The first decade of the new century proved to be a deadly one for many children and young people in the United States. Despite increased policing on the streets, higher rates of incarceration, harsher sentencing, stricter control of illegal drugs, and attempts to reduce access to firearms, FBI reports show that more than 7,300 young people between the ages of 15 and 29 were murdered in 2008 alone. It's clear that traditional crime reduction strategies have not stemmed the rising tide of homicides perpetrated by and upon one of society's most vulnerable populations. Innovative, practicable solutions are needed to staunch this lethal trend. Based on the findings of a unique longitudinal study, Young Homicide Offenders and Victims: Risk Factors, Prediction, and Prevention from Childhood now provides experts with unprecedented analysis of prospectively collected data on 1,517 boys and young men who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Following these males from childhood into early adulthood, examining their lives and the conditions under which they grew up in a representative mid-sized American city, the study forms the basis of this unique volume designed to stimulate debate on key questions of prevention and intervention as well as dispel popular myths about the childhood and adolescent features of homicide offenders and homicide victims. Key areas of coverage include: Early childhood risk factors of young homicide offenders and victims. Insights into homicide offenders' lives as told in their own words. The effectiveness of screening for at-risk youth. Risk factor-based prevention and intervention strategies. The impact of interventions on homicide rates. Policy implications at the local, state, and national levels. Young Homicide Offenders and Victims: Risk Factors, Prediction, and Prevention from Childhood is essential reading for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers across the fields of juvenile justice and criminology, developmental psychology, sociology, psychiatry, public health, and policy making. ------- "This book changes the game in violence research ... The analysis is masterful, the prose is readable, and the achievement is nothing short of stunning." Richard Rosenfeld, Ph.D. / Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis "This book will stand the test of time as a landmark homicide study." James C. Howell, Ph.D. / Senior Research Associate, National Gang Center "This is a fascinating, pioneering book ... The authors' sophisticated analyses demonstrate convincingly the considerable value of prospective longitudinal data for enhancing our understanding of the etiology and control of lethal violence." Steven F. Messner, Ph.D. / Distinguished Teacher Professor, Department of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY / President, American Society of Criminology

Drawing on extensive interviews with gang members, this book provides a vivid portrayal of gang life. Topics include the profiles and motivations of gang members; the processes of gang evolution, organization, and recruitment; gang members' uses of violence, media, and technology and the role of gangs in the drugs trade and organized crime

In the wake of the 2011 UK riots and the British government's new American-style 'war on gangs', this book is the definitive account of 'how gangs work'. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with gangs and drawing on a variety of sources, How Gangs Work provides a vivid portrayal of gang life, but not as the British traditionally know it.
The book deconstructs the mythology of gangs to make sense of the profiles and motivations of gang members in straightforward, rational terms. How Gangs Work examines the vital processes of evolution, organization, and recruitment within gangs and gang members' instrumental and expressive uses of violence, media, and technology. Special attention is paid to the role of gangs in the drugs trade and the relationship between gangs and organized crime. The book concludes with a critical appraisal of gang desistance and the precarious future of gang prevention and intervention, with practical advice for practitioners, police and policy-makers.

Sociological theory has veered between an insistence on understanding human rights as a genuine universal morality and far more cynical portrayals of human rights as a veil of bourgeois capitalist enterprise. This book criticizes, adapts and combines seemingly disparate elements of contemporary sociological theory within a new approach to human rights. The practicality of the approach is clearly demonstrated in its application to one of the most important, complex and vexing locations of human rights violation in the world: modern Turkey. While sociological analyses of Turkey have largely been limited to local perspectives on individual issues of human rights violation, this book expands sociological understanding of the broad swath of Turkey's human rights violations into a new global perspective of hope and resolution.

Against Violence Against Women is a journey through time and across the globe to bring to light the roots of sanctioned violence against women. Rona M. Fields utilizes an interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, sociology, anthropology, and women's studies to examine cases and causes of gender-based atrocities in Afghanistan, Sudan, China, India, Siberia, and Europe. Fields reveals how these disparate cultures and societies have evolved formal institutions in which extremist ideologies (both left and right) politicize religion and other belief systems to rationalize irrational, oppressive behavior. Against this long history of institutionalized femicide, this volume investigates the potential of non-governmental agencies and international courts to provide a forum for the protection of human rights, and for the prevention of gender-based violence.

Drawing on original ethnographic field-research conducted primarily with former guerrilla insurgents in southern and central Sri Lanka, this book analyses the memories and narratives of people who have perpetrated political violence. It explores how violence is negotiated and lived with in the aftermath, and its implications for the self and social relationships from the perspectives of those who have inflicted it. The book sheds ethnographic light on a largely overlooked and little-understood conflict that took place within the majority Sinhala community in the late 1980s, known locally as the Terror (Bheeshanaya). It illuminates the ways in which the ethical charge carried by violence seeps into the fabric of life in the aftermath, and discusses that for those who have perpetrated violence, the mediation of its memory is ethically tendentious and steeped in the moral, carrying important implications for notions of the self and for the negotiation of sociality in the present. Providing an important understanding of the motivations, meanings, and consequences of violence, the book is of interest to students and scholars of South Asia, Political Science, Trauma Studies and War Studies.

This book frames several historical incidents of violent movement-countermovement conflicts within the concept of 'cumulative extremism'- the mutually reinforcing dynamic of radicalisation that can develop between two or more antagonistic groups. Drawing on several in-depth case studies, including the contests between British fascist and anti-fascist groups in the interwar period and from 1967 to 1979 and 1980 to 2000; the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to mid-1970s; and Islamist extremists and the far-right counter-jihad movement in Britain since 2009, this book presents the first in-depth academic analysis of the concept of 'cumulative extremism' and constructs a theoretical framework through which to assess its development. This is a groundbreaking volume which will be of particular relevance to scholars with an interest in the extreme right, social movements, political violence and criminology. It will also be of interest to policy makers and to practitioners dealing with extremism and radicalisation, including youth workers, prevent coordinators, community support officers and police officers.

'Violence' is virtually synonymous in the popular imagination with the period of the Later Roman Empire-a time when waves of barbarian invaders combined with urban mobs and religious zealots to bring an end to centuries of peace and serenity. All of these images come together in the Visigothic sack of the city of Rome in A.D. 410, a date commonly used for the fall of the entire empire. But was this period in fact as violent as it has been portrayed? A new generation of scholars in the field of Late Antiquity has called into question the standard narrative, pointing to evidence of cultural continuity and peaceful interaction between "barbarians" and Romans, Christians and pagans. To assess the state of this question, the fifth biennial 'Shifting Frontiers' conference was devoted to the theme of 'Violence in Late Antiquity'. Conferees addressed aspects of this question from standpoints as diverse as archaeology and rhetoric, anthropology and economics. A selection of the papers then delivered have been prepared for the present volume, along with others commissioned for the purpose and a concluding essay by Martin Zimmerman, reflecting on the theme of the book. The four sections on Defining Violence, 'Legitimate' Violence, Violence and Rhetoric, and Religious Violence are each introduced by a theme essay from a leading scholar in the field. While offering no definitive answer to the question of violence in Late Antiquity, the papers in this volume aim to stimulate a fresh look at this age-old problem.

Mass violence and terrorism are a salient phenomenon in the late modern society, showing no sign of decline. Proactive results from the long, ongoing debate of how to address these issues are therefore increasingly necessary - not just in the context of prevention, but also in the context of the aftermath. Shared Experiences of Mass Shootings develops an understanding of the collective experience, consequences and recovery processes after mass shootings. Drawing from in-depth case studies of two mass shootings in Finland and comparing them with other international cases, it explores how communities work through violent tragedies employing social memory and memorialization practices that can be seen as either tools for recovery, or as something that needs to be restricted. Contributing a novel understanding of how experiencing mass violence is deeply gendered through the social patterns and narratives of men's and women's emotions, this timely monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as: Sociology of Violence, Criminology, Social Work, Memory Studies, Media Studies and Cultural Trauma.

Images of covered women, together with stories of honor killings and forced marriages, continue to retain their currency in media representations of Islam. Moving beyond staid stereotypes, Gender and Violence in the "New" Europe draws new conclusions about the role of violence in determining Muslim women's participation in German public life. Combining cultural studies with theory, Beverly Weber contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussion about Islam in the West in two key ways. First, she demonstrates how current thinking about gender violence prohibits the intellectual inquiry necessary to act against a range of forms of violence. Secondly, she analyzes ways in which Muslim women participate in the public sphere by thematizing violence in literature, art, and popular media. By examining how violence is imagined, portrayed, and challenged, this timely book provides new strategies for action.

While the causes of rampage violence have been analysed thoroughly in diverse academic disciplines, we hardly know anything about the factors that affect their consequences for public policy. This book addresses rampage shootings in Western Europe and their conditional impact on politicization and policy change in the area of gun control. The author sets out to unravel the factors that facilitate or impede the access of gun control to the political agenda in the wake of rampage shootings and analyses why some political debates lead to profound shifts of the policy status quo, while others peter out without any legislative reactions. In so doing, the book not only contributes to the theoretical literature on crisis-induced policy making, but also provides a wealth of case-study evidence on rampage shootings as empirical phenomena. In particular, the extent to which gun control gets politicized as a policy failure can either result from a bottom-up process (event severity and media pressure) or from a top-down logic (issue ownership and the electoral cycle). Including 12 case studies on the rampage shootings which have triggered a debate over the appropriateness of the affected countries gun policies, it illustrates that the way political processes unfold after rampage shootings depends strongly on specific causal configurations and draws comparisons between the cases covered in the book and the way rampage shootings are typically dealt with in the United States. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, policy analysis, European Politics and more broadly to comparative politics, criminology, psychology, and sociology. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315209425, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

School shootings are a topic of research in a variety of different disciplines-from psychology, to sociology to criminology, pedagogy, and public health-each with their own set of theories. Many of these theories are logically interconnected, while some differ widely and seem incompatible with each other, leading to divergent results about potential means of prevention. In this innovative work, leading researchers on the topic of school shootings introduce their findings and theoretical concepts in one combined systematic volume. The contributions to this work highlight both the complementary findings from different fields, as well as cases where they diverge or contradict each other. The work is divided into four main sections: an overview of current theoretical approaches and empirical models; application of these theories to international cases, including Columbine (USA), Emsdetten (Germany), and Tuusula (Finland); a critique of the influence of the media, both in the portrayals of past events and its effect on future events; and finally an overview of existing models for prevention and intervention, and measures of their success. The result is a comprehensive source for current research on school shootings, and will provide a direction for future research.

Gender-based violence is a global phenomenon which affects millions worldwide. However, despite the increasing attention which is now paid to this violence by policy makers data seem to indicate that these efforts are not having as great an impact as may have been hoped. In all countries of the world, reports of gender-related violence remain elevated, whilst many incidents of such violence probably remain unreported due to fear of stigma or reprisals for those who are victims. One of the problems in tackling gender-based violence has been that for too long men have been ignored as part of the solution. Men are often labelled as perpetrators of violence, but they are perhaps too infrequently considered also as potential victims, or as partners and actors in the fight against violence. Constructions of masculinities are not adequately studied to analyse how dominant forms of masculinities may contribute to cycles of violence, and may also oppress and traumatise men themselves. This volume aims to address critically the issues of men, masculinity and gender-based violence, asking how men can be fully engaged in the prevention of gender-based violence, and how this engagement can strengthen prevention initiatives.

Understanding Victims of Interpersonal Violence: A Guide for Investigators and Prosecutors provides accessible information for criminal justice personnel "in the trenches" with victims of violence to aid in understanding and explaining their behavior. This guide sheds light on interpersonal violence victims' decisions and actions by providing context and naming factors that commonly impact victim responses. These include internal factors such as culture, religion, shame, and personality, as well as external factors like access to services, support systems, and resources. These factors inhibit or facilitate responses like disclosure, resistance, and participation (or lack thereof) in the prosecution of the offenders. This book also explores the influence of the perpetrator, as well as more deeply examining victim responses that typically offer challenges to investigators and prosecutors; for example, continued contact with the offender, lack of resistance, and issues in disclosure. Finally, the guide provides concrete tools to assist investigators in interviewing and for prosecutors to use during the prosecutorial process. This book is designed for investigators, prosecutors, advocates, criminal justice practitioners, and students of these subjects.

The favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro are renowned for their high levels of urban violence at the hands of gangs and the police. This book problematises the exclusive focus on men as the victims of these wars played out on city streets, an approach which serves to trivialize and sideline the experiences and victimization of women. Nevertheless, women are both actors and victims in these wars, as well as suffering from distinct forms of violence, most notably domestic and sexual violence. This book explores the moral, ideological and spatial boundaries that are produced by high levels of violence and the ways in which they govern everyday interaction, behaviour and movement. Men and women engage with these boundaries in distinctive ways, in negotiating or challenging the imposition of norms and unwritten wars that delimit everyday behaviour. The book argues for a more holistic gendered perspective in how we conceptualise the issue of urban violence and how we develop alternatives and initiatives to tackle violence in general.

Demonstrating that animal cruelty behaviours are another form of antisocial behaviour, alongside human aggression and violence, and almost without exception are carried out by the same individuals, this book offers clear recommendations for future research on animal cruelty and future action aimed at prevention.

This new, revised edition incorporates significant advances in neurobiological research over the past decade, and includes a new introduction by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti, a leading researcher in the field. When Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence was published in 1997, it was lauded for providing scientific evidence that violence can originate in the womb and become entrenched in a child's brain by preschool. The authors' groundbreaking conclusions became even more relevant following the wave of school shootings across the nation including the tragedy at Columbine High School and the shocking subsequent shootings culminating most recently in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Following each of these media coverage and public debate turned yet again to the usual suspects concerning the causes of violence: widespread availability of guns and lack of mental health services for late-stage treatment. Discussion of the impact of trauma on human life--especially early in life during chemical and structural formation of the brain--is missing from the equation. Karr-Morse and Wiley continue to shift the conversation among parents and policy makers toward more fundamental preventative measures against violence.

Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America explores the links between Latin American governments' economic policies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. Based on the patterns of ten countries, the contributions to this volume trace the remarkable transformation from open ideological conflict to the explosion of social (seemingly apolitical) violence, the upsurge of urban crime, and the confrontations over natural resources and drugs across the region spanning from Mexico to Argentina. The variations in economic success and in conflict prevention and transformation can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

Weaving together a social history of the American beef industry with her own account of growing up in the shadow of her grandfather's cattle business, Halley juxtaposes the two worlds and creates a link between the meat industry and her own experience of the formation of gender and sexuality through family violence.

Burkert, Girard, and Smith hold important and contradictory theories about the nature and origin of ritual sacrifice, and the role violence plays in religion and culture. These papers and conversations derive from a conference that pursued the possibility and utility of a general theory of religion and culture, especially one based on violence. The special value of this volume is the conversations as such--the real record of working scholars engaged with one another's theories, as they make and meet challenges, and move and maneuver.
Girard and Burkert present different versions of the same conviction: that a single theory can account for ritual and its social function, a theory that posits original acts of group violence. Smith sharply questions both the possibility and the utility of such a general theory. Among the highlights of this stimulating interchange of ideas is a searching criticism of Girard's theory of generative scapegoating, which he answers with clarity and conviction, and a challenging of Burkert's theory of the origin of sacrifice in the hunt by Smith's argument, posed as a "jeu d'esprit, " that sacrifice originates with the domestication of animals.

In the tsunami of publications on terrorism which followed 9/11, few have probed effectively into the deeper layers of motivation that enable normal human beings to carry out such unimaginable acts. Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of empathetic understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence. Drawing on sociology, psychology, novels and films, it shows how the need to defend or create a territorial or purely cultural 'home' in an unforgiving universe can precipitate a process of 'heroic doubling' which in extreme circumstances legitimates murder and suicide for the sake of a 'higher' cause.

The United States Internal Revenue Service introduced a multi-million dollar program to automate its operations in the early 1980s. This book describes a multidisciplinary study of the experiences of several thousand users in this program, based primarily on questionnaires, observation and interviews. The case study gives valuable guidance to managers and their consultants involved in planning introduction of new office technology, as well as providing more academic insights into aspects of human behaviour under changing working conditions.

Violently divided societies present major challenges to institutions seeking to establish peace in places characterised by ethnic conflict and high levels of social segregation. Yet such societies also contain groups that refuse to be confined within separate forms of ethnic community and instead develop alternative modes of action that generate shared identities, build trust and foster consensual, peaceful politics. Advancing a unique social movement approach to the study of violently divided societies, this book highlights how various social movements function within a context of violent ethnic politics and provide new ways of imagining citizenship that complements peacebuilding. By analysing the impact of social movements on divided societies, this book contributes to debates about the complexity of belonging and identity, and constructs a nuanced understanding of political mobilisation in regions defined by ethnic violence. In turn, the book provides important insights into the dynamics of social movement mobilisation. Based on the author's extensive research in Lebanon and Northern Ireland, and drawing on numerous examples from other divided societies, this book examines a range of social movements, including nationalists, victims, sexual minorities, labour movements, feminists, environmentalists, secularists, and peace movements. Bringing together social theory and case studies in order to consider how grassroots movements intersect with political institutions, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers working in sociology and politics.

Throughout history, and especially in this century, revolutions have played a central role in human history. Yet, as both the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 and the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe made clear, revolutions are rarely predictable nor attributable to a single cause.

"Debating Revolutions" brings together some of our best social and political thinkers to address two central questions of revolution: Can they be predicted? And what are their causes? In the debating style of Contention, the award-winning journal from which the essays are culled, the contributors--among them Charles Tilly, Jack A. Goldstone, Edward Berenson, Said Amir Arjomand, and Daniel Chirot--focus on the Iranian, Eastern European, and French revolutions, and on the theoretical and comparative aspects of revolutionary study. Unlike most anthologies, Debating Revolutions has a format that enables scholars to engage one another in discussion, thus resolving many disputes and addressing dilemmas, rather than merely outlining differences.

'A vivid, inspiring and sometimes poetic history of modern Iraq' - miriam cooke Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, many Iraqi academics were assassinated. Countless others received bullets in envelopes and instructions to leave their institutions (and in many cases the country) or get killed. Many heeded the warning and fled into exile. Having played such a pivotal role in shaping post-independence Iraqi society, the exile and internal displacement of its academics has had a profound impact. Tracing the academic, political and social lives of 63 academics, Bullets in Envelopes offers a 'genealogy of loss', and a groundbreaking appraisal of the dismantling and restructuring of Iraqi institutions, culture and society. Through extensive fieldwork in the UK, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan, Louis Yako shows the human side of the destructive 2003 occupation, and asks us to imagine a better future.