With organized crime estimated to generate billions of dollars every year through illegal activities such as money laundering, smuggling of people and goods, extortion, robbery, fraud and insider trading, authorities are increasingly working together to combat this increasing threat to international security and stability.

In this book former police officer Frank Madsen provides a much needed, short and accessible introduction to transnational organized crime, explaining its history and the key current issues and clearly examining the economics and practices of crime in the era of globalization.

Key issues discussed include:

• the war on drugs
• anti-money laundering efforts
• the relationship between organized crime and terrorism
• development of ?Internet based? criminal activity
• international response to transnational organized crime.

Illustrated by a series of researched case studies from around the world, Transnational Organized Crime is essential reading for all students and researchers in International Relations, International Law and Criminology.

With organized crime estimated to generate billions of dollars every year through illegal activities such as money laundering, smuggling of people and goods, extortion, robbery, fraud and insider trading, authorities are increasingly working together to combat this increasing threat to international security and stability.

In this book former police officer Frank Madsen provides a much needed, short and accessible introduction to transnational organized crime, explaining its history and the key current issues and clearly examining the economics and practices of crime in the era of globalization.

Key issues discussed include:

• the war on drugs
• anti-money laundering efforts
• the relationship between organized crime and terrorism
• development of Internet based criminal activity
• international response to transnational organized crime.

Illustrated by a series of researched case studies from around the world, Transnational Organized Crime is essential reading for all students and researchers in International Relations, International Law and Criminology.

Organized crime has been on the rise in the Greater China region since the People's Republic opened up its economy and society in the mid-1980s. Today, triads from Hong Kong, Macao, and even Taiwan are involved in businesses in Guangdong Province, and often recruit local Chinese for illegal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, assassinations, and smuggling of illegal aliens.This book provides a detailed and comprehensive study of how the state at the central and local levels has responded to the changing patterns and activities of cross-border crime in Greater China. It discusses the theoretical concept of organized crime; the transnational nature of organized crime in recent years; the significance of studying organized crime in Greater China; and the implications for the national security of other countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.The author reviews the history of organized crime and secret societies, and addresses the legal complexities of dealing with criminal groups in the region. He covers such topics as money laundering, the financing of terrorist activities, and regional efforts in fighting terrorism.

Black Vanguards and Black Gangsters: From Seeds of Discontent to a Declaration of War examines the extent to which black gangsterism is a product of civil rights gains, community transition, black flight, social activism, and failed grassroots social movement groups. Unfortunately, the voice of the ghetto was politically tempered, silenced, ignored, and at times rebuked by a black leadership that seemed to be preoccupied with a middle-class integrationist agenda. As a result, a once strong sense of universal brotherhood became fractured and the mood of the oppressed shifted to confusion only to be tempered by relentless frustration, out of which emerged black gangs.

While the later history of the New York Mafia has received extensive attention, what has been conspicuously absent until now is an accurate and conversant review of the formative years of Mafia organizational growth. David Critchley examines the Mafia recruitment process, relations with Mafias in Sicily, the role of non-Sicilians in New York's organized crime Families, kinship connections, the Black Hand, the impact of Prohibition, and allegations that a "new" Mafia was created in 1931. This book will interest Historians, Criminologists, and anyone fascinated by the American Mafia.

Organized crime in America today is not the tough hoodlums familiar to moviegoers and TV watchers. It is more sophisticated, with many college graduates, gifted with organizational genius, all belonging to twenty-four tightly knit "families," who have corrupted legitimate business and infiltrated some of the highest levels of local, state, and federal government. Their power reaches into Congress, into the executive and judicial branches, police agencies, and labor unions, and into such business enterprises as real estate, retail stores, restaurants, hotels, linen-supply houses, and garbage-collection routes.

How does organized crime operate? How dangerous is it? What are the implications for American society? How may we cope with it? In answering these questions, Cressey asserts that because organized crime provides illicit goods and services demanded by legitimate society, it has become part of legitimate society. This fascinating account reveals the parallels: "the growth of specialization, "big-business practices"" (pooling of capital and reinvestment of profits; fringe benefits like bail money), and "government practices" (negotiated settlements and peace treaties, defined territories, fair-trade agreements).

For too long we have, as a society, concerned ourselves only with superficial questions about organized crime. "Theft of the Nation" focuses on to a more profound and searching level. Of course, organized crime exists. Cressey not only establishes this fact, but proceeds to explore it rigorously and with penetration. One need not agree with everything Cressey writes to conclude that no one, after the publication of "Theft of the Nation," can be knowledgeable about organized crime without having read this book.

Human trafficking, and the related problems of organised crime and prostitution, has become a serious problem for post-Soviet countries since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Human trafficking has a major impact on the countries of origin, the destination countries and the countries of transit, and is a concern for those studying population and migration, economics, politics, international relations and security studies. This book examines human trafficking from post-Soviet countries, exploring the full extent of the problem and discussing countermeasures, both local and at the global level, and considering the problem in all its aspects. It focuses in particular on the experiences of the Baltic Sea region, setting out the nature of organised crime and the full range of threats against society.

This innovative book investigates the paradoxical situation whereby organized crime groups, authoritarian in nature and anti-democratic in practice, perform at their best in democratic countries. It uses examples from the United States, Japan, Russia, South America, France, Italy and the European Union.

An astonishing read -- full of corruption, greed, strong drink and stronger language -- that reveals the rotten heart of the global economy - Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland Crackles along ... they deserve credit for exposing the dark underbelly of the jewellery industry and giving us another glimpse into the real cost of the global obsession with gold - Spectator __________ All that glitters is not gold. Gold is the new cocaine - and it's just as lucrative, dangerous, and destructive. __________ Dirty Gold is a searing expose on the booming gold mining industry and destruction on the land and people of Latin America. It looks closely at a small US firm in Miami that helped transform the city into the nation's No.1 importer of gold into the United States. The book follows the meteoric rise and fall of a group of drug traders known as 'the three amigos' who laundered narco money through gold illegally brought into the US and raked in millions before they were caught. Whilst they were making their millions, the humanitarian situation in Colombia, Peru, and many other countries deteriorated dramatically.

Georgia is one of the most corrupt and crime-ridden nations of the former Soviet Union. In the Soviet period, Georgians played a major role in organized crime groups and the shadow economy operating throughout the Soviet Union, and in the post-Soviet period, Georgia continues to be important source of international crime and corruption. Important changes have been made since the Rose Revolution in Georgia to address the organized crime and pervasive corruption.

This book, based on extensive original research, surveys the most enduring aspects of organized crime and corruption in Georgia and the most important reforms since the Rose Revolution. Endemic crime and corruption had a devastating effect on government and everyday life in Georgia, spurring widespread popular discontent that culminated with the Rose Revolution in 2003. Some of the hopes of the Rose Revolution have been realized, though major challenges lie ahead as Georgia confronts deep-seated crime and corruption issues that will remain central to political, economic, and social life in the years to come.

Few subjects elicit greater moral outrage than human trafficking. Media reports of dehumanizing practices such as slavery, abduction, child prostitution, and torture, along with shocking statistics, form the basis of public knowledge.

With sensitivity and candor, this book addresses the reality of human trafficking in Thailand, dissecting studies, presenting facts, and dismissing stereotypes. It focuses on the areas of fishing, agriculture, domestic work, sex work, and the trafficking of children, weaving individual narratives and official studies into the wider history of Thailand's changing economy and labor situation.

Sirok Sorajjakool is professor of religion, psychology, and counseling at Loma Linda University, California.

This anthology of original research studies focuses on why and how sex workers and pimps quit the sex trade. There is an extensive literature on 'desistance' with different theories explaining why people quit crime. However, with a few notable exceptions, researchers to date have not focused on desistance among pimps and sex workers. These studies explore a spectrum of quitting the sex trade from voluntarily stopping, 'drifting,' and retiring; to intervention-based or coerced stopping due to influences and impositions by programs and/or by specialized courts. This book provides insight into the meaning of this work; how people in the sex trade view their engagement in licit/illicit spheres; and it will inform providers who interface with people from these communities regarding how to support desistance. Further this book may help those engaged in emerging topics related to the sex trade, including: (1) global trends in sex trade decriminalization and/or human trafficking criminalization, (2) the recent emergence of human trafficking intervention courts in the USA, and (3) the development (and impact) of new laws, policies, and intervention programs designed to reduce human trafficking (globally, regionally, country level) and/or more localized efforts to support desistance among participants in the sex trade. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of Criminology, Sociology, Law, Policy, and Psychology. It was originally published as a special issue in the journal Victims & Offenders.

Do piracy and maritime terrorism, individually or together, present a threat to international security, and what relationship if any exists between them? Piracy may be a marginal problem in itself, but the connections between organised piracy and wider criminal networks and corruption on land make it an element of a phenomenon that can have a weakening effect on states and a destabilising one on the regions in which it is found. Furthermore, it is also an aspect of a broader problem of disorder at sea that, exacerbated by the increasing pressure on littoral waters from growing numbers of people and organisations seeking to exploit maritime resources, encourages maritime criminality and gives insurgents and terrorists the freedom to operate. In this context, maritime terrorism, though currently only a low-level threat, has the potential to spread and become more effective in the event of political change on land. It is only by addressing the issue of generalised maritime disorder that the problems of piracy and maritime terrorism may be controlled in the long term.

Today, no single issue dominates the global political landscape as much as terrorism. Aware of their unique position in the newly unipolar world, terrorist leaders - Osama bin Laden foremost among them - have articulated that economic warfare is a key component of the new terrorist agenda. Governments have accentuated the role of economic tools in their counter-terrorism policies while maintaining emphasis on the application of military force, or hard power, even though such tools often prove unnecessarily blunt, or in some cases are sorely inadequate. Given the complexity of the global threat posed by modern trans-national terrorist groups, combating terrorism with a mix of hard and soft power is more important than ever. The need for nuanced management and a full complement of choices in the policy toolkit is a pressing concern.Terrornomics is an invaluable new book for graduate and undergraduate courses in terrorism studies that - brings together contributions from renowned international scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines; provides a multifaceted view of contemporary financial counterterrorism and terrorist funding efforts; and, employs key concepts, terms, case studies and policy recommendations to advance the reader's understanding of the threats and possible courses of action. Terrornomics helps policy makers and students of the complex phenomenon known as terrorism grasp the critical financial and economic issues, while providing potential counterterrorist strategies.

We see mafias as vast, powerful organisations, harvesting billions of dollars across the globe and wrapping its tentacles around everything from governance to finance. But is this the truth? Travelling from mafia initiation ceremonies in far-flung Russian cities to elite gambling clubs in downtown Macau, Federico Varese sets off in search of answers. Using wiretapped conversations, interviews and previously unpublished police records, he builds up a picture of the real men and women caught up in mafia life, showing their loves and fears, ambitions and disappointments, as well as their crimes. Mafia Life takes us into the real world of organised crime, where mafia henchmen worry about their bad managers and have high blood pressure, assassinations are bungled as often as they come off, and increasing pressure from law enforcement means that a life of crime is no longer lived in the lap of luxury. As our world changes, so must the mafia. Globalisation, migration and technology are disrupting their traditions and threatening their revenue streams, and the mafiosi must evolve or die. Mafia Life is an intense and totally compelling look at an organisation and the daily life of its members, as it gets to grips with the modern world. Out now in paperback.

This book estimates the proceeds of crime and mafia revenues for different criminal markets such as sexual exploitation, drugs, illicit cigarettes, loan sharking, extortion racketeering, counterfeiting, illicit firearms, illegal gambling and illicit waste management. It is the first time that scholars have adopted detailed methodologies to ensure the highest reliability and validity of the estimation. Overall, estimated proceeds of crime amount to EURO 22.8 billion: 1.5% of the Italian GDP. Of this, up to EURO 10.7 billion (0.7 of the GDP) may be attributable to the Italian mafias. These figures are considerably lower than the ones most frequently circulated on the news, without any details about their methodology, which were defined by a UN study as "gross overestimates". Far from underestimating criminal revenues, the results of this study bring the issue of the proceeds of crime to an empirically-based debate, providing support for improved future estimates and more effective policies. The volume's contributions were inspired by a project awarded by the Italian Ministry of Interior to Transcrime, which produced the first report on mafia investments (www.investimentioc.it). This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.

Social network analysis finally reached a critical mass of scholars in the field of criminology. The proven track record of network theory and methods in fostering new advances in our understanding of crimes and criminals has extended the web of researchers willing to integrate this approach to their work. It is more than just a fad - once you adopt a network approach, it almost inevitably becomes the main lens through which you see crime. The insights learned from analysing matrices of relations among offenders, from exploiting the interdependence among actors instead of finding ways to avoid it are simply too great to ignore. This book provides a state of the art assessment into network research currently being conducted in criminology and beyond, pushing the field further in multiple ways. A series of contributions tackle themes and offending types that had yet to be previously empirically investigated, including political conspiracies, steroid distribution, methamphetamine production, illicit marketplaces on the Internet, and small arms trafficking. Advances are also found in the data sources used to extract illicit networks, and the methods used to analyse them. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.

The perceived threat of 'transnational organised crime' to Western societies has been of huge interest to politicians, policy-makers and social scientists over the last decade. This book considers the origins of this crime, how it has been defined and measured, and the appropriateness of governments' policy responses. The contributors argue that while serious harm is often caused by transnational criminal activity - for example, trafficking in human beings - the construction of that criminal activity as an external threat obscures the origins of these crimes in the markets for illicit goods and services within the 'threatened' societies. As such, the authors question the extent to which global crime can be controlled through law enforcement initiatives and alternative policy initiatives are considered. The authors also question whether transnational organised crime will retain its place on the policy agendas of the United Nations and European Union in the wake of the 'war on terror'.

At a time when Latin America is experiencing societal unrest from human rights violations, corruption and weak institutions Government and Governance of Security offers an insightful understanding for the modern steering of crime policies. Using Chile as a case study, the book delivers an untold account of the trade-offs between political, judicial and policing institutions put in practice to confront organised crime since the country's redemocratisation. In an effort to encompass the academic fields of political science, public policy and criminology, Carlos Solar challenges the current orthodoxies for understanding security and the promotion of the rule of law in developing states. His research aptly illuminates the practicalities of present-day governance and investigates how networks of institutions are formed and sustained across time and, subsequently, how these actors deal with issues of policy consensus and cooperation. To unveil the uniqueness of this on-the-ground action, the analysis is based on an extensive revision of public documents, legislation, media accounts and interviews conducted by the author with the key policy makers and officials dealing with crimes including drug-trafficking, money laundering and human smuggling. Government and Governance of Security will be of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, security and governance and development.

In recent years, organized crime has become endemic in the countries of southeast Europe giving rise to an urgent debate on what needs to be done to fight it. This collection of essays contributes directly to this debate. The discussions range over national and regional policies, the west European dimension of the phenomenon, and the less often discussed role that the media and civil society can play in the battle against organised crime.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

Deepfake technology can create video evidence of just about anything: Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie in an orgy; Chinese president Xi Jinping declaring nuclear war; Basketball legend Michael Jordan winning the FIFA World Cup. The only limit is the imagination.

In a time where fake news and disinformation is becoming harder and harder to identify, it is more essential than ever to understand the dark origins of deepfakes. Journalist Michael Grothaus goes down the rabbit hole as he interviews the often morally dubious, yet incredibly skilled creators of this content. It's a journey that opens a window into the communities transforming reality.

Challenging, enlightening and terrifying, Trust No One asks the question other people are too scared to: what happens when you can no longer believe your own eyes?

In Fraud Examiners in White-Collar Crime Investigations, Petter Gottschalk examines and evaluates the investigative processes used to combat white-collar crime. He also presents a general theory regarding the economic, organizational, and behavioral dimensions of its perpetrators. Pool Your Resources for a Successful Investigation Gottschalk emphasizes the importance of collaboration across multiple disciplines including accounting, law, and forensic science in solving each case of suspected white-collar crime. He describes each case as a "puzzle" or "project" consisting of several steps and several participating individuals or organizations. Since so many people participate in an investigation, Gottschalk advises that objectively acquired and communicated information is vital to successful results. Fraud Examiners in White-Collar Crime Investigations approaches case studies from the perspectives of police science and detective work rather than auditing and legal thinking. Gottschalk asserts that "the private detective rather than the firm lawyer" is the more potentially successful fraud examiner. His approach emphasizes the importance of using strategy and practice in yielding results toward solving a case and highlights the use of interviews. He looks at the role of people as significant resources of information to help solve white-collar criminal cases and explains how a well-conducted interview can have a significant impact on the progress of an investigation. Through the analyses theories Gottschalk presents, this book gives you a useful tool for understanding characteristics of white-collar crime and for devising strategies for conducting and evaluating investigations of suspected white-collar crimes.

This work examines the structure and illegal activities of organized crime groups in Taiwan and explores the infiltration of crime groups into the business and political arenas. It looks at the intricate relationship among government officials, elected deputies, businessmen, and underworld figures.

This is the first entire book devoted to the Irish-American gangster who was known as "Chicago's Arch Killer" and "The Boss of the 42nd and 43rd Wards."