Austerity continues to impact the criminal justice process in England and Wales: police numbers are down, the Crown Prosecution Service is in disarray, legal aid has been reduced, courts are closing and magistrates are leaving. Research into the criminal process usually focuses on England, however this book offers a rare insight into South Wales. Drawing on first-hand accounts of lawyers, police, suspects, and the convicted and their families, it uncovers how these affected individuals navigate the challenges caused by austerity, what has changed and what can be done to improve the system. This book is a reliable and evocative account of the reality of criminal justice in Wales.

This book seeks to break new ground in the way in which adolescent-to-parent violence and abuse is understood. Incorporating knowledge from an original research project undertaken in the UK and international literature, this book provides insight into the prevalence of this form of domestic violence which can include psychological, physical, and economic abuse. Young person and family characteristics are explored, and links are made between sibling aggression and school bullying behaviours. A key theme is how the data can be used to develop statistical models which can screen for young people behaving abusively towards their parents. It discusses how the research can be applied to inform theoretical frameworks, policy development, and professional practice, with a focus on prevention and early intervention that uses positive youth justice and restorative approaches.

The County Lines phenomenon has become one of the most significant drug market developments in the UK over recent years. This book analyses how it is being responded to by the police in affected provincial areas. Drawing on unique ethnographic fieldwork, it takes readers into police stations and out onto the streets with officers, providing timely insight into the policing of this high profile and challenging drug market context. The book considers the use of new police tactics that have been proposed and familiar methods that officers regularly embarked on. Through a sophisticated theoretical framework it argues that the policing of County Lines can often be considered 'symbolic', with concerns regularly placed on sending out strong messages that appear superficial when closely examined. Alongside this, however, there appears to be a progressive shift towards a more pragmatic drugs policing approach that embraces harm reduction principles.This cutting-edge research speaks to academics in Criminology and Policing, and to practitioners and policy makers.

Examining two overlapping aspects of the prison experience that, despite their central importance, have not attracted the scholarly attention they deserve, this book assesses both the degree to which prisoners can withstand the rigours of solitude and how they experience the passing of time. In particular, it looks at how they deal with the potentially overwhelming prospect of a long, or even indefinite, period behind bars. While the deleterious effects of penal isolation are well known, little systematic attention has been given to the factors associated with surviving, and even triumphing over, prolonged exposure to solitary confinement. Through a re-examination of the roles of silence and separation in penal policy, and by contrasting the prisoner experience with that of individuals who have sought out institutional solitariness (for example as members of certain religious orders), and others who have found themselves held in solitary confinement although they committed no crime (such as hostages and some political prisoners), Prisoners, Solitude, and Time seeks to assess the impact of long-term isolation and the rationality of such treatment. In doing so, it aims to stimulate interest in a somewhat neglected aspect of the prisoner's psychological world. The book focuses on an aspect of the prison experience - time, its meanderings, measures, and meanings - that is seldom considered by academic commentators. Building upon prisoner narratives, academic critiques, official publications, personal communications, field visits, administrative statistics, reports of campaigning bodies, and other data, it presents a new framework for understanding the prison experience. The author concludes with a series of reflections on hope, the search for meaning, posttraumatic growth, and the art of living.

Sport-based crime prevention programmes are becoming increasingly popular worldwide but until now there has been very little research on the effectiveness of such approaches. Bringing together authoritative evidence from existing programmes, the authors identify and analyse emerging successful practices. Covering mentoring and coaching, particularly as they relate to Positive Youth Development (PYD) programmes, the authors explore how the development of core life skills can improve individual resilience and decrease the risk of criminal involvement. The book conceptualizes the links between criminological theory and PYD and gives recommendations for future policy and practice.

This two-volume, edited collection lays the groundwork for an international exploration of incarceration and generation, covering a range of geographic, judicial and administrative contexts of incarceration from contributors across a range of subjects. Volume II examines intergenerational relations issues within contexts of incarceration. It focuses on the intergenerational continuities in imprisonment; intergenerational justice and citizenship; the impacts of incarceration on multiple generations and within families; and media representations of the intergenerationality of incarceration. Volume I explores an array of experiences, dynamics, cultures, interventions, and impacts of incarceration in different generations. This collection speaks to academics in criminology, sociology, psychology, and law, and to practitioners and policymakers interested in incarceration.

Following the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2020, and the creation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, there is increased interest in and a need to develop national human rights' bodies for children's rights. This book provides an in-depth look at one domestic independent children's rights institution: the Irish Ombudsman for Children's Office, to highlight the learnings for an international audience and the methodologies that can be used to promote and protect children's rights at a national level. Co-authored by Ireland's first Ombudsman for Children and a children's rights professor, the book will present an original and informed analysis of how a national human rights institution can advocate, most effectively, for the rights of children. By using illustrative case studies, the book will highlight how the powers of a national human rights institution can be put to strategic use to address specific children's rights deficits in areas of child protection, youth detention and public awareness about children's rights. Each chapter focusses on a case study, identifies a problem, the approach or intervention by the Ombudsman for Children, the outcome and reflects on lessons learned. It ensures that the cases can be extracted, examined and replicated in other jurisdictions by an international community interested in the promotion, monitoring and protection of children's rights. It speaks to those interested in Human Rights; Children's Rights; Socio-legal studies, Social Work; Childhood Studies; Administrative Law, Constitutional Law and International Law, and to practitioners and policy-makers in this field.

For many children and young people, Britain is a harmful society in which to grow up. This book contextualizes the violence that occurs between a small number of young people within a wider perspective on social harm. Aimed at academics, youth workers and policy makers, the book presents a new way to make sense of this pressing social problem. The authors also propose measures to substantially improve the lives of Britain's young people in areas ranging from the early years to youth services and the criminal justice system.

Even as restorative justice has captured the attention of justice practitioners, academics and communities worldwide and most research suggests that it has the potential to repair the harm of a criminal offense and reduce offending, there is also evidence that it can have no effect or even make things worse. Just Emotions: Rituals of Restorative Justice attempts to address these conflicting findings by analyzing how conferences work as a unique form of justice ritual. With a pioneering new approach to the micro-level study of the processes and emotions involved in successful conferences, this book offers clues on how to improve the practice and increase successful outcomes. Using an eclectic methodological approach, the author presents a model that adapts Goffman's and Collins' ideas about the interaction ritual chain by focusing on participants' emotions, emotional turning points, and the emergence of rhythm and solidarity between participants. The approach involves a contrasting systematic empirical program, including a combination of qualitative interviews, detailed observations of discourse, face and demeanour, and quantitative analysis of systematically observed conferences, in order to improve the capacity of facilitators and practitioners to produce successful outcomes. Offering an exploration of how rituals unfold dynamically in space and time, alongside analysis of both failed and successful rituals, Just Emotions provides a model of the ritual elements of restorative justice and how these rituals may impact reoffending.

After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime.
Drawing on the latest evidence, Saving Children from a Life of Crime is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. Criminologists David Farrington and Brandon Welsh also outline a policy strategy--early prevention--that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be.
At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, Farrington and Welsh here lay the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.

As organizations grapple with the challenges of hiring, they must also consider how they will engage with some of the most marginalized individuals in our society, such as individuals who have a criminal history. Many individuals are interested in returning to the workplace after obtaining a conviction. However, many of these individuals will encounter substantial barriers and exclusion when attempting to access employment in various occupations and industries. For our society to function, all individuals must have an opportunity to positively contribute, and organizations can no longer sit on the side-lines. Organizations have a responsibility to engage in hiring practices that encourage entry, not exclusion. Now Hiring allows readers to consider their individual biases, as well as their organizational employment practices and processes, and assess how these factors may be altered to increase hiring for individuals with a criminal history. Young encourages readers to think more broadly about the role of organizations and the responsibility that organizations have beyond their immediate stakeholders. Most importantly, Now Hiring prompts conversation and serves as a reminder that our current system is not sustainable. As we await other long overdue changes to various systemic issues, organizations must figure out how do their part. Providing entry to the workplace after a criminal history is a place to start.

The Multicultural Prison: Ethnicity, Masculinity, and Social Relations among Prisoners presents a unique sociological analysis of the daily negotiation of ethnic difference within the closed world of the male prison. At a time when issues of race, multiculture, and racialization inside the prison have been somewhat neglected, this book considers how multiple identities configure social interactions among prisoners in late modern prisoner society, whilst also recognising the significance of religion, age, masculinity, national, and local identifications. Contemporary political policies, which sees racialised incarceration together with penal expansion, has fostered the disproportionate incarceration of diverse British national, foreign, and migrant populations - all of whom are brought into close proximity within the confines of the prison. Using rich empirical material drawn from extensive qualitative research in Rochester Young Offenders' Institution and Maidstone prison, the author presents vivid prisoner accounts from both white and minority ethnic participants, describing economically and socially marginalised lives outside. In turn, these stories provide a backdrop to the inside - the interior world of the prison where ethnicity still shapes social relations but in a contingent fashion. Addressing both the negotiation and tensions inherent in conducting such research, the central discussion evolves from a frank dialogue about ethnic, faith, and masculine identities, constituted through loose solidarities based on 'postcode identities', to a more startling comprehension of such divisions as, in some cases, a means for cultural hybridity in prison cultures. More commonly, though, these divisions act as a familiar fault line, creating wary, unstable, and antagonistic relations among prisoners. Providing an arresting insight into how race is written into prison social relations, The Multicultural Prison adds a unique and outstanding voice to the challenging issues of discrimination, inequality, entitlement, and preferential treatment from the perspective of diverse groups of prisoners.

How can environments play a role in assisting and sustaining personal change in individuals incarcerated within the criminal justice system? Can a failure to address contextual issues reduce or undermine the effectiveness of clinical intervention? Bringing together a range of leading forensic psychologists, this book explores and illustrates inter-relationships between interventions and the environment in which they take place. This book examines how the environment can be better utilised to contribute to processes of change and how therapeutic principles and practices can be more strongly embedded through being applied in supportive, facilitative environments. In addition, it expands on emerging conceptualisations of how psychological functioning and environmental context are inextricably linked and offers an alternative to prevailing intrapsychic or 'essentialist' views of areas such as personality and cognition. Providing new and challenging insights and perspectives on issues of central relevance to forensic psychology and related disciplines, this book contributes to the development of innovative and unifying directions for research, practice and theory. This book will be an essential resource for those who work with or intend to work with offenders, particularly practitioners, researchers and students in the fields of psychology, criminology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and social work.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Explaining Criminal Careers presents a simple but influential theory of crime, conviction and reconviction. The assumptions of the theory are derived directly from a detailed analysis of cohort samples extracted from the Home Office Offenders Index - a unique database which contains records of all criminal (standard list) convictions in England and Wales since 1963. In particular, the theory explains the well-known Age/Crime curve. Based on the idea that there are only three types of offenders, who commit crimes at either high or low (constant) rates and have either a high or low (constant) risk of reoffending, this simple theory makes exact quantitative predictions about criminal careers and age-crime curves. Purely from the birth-rate over the second part of the 20th century, the theory accurately predicts (to within 2%) the prison population contingent on a given sentencing policy. The theory also suggests that increasing the probability of conviction after each offence is the most effective way of reducing crime, although there is a role for treatment programmes for some offenders. The authors indicate that crime is influenced by the operation of the Criminal Justice System and that offenders do not 'grow out' of crime as commonly supposed; they are persuaded to stop or decide to stop after (repeated) convictions, with a certain fraction of offenders desisting after each conviction. Simply imprisoning offenders will not reduce crime either by individual deterrence or by incapacitation. With comprehensive explanations of the formulae used and complete mathematical appendices allowing for individual interpretations and further development of the theory, Explaining Criminal Careers represents an innovative and meticulous investigation into criminal activity and the influences behind it. With clear policy implications and a wealth of original and significant discussions, this book marks a ground-breaking chapter in the criminological debate surrounding criminal careers.

In three parts, this volume in the AP-LS series explores the phenomena of captivity and risk management, guided and informed by the theory, method, and policy of psychological jurisprudence. The authors present a controversial thesis that demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management are sustained by several interdependent "conditions of control." These conditions impose barriers to justice and set limits on citizenship for one and all. Situated at the nexus of political/social theory, mental health law and jurisprudential ethics, the book examines and critiques constructs such as offenders and victims; self and society; therapeutic and restorative; health; harm; and community. So, too, are three "total confinement" case law data sets on which this analysis is based.
The volume stands alone in its efforts to systematically "diagnose" the moral reasoning lodged within prevailing judicial opinions that sustain captivity and risk management practices impacting: (1) the rights of juveniles found competent to stand criminal trial, the mentally ill placed in long-term disciplinary isolation, and sex offenders subjected to civil detention and community re-entry monitoring; (2) the often unmet needs of victims; and (3) the demands of an ordered society. Carefully balancing sophisticated insights with concrete and cutting-edge applications, the book concludes with a series of provocative, yet practical, recommendations for future research and meaningful reform within institutional practice, programming, and policy. The Ethics of Total Confinement is a thought-provoking and timely must-read for anyone interested in the ethical and legal issues regarding madness, citizenship, and social justice.

"It has become clear that there is no criminological exit from embrace of degrading punishments and practices to which our increasingly distorted risk perception commits us. Instead, the path forward must run through a return to the ethical and psychological roots of security and justice. TheEthics of Total Confinement is a quantum step forward in defining and advancing that path."--Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, UC Berkeley School of Law
"This book boldly calls for a total transformation in the way the law deals with people who are confined because of their perceived depravity or dangerousness. It focuses on three outcast groups--juveniles tried as adults, people with mental illness subjected to hospitalization, and sex offenders committed as dangerous--and, based on an innovative analysis of the relevant caselaw and empirics, shows why current practices not only visit substantial harm on these people but also brutalize those who deprive them of liberty and damage the rest of us by feeding our basest, most uninformed fears. Relying on Aristotelian philosophy, therapeutic and restorative principles, and commonsense justice, the book persuasively argues that we must reorient the training and thinking of all major players in the system if our goal is to promote the maximum amount of human flourishing."--Christopher Slobogin, Milton Underwood Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School
"The Ethics of Total Confinement: A Critique of Madness, Citizenship, and Social Justice deepens our understanding of how our legal system justifies its treatment of those it confines. By bridging gaps among relevant disciplines, the book clarifies to an interdisciplinary audience just how inadequate those justifications turn out to be when measured by psychological, ethical, or justice-based standards. The book's provocative conclusions and recommendations offer much food for thought and suggest potential directions for action."--Dennis Fox, Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Psychology, University of Illinois at Springfield
"The Ethics of Total Confinement shows how captivity diminishes the keepers and the kept. It is a book that synthesises in creative new ways reformist visions of justice, virtue and the cultivation of habits of character. This is profound work that opens new paths to dignity, healing and social justice."--John Braithwaite, Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, Australian National University
"The Ethics of Total Confinement offers a useful and wide-ranging perspective grounded in psychological jurisprudence. With its emphasis on the harm done to those most vulnerable to extremes of risk-management, this volume makes a welcome addition to the literature on confinement."--Lorna Rhodes, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
"The provocative thesis of this book develops psychological jurisprudence to conceptualize the ethics of existing total confinement practices, aspiring to greater justice and human flourishing for all. A timely intervention of this kind is most welcome."--George Pavlich, Associate Vice-President (Research), Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Alberta

This two-volume, edited collection lays the groundwork for an international exploration of incarceration and generation, cover a range of geographic, judicial and administrative contexts of incarceration from contributors across a range of subjects. Volume I explores an array of experiences, dynamics, cultures, interventions and impacts of incarceration in specific generations: childhood, youth and emerging adulthood, adulthood and older age. It covers topics such as: the expansion of the penal landscape; deprivation of liberty regarding children, the problem of unaccompanied migrant children; the incarceration of young adults and adults, exploring its impacts within and beyond incarceration and the consequences of imprisoning older populations. Volume II examines intergenerational relations issues within different contexts of incarceration. This collection discusses public policies and the role of the state and the citizen deprived of liberty. It speaks to academics in criminology, sociology, psychology, and law, and to practitioners and policymakers interested in incarceration.

Serious Offenders: A Historical Study of Habitual Criminals examines the persistent offending careers of men and women operating in northwest England between the 1840s and 1940s. The book focuses on a group of serious and persistent offenders who as well as offending in the region, had lengthy offending careers spanning several decades in various other locations. These were highly mobile persistent serious offenders who appear not to have been so closely bound in to the processes and structures which aided desistence from offending for the vast majority of the petty offenders.
The authors discuss questions such as: Why did some people remain minor offenders, whilst others developed into serious offenders? What were the triggers which propelled previously minor offenders towards persistent serious criminality? What part did changes in criminal legislation play in these processes? They conclude by drawing on the lessons to be learnt for today's debates about the regulation and surveillance of serious habitual offenders.

A comprehensive guide to the theory, research and practice of violence risk management The Wiley Handbook of What Works in Violence Risk Management: Theory, Research and Practice offers a comprehensive guide to the theory, research and practice of violence risk management. With contributions from a panel of noted international experts, the book explores the most recent advances to the theoretical understanding, assessment and management of violent behavior. Designed to be an accessible resource, the highly readable chapters address common issues associated with violent behavior such as alcohol misuse and the less common issues for example offenders with intellectual disabilities. Written for both those new to the field and professionals with years of experience, the book offers a wide-ranging review of who commit acts of violence, their prevalence in society and the most recent explanations for their behavior. The contributors explore various assessment approaches and highlight specialized risk assessment instruments. The Handbook provides the latest evidence on effective treatment and risk management and includes a number of well-established and effective treatment interventions for violent offenders. This important book: Contains an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the topic Includes contributions from an international panel of experts Offers information on violence risk formulation Reveals the most recent techniques in violence risk assessment Explains what works in violence intervention Reviews specialty clinical assessments Written for clinicians and other professionals in the field of violence prevention and assessment, The Wiley Handbook of What Works in Violence Risk Management is unique in its approach because it offers a comprehensive review of the topic rather than like other books on the market that take a narrower view.

Although there is plentiful research on the impact of marriage, employment and the military on desistance from criminal behaviour in the lives of men, far less is known about the factors most important to women's desistance. Imprisoned women are far more likely than their male counterparts to be the primary caretakers of children before their incarceration, and are far more likely to intend to reunify with their children upon their release from incarceration. This book focuses on the role of mothering in women's desistance from criminal behaviour. Drawing on original research, this book explores the nature of mothering during incarceration, how mothers maintain a relationship with their children from behind bars and the ways in which mothering makes desistance more or less likely after incarceration. It outlines the ways in which race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, and other characteristics affect mothering and desistance, and explores the tensions between individual and system-level factors in the consideration of desistance. This book suggests that any discussion of desistance, particularly for women, must move beyond the traditional focus on individual characteristics and decision-making. Such a focus overlooks the role played by context and systems which undermine both women's attempts to be mothers and their attempts to desist. By contrast, in the tradition of Beth Richie's Compelled to Crime, this book explores both the trees and the forests, and the quantum in-between, in a way that aims for lasting societal and individual changes.

In recent years, the incidence of violent crime committed by teenagers has escalated, a fact that has hardly escaped the news media. When faced with the challenge of understanding and explaining such occurences in the headlines, one is tempted to rely upon the truism: There are good kids and there are bad kids. Michael D. Kelleher, noted expert on the subject of violence, asserts in When Good Kids Kill that this belief is outdated, oversimplified, and fundamentally wrong. He states that some of the most atrocious murders are, in fact, committed by good kids who have never given a prior indication of violence. Kelleher's book is the first to focus exclusively on homicides committed by previously nonviolent teens, exploring many of the prominent criminal cases covered by the media in recent years. Although individual killings are hard to predict, Kelleher's important new work demonstrates that there are categories of crime that can be attributed to good kids who kill; his work shows for the first time that the young perpetrators of murders that fall into these categories share similar backgrounds and experience. While such crimes as teen mothers disposing of their newborns, sons and daughters murdering their parents, members of cults slaying friends or strangers, and young people murdering the objects of their sexual obsessions are almost always surprising and baffling, Kelleher points out that the killers often exhibit warning signs before erupting into violence. By recognizing these warnings and understanding patterns of experience that can motivate these tragic crimes, the author believes that parents, counselors, and education and law enforcement professionals can begin to address the challenge of increasing teenage violence and ensure a less violent society for our children.

Accounts of female offenders' journeys into the criminal justice system are often silenced or marginalized. Featuring a Foreword from Pat Carlen and inspired by her seminal book 'Criminal Women', this collection uses participatory, inclusive and narrative methodologies to highlight the lived experiences of women involved with the criminal justice system. It presents studies focused on drug use and supply, sex work, sexual exploitation and experiences of imprisonment. Bringing together cutting-edge feminist research, this book exposes the intersecting oppressions and social control often central to women's experiences of the justice system and offers invaluable insights for developing penal policies that account for the needs of women.

This Open Access edited collection seeks to improve collaboration between criminal justice and welfare services in order to help prepare offenders for life after serving a prison sentence. It examines the potential tensions between criminal justice agencies and other organisations which are involved in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders, most notably those engaged in mental health care or third sector organisations. It then suggests a variety of different methods and approaches to help to overcome such tensions and promote inter-agency collaboration and co-working, drawing on emerging research and models, with a focus on the practice in European and Scandinavian countries. For academics and practitioners working in prisons and the penal system, this collection will be invaluable.

This book examines the current debate about UK street gangs termed the 'UK Gang Thesis' debate. It argues that policy formations in the UK aimed at addressing street gangs preceding and succeeding the English riots of 2011 have encompassed positions of both gang denial and gang blame. The policy pendulum of denial and blame raises questions about where UK gang-policy stands, and which ideas and influences have framed our responses to this issue. The book will explore the UK Gangs Thesis using an analysis of empirical evidence from three sites in three English regions which encompasses periods of both gang denial and gang blame. This book is an examination of the relationship between theory, policy and practice in the context of the current UK gangs-discourse, and one of the first to examine the country lines phenomena. There is a need to formulate a less partisan analysis of gangs in the UK, and to recapture the debate from analyses which understate or overstate the gang problem. In order to do so, Andell argues that a realist approach is needed which defines what constitutes social reality and overcomes theoretical and methodological difficulties in order to critique present formulations of gangs. This book provides this critique and makes suggestions for a more comprehensive and democratic approach to gang policy, in what can be termed a critical realist approach to gangs.

While the use of imprisonment continues to rise in developed nations, we have little sociological knowledge of the prison's inner world. Based on extensive fieldwork in a medium-security prison in the UK, HMP Wellingborough, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an EnglishPrison provides an in-depth analysis of the prison's social anatomy. It explains how power is exercised by the institution, individualizing the prisoner community and demanding particular forms of compliance and engagement. Drawing on prisoners' life stories, it shows how different prisoners experience and respond to the new range of penal practices and frustrations. It then explains how the prisoner society - its norms, hierarchy and social relationships - is shaped both by these conditions of confinement and by the different backgrounds, values and identities that prisoners bring into the prison environment.
Individual chapters in the book examine the flow of power, social order and governance, social relations and hierarchy, everyday prison culture, politics and economics, and the effects of imprisonment on prisoners. The book also looks at the recent accounts of transformations in penal management and changes in prison policy, and offers comparative content on the quality of prison life by drawing upon quantitative evaluations based on standard UK prison surveys and visits to three other category C prisons.

This book presents a comparative look at the norms and attitudes related to youth violence. It aims to present a perspective outside of the typical Western context, through case studies comparing a developed / Western democracy (Germany), a country with a history of institutionalized violence (South Africa), and an emerging democracy that has experienced heavy terrorism (Pakistan). Building on earlier works, the research presented in this innovative volume provides new insights into the sociocultural context for shaping both young people's tolerance of and involvement in violence, depending on their environment. This volume covers: Research on interpersonal violence. Thorough review of the contribution of research on gangs, violence, neighborhoods and community. Analyses on violence-related norms of male juveniles (ages 16-21 years old) living in high-risk urban neighborhoods. Intense discussion of the concept of street code and its use. Application of street code concept to contexts outside the US. An integrating chapter focused on where the street code exists, and how it is modified or interpreted by young men. With a foreword by Jeffrey Ian Ross, this book aims to provide a broader context for research. It does so via a rigorous comparative methodology, presenting a framework that may be applied to future studies. This open access book will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, demography, psychology, and public health.