Philadelphia's 'Black Mafia' could be used as primary reading in deviance and organized crime courses. Academicians in the fields of criminology, sociology, history, political science and African-American Studies will find the book compelling and important. This book provides the first sociological analysis to date of Philadelphia's infamous "Black Mafia" which has organized crime (with varying degrees of success) in predominantly African-American sections of the city dating back to the late 1960's.
Philadelphia's 'Black Mafia':

-is a first step in developing both data and sophisticated theoretical propositions germane to the ongoing study of organized crime;
-uses primary source documents, including confidential law enforcement files, court transcripts and interviews;
-explores the group's activities in detail, depicting some of the most notorious crimes in Philadelphia's history;
-thoroughly examines the organization of the Black Mafia and the group's alliances, conspiracies and conflicts;
-challenges many of the current historical and theoretical assumptions regarding organized crime.

From Los Angeles and New York to Chicago and Miami, street gangs are regarded as one of the most intractable crime problems facing our cities, and a vast array of resources is being deployed to combat them. This book chronicles the astounding self-transformation of one of the most feared gangs in the United States into a social movement acting on behalf of the dispossessed, renouncing violence and the underground economy, and requiring school attendance for membership.

What caused the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation of New York City to make this remarkable transformation? And why has it not happened to other gangs elsewhere? David C. Brotherton and Luis Barrios were given unprecedented access to new and never-before-published material by and about the Latin Kings and Queens, including the group's handbook, letters written by members, poems, rap songs, and prayers. In addition, they interviewed more than one hundred gang members, including such leaders as King Tone and King Hector. Featuring numerous photographs by award-winning photojournalist Steve Hart, the book explains the symbolic significance for the gang of hand gestures, attire, rituals, and rites of passage. Based on their inside information, the authors craft a unique portrait of the lives of the gang members and a ground-breaking study of their evolution.

While the success of national and international law enforcement cooperation to suppress organized crime means that stable, large-scale criminal organizations like the Cosa Nostra or the Japanese Yakuza have seen their power reduced, organized crime remains a concern for many governments. Economic globalization and the easing of restrictions on exchanges across borders now provide ample opportunity for money-making activities in illegal markets. Policies designed to stop illegal market flows often shift these activities to new places or create new problems, as the U.S.- led war on drugs spread production and trafficking to a number South and Central American countries. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime provides informed, authoritative, and comprehensive overviews of these issues and other principal forms of organized crime, as well as the type and effectiveness of efforts to prevent and control them. Leading scholars from criminology, law, sociology, history, and political science discuss the key concepts, history, and methods of organized crime; the major actors and interactions involved in it; the markets and activities frequently associated with organized crime; and the policies designed to combat it. Individual chapters on criminal organizations and specific activities or markets comprise the heart of the volume. The chapters on actors provide the history, analyze the structure and activities, and assess the strength and future prospects of each organization. Articles on particular markets address the patterns of activity, identify the most affected regions, and where possible provide estimated revenues, discuss factors promoting the activity, and disclose information on the victims and harms caused. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime delivers a systematic, high-quality, and truly global approach to the topic and with it a more complete understanding of organized crime in its many forms for researchers, government officials, and policymakers.

Through a riveting narrative both disturbing and disturbingly relevant to the present, Blood Brotherhoods shines a new light on the development of organized crime in Italy. Dickie draws on research that has never been seen before to examine the myths surrounding the three largest and most violent mafia groups--divulging the secrets, intrigues, histories and documents of the real stories behind the Honored Society's most brutal crimes. Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia made infamous to Americans by television shows like The Sopranos and classic films like The Godfather is not the only dangerous criminal fraternity active in Italy. The country hosts two other major mafias: the Camorra from Naples and the 'ndrangheta, the Mafia from the poor and isolated region of Calabria that has now risen to become the most powerful mob group active today. Each of these brotherhoods has its own methods, its own dark rituals, its own style of ferocity and corruption. Yet violence is only the beginning. The mafias have corrupted Italy's institutions, drastically curtailed the life-chances of its citizens, evaded justice, and set up their own self-interested meddling as an alternative to the courts. The staggering reach of organized crime in Italy hangs over a nation racked by debt, political paralysis, and widespread corruption. The largest mafia factions control much of Europe's wholesale cocaine trade and about three percent of Italy's total GDP. These are not solitary or static criminal organisms, nor are the Mafiosi that comprise them primitive gangsters. Sicily might have given the world the term 'mafia, ' but the history of organized crime in Italy is as much about Italy's weakness as it is about the mafia's strength. Italy itself is revealed to be a criminal ecosystem and a key player, in its own right, within the bowels of the Honored Society. Blood Brotherhoods is a book of breathtaking ambition. It blends archival detective work, passionate narrative, and shrewd analysis to bring Italy's unique criminal underworld, and the three terrifying criminal brotherhoods that have evolved within it, to life on the page.

Law today is incomplete, inaccessible, unclear, underdeveloped, and often perplexing to those whom it affects. In The Legal Singularity, Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie argue that the proliferation of artificial intelligence-enabled technology - and specifically the advent of legal prediction - is on the verge of radically reconfiguring the law, our institutions, and our society for the better. Revealing the ways in which our legal institutions underperform and are expensive to administer, the book highlights the negative social consequences associated with our legal status quo. Given the infirmities of the current state of the law and our legal institutions, the silver lining is that there is ample room for improvement. With concerted action, technology can help us to ameliorate the law and our legal institutions. Inspired in part by the concept of the "technological singularity," The Legal Singularity presents a future state in which technology facilitates the functional "completeness" of law, where the law is at once extraordinarily more complex in its specification than it is today, and yet operationally vastly more knowable, fairer, and clearer for its subjects. Aidid and Alarie describe the changes that will culminate in the legal singularity and explore the implications for the law and its institutions.

Eddie Richardson was for many years a dominant figure in Britain's criminal underworld. He was at the top of his game at a time when he who packed the biggest punch survived. In his revealing autobiography, he explains how he and his family rose to gangland prominence, how his dodgy deals brought him to the attention of the police, how he became a living legend and how he almost lost it all. For the first time, he talks frankly about his rivalry with the Krays, the family feuds that ironically brought him into greatest danger, being in prison and the celebrities, toffs and coppers who shared his life of crime and violence. With brutal honesty, he describes the motivations behind his lifestyle and explains why, for him, it was only ever a question of survival. He reveals that despite the hard-man, tough-guy image, his biggest weakness was putting the safety of others before his own. Eddie Richardson tells the gripping story of his life in the same gritty way in which he has lived it.

Willie 'Chill' Bruce has been recently freed from the California Penal system and is tryig to stay on the straight and narrow, but is finding it hard to do with the government trying to garnishee his pay check for child support. He finds him safe faced with some hard decisions to make that ultimately lead him to become one of the Kings of Credit.

In Gangs and Organized Crime, George W. Knox, Gregg W. Etter, and Carter F. Smith offer an informed and carefully investigated examination of gangs and organized crime groups, covering street gangs, prison gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and organized crime groups from every continent. The authors have spent decades investigating gangs as well as researching their history and activities, and this dual professional-academic perspective informs their analysis of gangs and crime groups. They take a multidisciplinary approach that combines criminal justice, public policy and administration, law, organizational behavior, sociology, psychology, and urban planning perspectives to provide insight into the actions and interactions of a variety of groups and their members. This textbook is ideal for criminal justice and sociology courses on gangs as well as related course topics like gang behavior, gang crime and the inner city, organized crime families, and transnational criminal groups. Gangs and Organized Crime is also an excellent addition to the professional's reference library or primer for the general reader. More information is available at the supporting website - www.gangsandorganizedcrime.com

This book is a systematic analysis of the youth gang problem in the United States, focusing on current patterns of gang behaviour, with reference to historical and cross-cultural dimensions. Spergel integrates theory and practice based on his four decades of experience in gang research, as well as extensive analysis of local and national research on ways to address the problem.

The Tiandihui, also known as the Heaven and Earth Association or the Triads, was one of the earliest, largest, and most enduring of the Chinese secret societies that have played crucial roles at decisive junctures in modern Chinese history. These organizations were characterized by ceremonial rituals, often in the form of blood oaths, that brought people together for a common goal.
Some were organized for clandestine, criminal, or even seditious purposes by people alienated from or at the margins of society. Others were organized for mutual protection or the administration of local activities by law-abiding members of a given community.
The common perception in the twentieth century, both in China and in the West, was that the Tiandihui was founded by Chinese patriots in the seventeenth century for the purpose of overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty and restoring the Ming (Chinese). This view was put forward by Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries who claimed that, like the anti-Manchu founders of the Tiandihui, their goal was to strip the Manchus of their throne.
The Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang) today claim the Tiandihui as part of their heritage.
This book relates a very different history of the origins of the Tiandihui. Using Qing dynasty archives that were made available in both Beijing and Taipei during the last decades, the author shows that the Tiandihui was founded not as a political movement but as a mutual aid brotherhood in 1761, a century after the date given by traditional historiography.
She contends that histories depicting Ming loyalism as the raison d'etre of the Tiandihui are based on internally generated sources and, in part, on the "Xi Lu Legend," a creation myth that tells of monks from the Shaolin Monastery aiding the emperor in fighting the Xi Lu barbarians.
Because of its importance to the theories of Ming loyalist scholars and its impact on Tiandihui historiography as a whole, the author thoroughly investigates the legend, revealing it to be the product of later - not founding - generations of Tiandihui members and a tale with an evolution of its own. The seven extant versions of the legend itself appear in English translation as an appendix.
This book thus accomplishes three things: it reviews and analyzes the extensive Tiandihui literature; it makes available to Western scholars information from archival materials heretofore seen only by a few Chinese specialists; and it firmly establishes an authoritative chronology of the Tiandihui's early history.

What is human trafficking? Despite legislative developments and national and international interventions, we still lack firm definitions, estimates of its full extent, effective responses to perpetrators and sound survivor care. This volume critically examines the competing discourses surrounding human trafficking, the conceptual basis of global responses and the impact of these horrific acts worldwide.

Some of the most important international security threats stem from terror groups, criminal enterprises, and other violent non-state actors (VNSAs). Because these groups are often structured as complex, dark networks, analysts have begun to use network science to study them. However, standard network tools were originally developed to examine companies, friendship groups, and other transparent networks. The inherently clandestine nature of dark networks dictates that conventional analytical tools do not always apply. Data on dark networks is incomplete, inaccurate, and often just difficult to find. Moreover, dark networks are often organized to undertake fundamentally different tasks than transparent networks, so resources and information may follow different paths through these two types of organizations. Given the distinctive characteristics of dark networks, unique tools and methods are needed to understand these structures. Illuminating Dark Networks explores the state of the art in methods to study and understand dark networks.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by dreams of newly opened markets. But no one could have foreseen that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the worldwide rise of organized crime. Today, it is estimated that illegal trade accounts for one-fifth of the global GDP.
In this fearless and wholly authoritative investigation of the seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares, veteran reporter Misha Glenny travels across five continents to speak with participants from every level of the global underworld--police, victims, politicians, and even the criminals themselves. What follows is a groundbreaking, propulsive look at an unprecedented phenomenon from a savvy, street-wise guide.

How do mafias work? How do they recruit people, control members, conduct legal and illegal business, and use violence? Why do they establish such a complex mix of rituals, rules, and codes of conduct? And how do they differ? Why do some mafias commit many more murders than others? This book makes sense of mafias as organizations, via a collative analysis of historical accounts, official data, investigative sources, and interviews. Catino presents a comparative study of seven mafias around the world, from three Italian mafias to the American Cosa Nostra, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Triads, and Russian mafia. He identifies the organizational architecture that characterizes these criminal groups, and relates different organizational models to the use of violence. Furthermore, he advances a theory on the specific functionality of mafia rules and discusses the major organizational dilemmas that mafias face. This book shows that understanding the organizational logic of mafias is an indispensable step in confronting them.

A collection of ten papers, some about organized crime in the Netherlands published over the past five years, and others more recent studies of the cross-border species. They discuss business crime-enterprises in the Netherlands, relations with legitimate industry, implications for crime risks in an

The universe of actors involved in international cybersecurity includes both state actors and semi- and non-state actors, including technology companies, state-sponsored hackers, and cybercriminals. Among these are semi-state actors-actors in a close relationship with one state who sometimes advance this state's interests, but are not organizationally integrated into state functions. In Semi-State Actors in Cybersecurity, Florian J. Egloff argues that political relations in cyberspace fundamentally involve concurrent collaboration and competition between states and semi-state actors. To understand the complex interplay of cooperation and competition and the power relations that exist between these actors in international relations, Egloff looks to a historical analogy: that of mercantile companies, privateers, and pirates. Pirates, privateers, and mercantile companies were integral to maritime security between the 16th and 19th centuries. In fact, privateers and mercantile companies, like today's tech companies and private cyber contractors, had a particular relationship to the state in that they conducted state-sanctioned private attacks against foreign vessels. Pirates, like independent hackers, were sometimes useful allies, and other times enemies. These actors traded, explored, plundered, and controlled sea-lanes and territories across the world's oceans-with state navies lagging behind, often burdened by hierarchy. Today, as cyberspace is woven into the fabric of all aspects of society, the provision and undermining of security in digital spaces has become a new arena for digital pirates, privateers, and mercantile companies. In making the analogy to piracy and privateering, Egloff provides a new understanding of how attackers and defenders use their proximity to the state politically and offers lessons for understanding how actors exercise power in cyberspace. Drawing on historical archival sources, Egloff identifies the parallels between today's cyber in-security and the historical quest for gold and glory on the high seas. The book explains what the presence of semi-state actors means for national and international security, and how semi-state actors are historically and contemporarily linked to understandings of statehood, sovereignty, and the legitimacy of the state.

Described by the National Crime Agency as a 'significant threat', county lines involve gangs recruiting vulnerable youth to sell drugs in provincial areas. This phenomenon has impacted local drug markets, increasing criminal activity and violence. Exploring how county lines evolve, Harding reveals extensive criminal exploitation and control in the daily 'grind' to sell drugs. Drawing upon extensive interviews and case studies, this timely book gives voice to users and dealers, providing an in-depth analysis of techniques, relationships and 'trapping'. With county lines now a critical issue for policing and government, this is an invaluable contribution to literature on gangs, youth violence and drugs.

Digital Pirates examines the unauthorized creation, distribution, and consumption of movies and music in Brazil. Alexander Sebastian Dent offers a new definition of piracy as indispensable to current capitalism alongside increasing global enforcement of intellectual property (IP). Complex and capricious laws might prohibit it, but piracy remains a core activity of the twenty-first century. Combining the tools of linguistic and cultural anthropology with models from media studies and political economy, Digital Pirates reveals how the dynamics of IP and piracy serve as strategies for managing the gaps between texts-in this case, digital content. Dent's analysis includes his fieldwork in and around Sao Paulo with pirates, musicians, filmmakers, police, salesmen, technicians, policymakers, politicians, activists, and consumers. Rather than argue for rigid positions, he suggests that Brazilians are pulled in multiple directions according to the injunctions of international governance, localized pleasure, magical consumption, and economic efficiency. Through its novel theorization of "digital textuality," this book offers crucial insights into the qualities of today's mediascape as well as the particularized political and cultural norms that govern it. The book also shows how twenty-first century capitalism generates piracy and its enforcement simultaneously, while producing fraught consumer experiences in Latin America and beyond.

When we think of the Italian Mafia, we think of Marlon Brando, Tony Soprano, and the Corleones--iconic actors and characters who give shady dealings a mythical pop presence. Yet these sensational depictions take us only so far. The true story of the Mafia reveals both an organization and mindset dedicated to the preservation of tradition. It is no accident that the rise of the Mafia coincided with the unification of Italy and the influx of immigrants into America. The Mafia means more than a horse head under the sheets--it functions as an alternative to the state, providing its own social and political justice. Combining a nuanced history with a unique counternarrative concerning stereotypes of the immigrant, Salvatore Lupo, a leading historian of modern Italy and a major authority on its criminal history, has written the definitive account of the Sicilian Mafia from 1860 to the present. Consulting rare archival sources, he traces the web of associations, both illicit and legitimate, that have defined Cosa Nostra during its various incarnations. He focuses on several crucial periods of transition: the Italian unification of 1860 to 1861, the murder of noted politician Notarbartolo, fascist repression of the Mafia, the Allied invasion of 1943, social conflicts after each world war, and the major murders and trials of the 1980s. Lupo identifies the internal cultural codes that define the Mafia and places these codes within the context of social groups and communities. He also challenges the belief that the Mafia has grown more ruthless in recent decades. Rather than representing a shift from "honorable" crime to immoral drug trafficking and violence, Lupo argues the terroristic activities of the modern Mafia signify a new desire for visibility and a distinct break from the state. Where these pursuits will take the family adds a fascinating coda to Lupo's work.