Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. Drawing on six years' worth of extensive fieldwork, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael amplifies the voices of local communities who have suffered under the heavy weight of illegal fishing, piracy and counter-piracy and makes their struggles comprehensible on their own terms. He also exposes complex webs of crimes within crimes of double-dealing pirates, fraudulent negotiators, duplicitous intermediaries, and treacherous foreign illegal fishers and their local partners. In so doing, this book will help inform regional and global counter-piracy endeavors, avoid possible reversals in the gains so far made against piracy, and identify the gains that need to be made against its root causes.

Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. Drawing on six years' worth of extensive fieldwork, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael amplifies the voices of local communities who have suffered under the heavy weight of illegal fishing, piracy and counter-piracy and makes their struggles comprehensible on their own terms. He also exposes complex webs of crimes within crimes of double-dealing pirates, fraudulent negotiators, duplicitous intermediaries, and treacherous foreign illegal fishers and their local partners. In so doing, this book will help inform regional and global counter-piracy endeavors, avoid possible reversals in the gains so far made against piracy, and identify the gains that need to be made against its root causes.

Sarah Forsyth has spent most of her life in fear. After overcoming the hurt and heartbreak of a horrific childhood, Sarah managed to build a new life for herself as a nursery nurse. Then, one day, she spotted a newspaper advert for a job in a creche in Amsterdam. Excited by the prospect of a fresh start abroad, she eagerly signed up. But within minutes of stepping off the plane in Amsterdam her life began to fall apart... There was no creche and no job. That night, at just nineteen years of age, her life - her real life, her life as Sarah Forsyth - ended. Fed cocaine and cannabis, and forced at gunpoint to work as a prostitute in the Red Light District of Amsterdam: Sarah was a victim of sex-trafficking. Sarah Forsyth is a survivor. This is her heartbreaking story.

Transnational Organized Crime and Gangs: Intervention, Prevention, and Suppression of Cybersecurity provides several first-person examples of the mind set and mentality present in today's transnational organized crime groups combined with a holistic approach towards prevention and intervention in the cybersecurity space. Transnational organized crime groups have tremendous power and money, which means they have the ability to pay hackers to defeat cybersecurity measures. The dangers posed by organized crime groups are nothing new. For decades, these groups have launched sophisticated attacks against individuals as well as major corporations. Billions of dollars have been stolen every year, and large, continuous hacks of our highly sensitive computer systems. What is new, is the acknowledgement that cybersecurity should be high priority for every individual, company, and government entity. While Department of Homeland Security's involvement in cybersecurity is a step in the right direction, more measures need to be put in place that facilitates collaboration across industries and government entities. Transnational organized criminal elements will continue to find creative and effective ways to use technology for illegal activity. They will continue doing so unless law enforcement works closer with policymakers to enact uniform laws, regulations, and policies beyond current practices. Transnational Organized Crime and Gangs explores effective programs, policies, technologies and builds a body of knowledge to guide future regulations and resources for our criminal justice leaders of tomorrow.

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.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom - and almost got away with it. In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. While the federal government were undertaking an epic two-year manhunt for the site's elusive proprietor, the Silk Road quickly ballooned into a $1.2 billion enterprise. Ross embraced his new role as kingpin, taking drastic steps to protect himself - including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren't sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It's a story of the boy next door's ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralised Web advocates and the old world of government control, order and the rule of law.

You can see them, but you don't know them. Ultras are football fans like no others. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time. 1312: Among the Ultras tells the story of how the movement began and how it grew to become the global phenomenon that now dominates the stadiums from the Balkans and Buenos Aires. With unprecedented insider access, the book investigates how ultras have grown into a fiercely political movement, embracing extremes on both the left and right; fighting against the commercialisation of football and society - and against the attempts to control them by the authorities, who both covet and fear their power.

Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Intimate Crimes outlines the history of kidnapping in Mexico City by constructing a narrative of this crime based on extensive qualitative research on gangs, policing and other crime-related policies. The book also analyses the effect of kidnapping - and crime more broadly - on how communities experience the city, as well as the strategies put in place by potential kidnapping victims to deal with the threat of being victimised by someone close to them, a common occurrence in Mexico City, including analysing the processes through which household employees are screened and selected in Mexican households. The book presents the results of over a year of fieldwork in Mexico, and creates a qualitative database of news reports for the material used in its writing. It includes material from over 70 interviews with kidnapping victims, their families, potential victims and their employees, police, prosecutors, government agents, journalists and other informants. Intimate Crimes contributes to existing criminological literature on Mexico and Latin America by making an important contribution to a subject of the outmost regional importance. The book also contributes to broader criminological topics on the rule of law, criminal gangs, policing and the impact of economic development on crime. It also builds on the existing literature on empirical work on trust and signalling, particularly as it relates to contexts of weak rule of law and low state protection.

'A gripping true crime mystery... a must-read' Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of Myth 'An essential book' Joe Jackson, author of The Thief at the End of the World Deep in the heart of the Amazon, an entire region has lived under the control of one notorious land baron: Joselio de Barros. Joselio cut a grisly path to success: having arrived in the jungle with a shady past, he quickly made a name for himself as an invincible thug who grabbed massive tracts of public land, burned down the jungle and executed or enslaved anyone trying to stop him. Enter Dezinho, the leader of a small but robust farm workers' union fighting against land grabs, ecological destruction, and blatant human rights abuses. When Dezinho was killed in a shocking assassination, the local community held its breath. Would Joselio, whom everyone knew had ordered the hit, finally be brought to account? Or would authorities look the other way, as they had hundreds of times before? Dezinho's widow, Dona Joelma, was not about to let that happen. After his murder, she stepped into the spotlight, orchestrating a huge push to bring national media attention to the injustices in the Amazon. Set against the backdrop of Bolsonaro's devastating cuts to environmental protections, Brazil's rapidly changing place in the geopolitical spectrum, and the Amazon's crucial role in climate change, Masters of the Lost Land is both a gripping epic into one of the last wild places on Earth and an urgent illustration of how people are fighting for - and winning - justice for their futures and the environment.

An old enemy, a new threat, and a secret that could tear the world apart.Hostage negotiator Ethan Munroe is called urgently to a developing crime scene. A serial killer is holding a young girl hostage, and, inexplicably, demands his attendance. Events quickly spiral out of control, and the security of Ethan's life is stripped away, as he is thrown headlong into a perilous world of deception, espionage and danger, lurking deep within the shadows of political power. Ethan will discover things about himself he could never have suspected, come face-to-face with a terrifying foe, and uncover an unthinkable truth that could not only shatter his own future but that of the world... The enigma that is Project Icarus. A totally gripping conspiracy thriller with a twist you will never see coming, perfect for fans of Lee Child, Scott Mariani, and Adam Hamdy.

Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) have received increased attention in light of international corruption scandals, high-profile leaks about extensive tax abuse schemes, and the continued fight against terrorism financing and organized crime. Reducing IFFs is now a key target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, renewing debates about both how to operationally define IFF and the methodologies that are used to estimate their extent. This book addresses these key issues, by investigating and schematizing the concept of illicit financial flows and critically evaluating the current models used to estimate them. It book proposes an original flow-network approach through which to produce longitudinal and country-specific estimates of IFFs and the gross value added related to transnational trafficking. It advocates for a reformulation of the current definition of IFFs to one that is more specific and operational, allowing scholars and policy-makers to better clarify the relationship between IFFs, the sources of capital and the channels that are used to move capital abroad. This brief will be an indispensable guide for students of criminology and organized crime, and for the researchers and practitioners working to understand and combat these crimes.

Control and Protect explores the meaning and significance of efforts designed to combat sex trafficking in the United States. A striking case study of the new ways in which law enforcement agents, social service providers, and nongovernmental advocates have joined forces in this campaign, this book reveals how these collaborations consolidate state power and carceral control. This book examines how partnerships forged in the name of fighting domestic sex trafficking have blurred the boundaries between punishment and protection, victim and offender, and state and nonstate authority.

Since the late 1940s, a migrant African criminal society, known as the Marashea has operated and around South Africa's gold mining compounds. Comprising thousands of members involved in extensive criminal networks, the Marashea were more influential in the day-to-day lives of many black South Africans than were the agents of the apartheid state. These gangs remain active in South Africa. Much has been written about the problems of violent criminality and the historical roots of South Africa's urban criminal culture. In We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947?1999 Gary Kynoch points to the combination of coercive force and administrative weakness that characterized the apartheid state. As long as crime and violence were contained within black townships and did not threaten adjacent white areas, township residents were largely left to fend for themselves. The Marashea's ability to prosper during the apartheid era and its involvement in political conflict are critical to an understanding of the violent crime epidemic that today plagues contemporary South Africa.Highly readable and solidly-researched, We Are Fighting the World is critical to an understanding of South African society, past and present. This pioneering study effectively challenges many of the orthodoxies that have guided social history research on resistance, ethnicity, urban spaces, and gender in South Africa. Kynoch's interviews with many current and former gang members gives We are Fighting the World an energy and a realism that is unparalleled in any other published work on gang violence in southern Africa.Gary Kynoch is an assistant professor of History at Dalhousie University. Heis the author of numerous articles on crime, policing and violence in urban South Africa.

Discover the secret history behind the headlines. The Mexican drug wars have inspired countless articles, TV shows and movies. From Breaking Bad to Sicario, El Chapo's escapes to Trump's tirades, this is a story we think we know. But there's a hidden history to the biggest story of the twenty-first century. The Dope exposes how an illicit industry that started with farmers, families and healers came to be dominated by cartels, kingpins and corruption. Benjamin T Smith traces an unforgettable cast of characters from the early twentieth century to the modern day, whose actions came to influence Mexico as we now know it. There's Enrique Fernandez, the borderlands trafficker who became Mexico's first major narco and one of the first victims of the war on drugs; Eduardo 'Lalo' Fernandez, Mexico's most prominent heroin chemist and first major cocaine importer; Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the brilliant doctor and Marxist who tried (and failed) to decriminalize Mexico's drugs; and Harry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics whose sensationalist strategies paved the way for U.S. interference and the extraordinary levels of violence in Mexico today. The Dope is the epic saga of how violence and corruption came to plague modern Mexico, and the first book to make sense of the political and economic big picture of the Mexican drug wars.

TO KNOW THE TRUE STORY BEHIND A WAR, ASK THE PEOPLE WHO FOUGHT IT 'An observation van is running surveillance on a high-level Bradford gangster. Suddenly the van is surrounded by men in balaclavas and tied shut. Out comes the can of petrol. It is set alight and the two cops inside barely escape with their lives. This incident is never reported. The gangsters clearly have informants inside the police and alerting the public would undermine the force. Everyone shrugs it off - with so much money in the drugs game, corruption is part and parcel of the whole deal' The Drug Wars have been fought on British streets for decades, bringing destruction, corruption and violence in their wake. Yet it is a story that remains fundamentally untold. Until now. In this groundbreaking book, former undercover police officer Neil Woods, who risked his life infiltrating some of the UK's most vicious gangs, pieces together the complex and terrifying reality of the drug war in Britain. Calling upon gripping first-hand accounts from those on both sides of the battle, Drug Wars is told by those who are fighting it.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom--and almost got away with it

In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything--drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons--free of the government's watchful eye.

It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone--not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers--could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site's elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself--including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren't sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.

Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It's a story of the boy next door's ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it's all too real.