriarchal strategies that have been relied on for centuries to control and constrain women's lives, silencing their voices and keeping them as 'othered' outsiders in a male-defined world. Women throughout history have sought ways to resist such control and, since the second-wave women's movement of the 1970s, this has included multiple initiatives both offline and more recently online. While #MeToo is being hailed by many as evidence that the silencing of women's voices about rape has finally been broken, Jordan urges a more critical appraisal given the continued dominance of patriarchal thinking. To end rape culture, Jordan argues, we must end patriarchy. This timely and provocative book, which complements Jordan's Women, Rape and Justice: Unravelling the Rape Conundrum (Routledge, 2022), will be of great interest to researchers, students, practitioners and activists seeking to understand and challenge the pervasive rape culture characterising contemporary patriarchal society.

Things change, and as the world becomes more challenging, we need to take the time to prepare our children. Not in a threatening or scary way, but in a way that is fun, engaging, and will give them the best possible chance of ensuring their own wellbeing. Spotting Danger Before It Spots Your KIDS is a book about presenting the concepts of situational awareness to children (ages 5 - 12) in a way that will keep them engaged and help them take an active role in their own personal security. This book will show you how to use fun, interactive games to build situational awareness skills such as: How children can identify and understand normal environmental behaviors. How children can spot abnormal behaviors within their given environment. How to give children a plan and a means of avoidance or escape should a dangerous situation present itself. Whether you're a parent, relative, or work in the childcare industry, the things you impart upon children will have a lasting impact on the way they live their lives. Nowhere is this more important than in the area of personal safety. As caregivers, we have a great responsibility for the security and wellbeing of our children, and to guide them along the path to independence. Your child's future success will depend on their ability to interact with their surroundings and make sound decisions based on what they see. That's the foundation of situational awareness. Author Gary Quesenberry has spent nearly two decades working as a federal air marshal. The training methods outlined in this book are based on the lessons learned not only as a counter-terror agent but also as a father of three.

Social Bridges and Contexts in Criminology and Sociology brings together leading scholars to commemorate the illustrious career and enduring contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to the social sciences. Although Professor Short is best known as a gang scholar, he was a bridging figure who advanced the study of human behavior across multiple domains. Individual chapters document Professor Short's intellectual development and highlight the significance of his theoretical and empirical work in a range of specialty areas, including suicide and homicide, criminological theory, field and self-report survey research methodologies, white-collar crime, hazards and risks, levels of explanation, microsocial group processes, and the etiology of gang violence and delinquency. A special feature of this book is the collection of brief personal reflection essays appearing after the main chapters. Authored by Professor Short's students, colleagues, collaborators, and friends, these essays provide powerful testimonials of the influence of his intellectual legacy as well as his generous spirit and commitment to mentorship. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology and sociology, and all those interested in the important contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to these subject areas.

Gender-Based Violence in Latin American and Iberian Cinemas rethinks the intersection between violence and its gendered representation. This is a groundbreaking contribution to the international debate on the cinematic construction of gender-based violence. With essays from diverse cultural backgrounds and institutions, this collection analyzes a wide range of films across Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. The volume makes use of varied perspectives including feminist, postcolonial, and queer theory to consider such issues as the visual configuration of power and inequality, the objectification and the invisibilization of women's and LGBTQ subjects' resistance, the role of female film-makers in transforming hegemonic accounts of violence, and the subversion of common tropes of gendered violence. This will be of significance for students and scholars in Latin American and Iberian studies, as well as in film studies, cultural studies, and gender and queer studies.

This book brings together a diverse range of international voices from academia, policymaking and civil society to address the failure to connect historical dialogue with atrocity prevention discourse and provide insight into how conflict histories and historical memory act as dynamic forces, actively facilitating or deterring current and future conflict. Established on a variety of international case studies combining theoretical and practical points of view, the book envisions an integrated understanding of how historical dialogue can inform policy, education, and the practice of atrocity prevention. In doing so, it provides a vital basis for the development of preventive policies sensitive to the importance of conflict histories and for further academic study on the topic. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of history, psychology, peace studies, international relations and political science.

The Economic Roots of Conflict and Cooperation in Africa explores how the development strategies of African nations shape the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. The overview chapter assesses development doctrines, patterns of development, and levels and nature of violence in both North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on eleven countries, the case-study contributions explore the immediate and long-term impacts of development initiatives on reducing or increasing inter-group conflict and violence. They demonstrate the importance of evolving identities as economic roles and conditions change. These insights can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

Trauma and Repair: Confronting segregation and violence in America is an interview-based interdisciplinary exploration of complex trauma in specific low-income communities and neighborhoods in Baltimore, Oakland, New Orleans and Elaine (Arkansas). The author's discussion and extensive analysis draws on insights from diverse fields - sociology, public health, history, and legal studies, as well as her own profession of clinical psychoanalysis. Moving fluidly between respondents' narratives about their lives on one hand and clinical and academic perspectives on trauma and inequality on the other, a picture emerges of multidimensional and intergenerational trauma with multiple sources, including prolonged economic injustice and repeated exposure to community violence. Eminent Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson writes that Stopford's book provides the most compelling case for acknowledging not only the cumulative economic, social and cultural effects of living in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods, but also the physical and psychological suffering caused by exposure to constant and chronic dangers, including the damaging health consequences of early childhood trauma that can span generations. Written in an accessible and engaging style, with an emphasis on interviewees' lived experience and insights, this original study promises to be a vital addition to the literature on inequality and poverty in the United States. Trauma and Repair will engage readers in diverse academic disciplines including sociology, psychology, public health, history, and legal studies. Readers in the wider public seeking to better understand the complex toxic forces confronting residents of distressed neighborhoods in American cities and towns will also find this original study informative, accessible and fascinating.

Violence is more than an issue in America. It is a pandemic, its negative impacts and corrosive character are harming us whether we are a victim, a bystander or professional tasked with public health and safety. Violence affects us regardless of class or social standing. For decades, celebrities and well-known public figures have taken to the media to share their own experiences with violence. This book spotlights the celebrities and their loved ones who have survived self-harm, bullying, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, family abuse, home invasion, gun violence, or police brutality. Violence prevention experts increasingly recognize the influence of celebrities and work with them to spread awareness. This collection of case studies aims to support this growing influence by documenting the effects of violence prevention through celebrity advocacy.

This book chronicles key contemporary developments in the social scientific study of various types of male-to-female abuse in rural places and suggests new directions in research, theory, and policy. The main objective of this book is not to simply provide a dry recitation of the extant literature on the abuse of rural women in private places. To be sure, this material is covered, but rural women's experiences of crimes of the powerful like genocidal rape and corporate violence against female employees are also examined. Written by a celebrated expert on the subject, this book considers woman abuse in a broad context, covering forms of violence such as physical and sexual assault, coercive control genocidal rape, abortion bans, forced pregnancy, and corporate forms of violence. It offers a broad research agenda, that examines the multidimensional nature of violence against rural women. Drawing on decades of work in the shelter movement, with activist organizations, and doing government research, DeKeseredy punctuates the book with stories and voices of perpetrators and survivors of abuse. Additionally, what makes this book unique is that it focuses on the plight of rural women around the world and it introduces a modified version of Liz Kelly's original continuum of sexual violence. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, policing, geography and all those interested in learning about the abuse women face in rural areas. Walter S. DeKeseredy is Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. He has published 26 books, over 100 refereed journal articles, and 90 scholarly book chapters on issues such as woman abuse, rural criminology, and criminological theory.

Ritualistic Crime, Criminals, and the Organizations behind the Sheath: A Book of Readings features carefully selected articles that help students better understand the causes, functions, and similarities of sacred forms of violence across the spectrum. Students learn about crimes committed by individuals or groups against another based on an errant belief that their acts will bring about a greater good. This information equips readers with the knowledge they need to identify and understand the classic signs of group affiliation. The anthology is divided into eight parts. The first part presents readers with an introduction to the volume and a discussion of the sacred power of violence in popular cultural. Parts II through IV focus on cults, sects, and religious crimes; millennial religions; domestic and international terrorist religions. Students read articles about Satanism, vampirism and the Goth movement, and syncretistic religions, Wicca, and neo-paganism. The final part speaks to new religious movements, including fiction-based religions and Scientology. Throughout, students are encouraged to consider how groups grow, flourish, and prosper, as well as the elements that either render them benign or violent. Providing students with a unique view into group behavior, Ritualistic Crime, Criminals, and the Organizations behind the Sheath is an ideal resource for courses in criminal justice, criminology, or law enforcement.

In this succinct text, Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab explore the linkage between weak institutions and government policies designed to combat drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence in Latin America. Using quantitative analysis to examine criminal violence and publicly available survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to conduct regression analysis, individual case studies on Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua highlight the major challenges that governments face and how they have responded to various security issues. Rosen and Kassab later turn their attention to the role of external criminal actors in the region and offer policy recommendations and lessons learned. Questions explored include: What are the major trends in organized crime in this country? How has organized crime evolved over time? Who are the major criminal actors? How has state fragility contributed to organized crime and violence (and vice versa)? What has been the government's response to drug trafficking and organized crime? Have such policies contributed to violence? Crime, Violence and the State in Latin America is suitable to both undergraduate and graduate courses in criminal justice, international relations, political science, comparative politics, international political economy, organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence.

Aggression in Pornography focusses on the issue of violence in mainstream pornography and examines what we know, what we think we know, and what are some surprising research findings and insights about the place of violence within pornography today. The authors first review the modern pornography industry, theoretical claims about pornography as violence, and the ways in which aggression has been defined and measured in previous research. Next, they review the findings of empirical research on violent content in pornographic materials and the potential effects of such content on audiences . The main part of the book relies on systematically collected empirical data, as the authors analyze the content of hundreds of pornographic videos as well as more than a hundred interviews with men and women who regularly watch pornography. These analyses provide surprising insights regarding the prevalence of and trends in violent content within mainstream pornography, the popularity of violent and non-violent content among viewers, and variations in aggression by race and sexual orientation. As such, Aggression in Pornography will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and media and film studies, as well as to wider audiences who are interested in today's pornography industry and to policymakers looking to devise empirically driven policies regarding this industry and its potential effects.

Nightlife is a place of both real and imagined risk, a 'frontier' (Melbin 1978) where apparent freedom and transgression are closely linked, and where regulation of leisure and collective intoxication has been diffused throughout an expanding network of state and private actors. This book explores Sydney's contemporary night-time economy as the product of an intersection of both local and global transformations, as policing comes to incorporate more and more 'private' personnel empowered to regulate 'public' drinking and nightlife. Policing Nightlife focuses on the historical and social conditions, cultural meanings and regulatory controls that have shaped both public and private forms of policing and security in contemporary urban nightlife. In so doing, it reflects more broadly on global changes in the nature of contemporary policing and how aspects of neoliberalism and the ideal of the '24-hour city' have shaped policing, security and night-time leisure. Based on a decade of research and interviews with both police and doorstaff working in nightlife settings, it explores the effectiveness of policies governing policing and private security in the night-time economy in the context of media, political and public debates about regulation, and the gendered and highly masculine aspects of much of this work. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology and those interested in understanding the debates surrounding security, policing and contemporary urban nightlife.

An examination of the treatment of serious violence by men against women in nineteenth-century England. During Victoria's reign the criminal law came to punish such violence more systematically and heavily, while propagating a new, more pacific ideal of manliness. Yet this apparently progressive legal development called forth strong resistance, not only from violent men themselves but, from others who drew upon discourses of democracy, humanitarianism and patriarchy to establish sympathy with 'men of blood'. In exploring this development and the contest it generated, Professor Wiener analyzes the cultural logic underlying shifting practices in nineteenth-century courts and Whitehall, and locates competing cultural discourses in the everyday life of criminal justice. The tensions and dilemmas this book highlights are more than simply 'Victorian' ones; to an important degree they remain with us. Consequently this work speaks not only to historians and to students of gender but also to criminologists and legal theorists.

Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. The forty original essays in this volume include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The essays also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies. The contributors to this volume--innovative thinkers who are forging new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence--provide novel insights into this important field of studies. By mapping out the whole field of religion and violence, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence will prove an authoritative source for students and scholars for years to come.

Published in 2009, the first edition of Forensic Victimology introduced criminologists and criminal investigators to the idea of systematically gathering and examining victim information for the purposes of addressing investigative and forensic issues. The concepts presented within immediately proved vital to social scientists researching victims-offender relationships; investigators and forensic scientists seeking to reconstruct events and establish the elements of a crime; and criminal profilers seeking to link pattern crimes. This is because the principles and guidelines in Forensic Victimology were written to serve criminal investigation and anticipate courtroom testimony.

As with the first, this second edition of Forensic Victimology is an applied presentation of a traditionally theoretical subject written by criminal justice practitioners with years of experience-both in the field and in the classroom. It distinguishes the investigative and forensic aspects of applied victim study as necessary adjuncts to what has often been considered a theoretical field. It then identifies the benefits of forensic victimology to casework, providing clearly defined methods and those standards of practice necessary for effectively serving the criminal justice system.
30% new content, with new chapters on Emergency Services, False Confessions, and Human TraffickingUse of up-to-date references and case examples to demonstrate the application of forensic victimologyProvides context and scope for both the investigative and forensic aspects of case examination and evidence interpretationApproaches the study of victimology from a realistic standpoint, moving away from stereotypes and archetypesUseful for students and professionals working in relation to behavioral science, criminology, criminal justice, forensic science, and criminal investigation

Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America presents a nuanced and evidence-based discussion of both the acceptance and co-optation of the transitional justice framework and its potential abuses in the context of the struggle to keep the memory of the past alive and hold perpetrators accountable within Latin America and beyond. The contributors argue that "transitional justice"-understood as both a conceptual framework shaping discourses and a set of political practices-is a Janus-faced paradigm. Historically it has not always advanced but often hindered attempts to achieve historical memory and seek truth and justice. This raises the vital question: what other theoretical frameworks can best capture legacies of human rights crimes? Providing a historical view of current developments in Latin America's reckoning processes, Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America reflects on the meaning of the paradigm's reception: what are the broader political and social consequences of supporting, appropriating, or rejecting the transitional justice paradigm?

Development Strategies, Identities, and Conflict in Asia explores the links between Asian governments' development strategies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. The overview chapters comprehensively assess the development doctrines, patterns of development, and levels and nature of violence in all Asian subregions, while case-study contributions focusing on eight countries explore the often surprising impacts of development initiatives on reducing or increasing inter-group conflict and violence ranging from West Asia to Southeast Asia. The variations in strategies and their impacts on multiple risks of violence can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

This book is concerned with the connection between the formal structure of agency and the formal structure of genocide. The contributors employ philosophical approaches to explore the idea of genocidal violence as a structural element in the world. Do mechanisms or structures in nation-states produce types of national citizens that are more susceptible to genocidal projects? There are powerful arguments within philosophy that in order to be the subjects of our own lives, we must constitute ourselves specifically as national subjects and organize ourselves into nation states. Additionally, there are other genocidal structures of human society that spill beyond historically limited episodes. The chapters in this volume address the significance-moral, ethical, political-of the fact that our very form of agency suggests or requires these structures. The contributors touch on topics including birthright citizenship, contemporary mass incarceration, anti-black racism, and late capitalism. Logics of Genocide will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, critical theory, genocide studies, Holocaust and Jewish studies, history, and anthropology.