This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the illegal extraction of metals and minerals from the perspectives of organized crime theory, green criminology, anti-corruption studies, and victimology. It includes contributions that focus on organized crime-related offences, such as drug trafficking and trafficking in persons, extortion, corruption and money laundering and sheds light on the serious environmental harms caused by illegal mining. Based on a wide range of case studies from the Amazon rainforest through the Ukrainian flatlands to the desert-like savanna of Central African Republic and Australia's elevated plateaus, this book offers a unique insight into the illegal mining business and the complex relationship between organized crime, corruption, and ecocide. This is the first book-length publication on illegal extraction, trafficking in mined commodities, and ecocide associated with mining. It will appeal to scholars working on organized crime and green crime, including criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and legal scholars. Practitioners and the general public may welcome this comprehensive and timely publication to contemplate on resource-scarcity, security, and crime in a rapidly changing world.

Based on five years of ethnography, archival research, census data analysis, and interviews, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries reveals how the LAPD, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered "dangerous" and how they should be policed in Los Angeles. Sociologist Ana Muniz shows how these influential groups used policies and everyday procedures to criminalize behaviors commonly associated with blacks and Latinos and to promote an exceedingly aggressive form of policing. Muniz illuminates the degree to which the definitions of "gangs" and "deviants" are politically constructed labels born of public policy and court decisions, offering an innovative look at the process of criminalization and underscoring the ways in which a politically powerful coalition can define deviant behavior. As she does so, Muniz also highlights the various grassroots challenges to such policies and the efforts to call attention to their racist effects. Muniz describes the fight over two very different methods of policing: community policing (in which the police and the community work together) and the "broken windows" or "zero tolerance" approach (which aggressively polices minor infractions - such as loitering - to deter more serious crime). Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries also explores the history of the area to explain how Cadillac-Corning became viewed by outsiders as a "violent neighborhood" and how the city's first gang injunction - a restraining order aimed at alleged gang members - solidified this negative image. As a result, Muniz shows, Cadillac-Corning and other sections became a test site for repressive practices that eventually spread to the rest of the city.

ORGANIZED CRIME examines how criminal groups are organized; the widening of their business activities; and the statutes, agencies, and techniques used to combat organized crime. Updated throughout, the eleventh edition reflects the decline of the American Mafia, its importance dwindling as new criminal organizations emerge. The text also explains how criminal organizations operating on a global scale have become more sophisticated and more threatening, and examines additional crime groups that have been added to the pantheon we refer to as organized crime.

This book describes and analyzes the convergence of transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorism that has taken place within Russian-speaking social networks in Western Europe. Studies have shown that while under certain circumstances links between criminal organizations and terrorist groups appear, these are usually opportunistic and temporary in nature. Only rarely do they develop into something deeper and transformative, a convergence between crime and terrorism. This book reveals that Russian-speaking transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorism pose a serious threat to security and constitute a major challenge for law enforcement. Through their links with transnational organized crime, Russian-speaking jihadist networks from the Caucasus and Central Asia have easier access to weaponry, commercial explosives, and forged IDs than many other jihadist networks. Being in effect an integral component of transnational organized crime, the Russian-speaking jihadists can be assessed as potentially more capable than many other jihadists. The book assesses the effects of terrorism and organized crime on Russian-speaking diasporas in Western Europe and examines the implications for counterterrorism as well as policing on how to counteract the illegal activities of these networks. Drawing on Swedish court cases the work shows that an additional, and sometimes more effective way, to fight terrorism is by focusing on the non-terrorist types of crime perpetrated by terrorists. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, political violence, criminology, security studies and IR in general.

Corruption is increasingly placed on top of the agenda of national governments and supra national institutions, such as the OECD, UN or the World Bank. A necessary condition for promoting sustainable economic growth is the pre-existence of a stable political system which is able to control corruption. Corruption, however, is a very complex issue, associated with institutional and cultural specificities, personality traits related to individualistic values, and criminal personalities. In this book the social, political and economic realities that prevail in particular settings are viewed from an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and a multi country perspective. This book is divided into three parts. The first part presents a comprehensive, theoretical and empirical framework of corruption with an overview of literature on economic growth and corruption. Part two, encompasses the in-depth analysis of several countries, ranging from middle corrupted contexts like Portugal, to highly corrupted countries including Serbia, Russia, Thailand and China- the latter viewed from the perspective of firms from a very low corruption country such as Finland. The final part explores the prevention and control of corruption, looking at the public sector in Thailand and fighting corruption with different strategies. This volume is of the interest of those who study international economics, development economics or organised crime.

This book examines the UK's response to terrorist communication. Its principle question asks, has individual privacy and collective security been successfully managed and balanced? The author begins by assessing several technologically-based problems facing British law enforcement agencies, including use of the Internet; the existence of 'darknet'; untraceable Internet telephone calls and messages; smart encrypted device direct messaging applications; and commercially available encryption software. These problems are then related to the traceability and typecasting of potential terrorists, showing that law enforcement agencies are searching for needles in the ever-expanding haystacks. To this end, the book examines the bulk powers of digital surveillance introduced by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The book then moves on to assess whether these new powers and the new legislative safeguards introduced are compatible with international human rights standards. The author creates a 'digital rights criterion' from which to challenge the bulk surveillance powers against human rights norms. Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC in recommending this book notes this particular legal advancement, commenting that rightly so the author concludes the UK has fairly balanced individual privacy with collective security. The book further analyses the potential impact on intelligence exchange between the EU and the UK, following Brexit. Using the US as a case study, the book shows that UK laws must remain within the ambit of EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union's (CJEU's) jurisprudence, to maintain the effectiveness of the exchange. It addresses the topics with regard to terrorism and counterterrorism methods and will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and students researching counterterrorism and digital electronic communications, international human rights, data protection, and international intelligence exchange.

In this succinct text, Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab explore the linkage between weak institutions and government policies designed to combat drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence in Latin America. Using quantitative analysis to examine criminal violence and publicly available survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to conduct regression analysis, individual case studies on Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua highlight the major challenges that governments face and how they have responded to various security issues. Rosen and Kassab later turn their attention to the role of external criminal actors in the region and offer policy recommendations and lessons learned. Questions explored include: What are the major trends in organized crime in this country? How has organized crime evolved over time? Who are the major criminal actors? How has state fragility contributed to organized crime and violence (and vice versa)? What has been the government's response to drug trafficking and organized crime? Have such policies contributed to violence? Crime, Violence and the State in Latin America is suitable to both undergraduate and graduate courses in criminal justice, international relations, political science, comparative politics, international political economy, organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence.

1. Provides an engaging and accessible introduction to the psychological study of terrorism for students and the interested general reader 2. Features real-life case studies to engage readers 3. Includes further reading aimed at students wishing to use it as a primer for further s 4. Part of a series of books providing an accessible precis of the psychological of popular and contemporary topics

Gang violence is on the increase in certain neighbourhoods. There is an urgent need for a fresh perspective that offers insight into gang structure, organisation and offending behaviour to explain this increase. Using the findings from an extensive ethnographic study of local residents, professionals and gang members in south London, and drawing on his vast experience and knowledge of the field, Simon Harding proposes a unique theoretical perspective on survival in violent street gangs. He applies Bourdieu's principles of social field analysis and habitus to gangs, establishing them as a social arena of competition where actors struggle for distinction and survival, striving to become 'players in the game' in the 'casino of life'. Success is determined by accruing and retaining playing chips - street capital. Harding's dramatic and compelling insights depict gang life as one of constant flux, where players jostle for position, reputation, status and distinction. This perspective offers new evidence to the field that will help academics, students, practitioners and policy makers to understand the dynamics of gang behaviour and the associated risks of violence and offending. Simon Harding is currently a senior lecturer in criminology at Middlesex University, UK. He draws on 25 years of experience in research, public policy and project delivery as a crime reduction and community safety practitioner.

Using in-depth field research and analysis of case studies, Mafia Violence: Political, Symbolic, and Economic Forms of Violence in Camorra Clans focuses attention on the phenomenon of violence performed by Italian organised crime groups, devoting specific attention to the Camorra, which has been responsible since the mid-1980s for almost half of all mafia homicides documented in Italy. The Camorra has acquired increased visibility at an international level due to its intense use of violence and high level of dangerousness, but until now, the study of the different forms of violence implemented by mafias has not received systematic attention at the scientific level. Hence, this book fills this gap by providing a both theoretical and empirical contribution toward the analysis of one of the most unknown - although highly visible and dangerous - dimension of mafias' action. This collection of work by distinguished scholars provides a unique overview of the multifaceted characteristics of violence currently performed by mafia groups in Italy by focusing on specific actors - i.e., Camorra clans - but also other traditional mafia organisations such as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta; specific contexts - i.e., different territories and different markets, both legal and illegal; and specific practices and performances. Part I takes a diachronic and comparative perspective to provide an overview of mafias' violence during the past 30 years, focusing on the three most prominent criminal organisations active in Italy: Camorra, Cosa Nostra, and 'Ndrangheta. Based on the outcomes of a major project carried out by a research group at the University of Naples Federico II from 2015 to 2017, Part II looks at the use of violence by Camorra clans, incorporating information from case studies, judicial files, law enforcement investigations, wiretappings, interviews with privileged observers, firsthand empirical data, and historical documents and social sciences literature. Using a multi-disciplinary approach drawing from criminology, sociology, history, anthropology, economics, political science, and geography, this book is essential reading for international researchers and practitioners interested in piecing together the full picture of modern organised crime.

Geopolitics is an increasingly important tool to understand national and international relations. This book unravels how organized crime is not just a marginal problem but part of a bigger geopolitical and asymmetrical warfare strategy. It seeks to establish a direct relationship between Nation States and organized crime groups. Many States have been using criminal and terrorist organizations as a policy for issues of national sovereignty or as a tool to strengthen a nation's geopolitical position. This book demonstrates how national states are utilizing criminal organizations in covert operations and "dirty jobs" such as espionage, proxy war, arms trafficking and sabotage. Examples from the United States, China and the Soviet Union are explored, providing both an historical and contemporary analysis, from World War II through to the Cold War and to the present day. The book brings together perspectives from international relations and criminology drawing on insights from a variety of sources, including public documents and interviews.

This book tackles the challenging topic of corruption. It explores the evolution of a global prohibition regime against corrupt activity (the global anti-corruption regime). It analyses the structure of the transnational legal framework against corruption, evaluating the impact of global anti-corruption efforts at a national level. The book focuses on the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) as the primary tool of the global anti-corruption regime. It provides new and engaging material gathered in the field, including first-hand accounts from actors at international, regional, and domestic levels. By documenting the experiences of diverse actors, the book makes a substantial contribution to literature on corruption and anti-corruption efforts. Synthesising empirical research with an exploration of theoretical literature on corruption and regime evolution results in novel suggestions for improvement of the global anti-corruption regime and its legal tools. The Global Anti-Corruption Regime is a well-rounded text with a wealth of new information that will be valuable to both academic and policy audiences. It clarifies the factors that prevent current anti-corruption efforts from successfully eliminating corrupt activity and applies the five-stage model of global prohibition regime evolution to the global anti-corruption regime. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in anti-corruption law, comparative law, transnational criminal law, international law, international relations, politics, economics, and trade.

From supreme president to forgotten enemy, John W. Talbot lived a remarkable life. Charismatic, energetic, and powerful, he founded a national fraternal organization, the Order of Owls, and counted senators, congressmen, and business leaders among his friends. He wielded his influence to help causes close to his heart but also to bring down those who stood against him. In So Much Bad in the Best of Us, Greta Fisher's careful research reveals that Talbot was capable of great evil, causing one woman to describe him as "the Devil Incarnate." His string of very public affairs revealed his strange sexual preferences and violent tendencies, and charges leveled against him included perjury, blackmail, jury tampering, slander, libel, misuse of the mail, assault with intent to kill, and White slavery. Ultimately convicted on the slavery charge, he spent several years in Leavenworth penitentiary and eventually lost everything, including control of the Order of Owls. His descent into alcoholism and death by fire was a fitting end to a tumultuous and dramatic life. After 50 years of newspaper headlines and court battles, Talbot's death made national news, but with more enemies than friends and estranged from his family, he was ultimately forgotten. A gripping true crime story, So Much Bad in the Best of Us offers a mesmerizing account of the life of John W. Talbot, the Order of Owls, and how quickly the powerful can fall.

This book explores the historical origins, activities, and structure of the archetypal 'new' Asian criminal entrepreneurs in Canada, known as The Big Circle Boys (BCB). It traces their illegal immigration abroad from Guangzhou, the extent to which they are organised and violent, and what the future holds for them in Canada. The BCB's organisational features are examined against theories and legislation of organised crime to understand how they compare to other criminal entities. For the first time, a unique glimpse is provided into the workings of an elusive cellular network comprised of BCB dai lo (bosses). Through interviews and official documents, their criminal undertakings and structural dimensions are pieced together to show how their interdependent and collaborative cells enabled them to form a dynamic criminal community. This book speaks to those interested in how a collective of ethnic-Chinese career criminals have replaced traditional criminal organisations in transnational criminal markets, particularly for scholars and students of social sciences disciplines.

This book explains the existence of illicit markets throughout human history and provides recommendations to governments. Organized criminal networks increased in strength after the enforcement of prohibition, eventually challenging the authority of the state and its institutions through corruption and violence. Criminal networks now organize under cyber-infrastructure, what we call the Deep or Dark Web. The authors analyze how illicit markets come together, issues of destabilization and international security, the effect of legitimate enterprises crowded out of developing countries, and ultimately, illicit markets' cost to human life.

Winner, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles' eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality-for a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in God's Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.

More than a hundred years have passed since the adoption of the first prohibitionist laws on drugs. Increasingly, the edifice of international drug control and laws is vacillating under pressures of reform. Scholarship on drugs history and policy has had a tendency to look at the issue mostly in the Western hemisphere of the globe or to privilege Western narratives of drugs and drugs policy. This volume instead turns this approach upside down and makes an intellectual attempt to redefine the subject of drugs in the Global South. Opium, heroin, cannabis, hashish, methamphetamines and khat are among the drugs discussed in the contributions to the volume, which spans from Sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, including the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and the Indian Subcontinent. The volume also makes a powerful case for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of drugs by juxtaposing the work of historians, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists and criminologists. Ultimately, this edited volume is a rich and diverse collection of new case studies, which opens up venues for further research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Published in 1999, this book focuses on organized crime as a worldwide phenomenon that has taken great advantage of enabling technology in banking, communications and transportation to build what is probably the first true 'virtual' corporation in the world. It looks at organized crime as a threat to national and international security ironically stemming, in part, from the collapse of the Soviet empire that provided an already thriving, ruthless and well-organized system of graft, corruption and crime with a new lease of life and also unleashed it on to the world scene. Organized crime is also seen as a system of transnational alliances with the potential to destabilize democratic values and institutions; distort regional, if not worldwide, economies; and subvert the international order by allying itself with terrorist organizations, rogue states and developing countries in search of rapid industrialization and market dominance.

An in-depth study of the U.S. v. the International Brotherhood of Teamsters In 1988, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most corrupt union in the world. The lawsuit charged that the mafia had operated the IBT as a racketeering enterprise for decades, systematically violating the rights of members and furthering the interests of organized crime. On the eve of trial, the parties settled the case, and twenty years later, the trustees are still on the job. Breaking the Devil's Pact is an in-depth study of the U.S. v. IBT, beginning with Giuliani's lawsuit and the politics surrounding it, and continuing with an incisive analysis of the controversial nature of the ongoing trusteeship. James B. Jacobs and Kerry T. Cooperman address the larger question of the limits of legal reform in the American labor movement and the appropriate level of government involvement.

Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America is the first sustained effort to present an alternative framework for understanding piracy and contemporary challenges to global discourses on intellectual property (IP) in the Americas. While piracy might just look like theft and derivative reproduction from the perspective of many right-holders, the contributors to this volume go beyond this economic-driven logic and show how practices of copying are in fact practices of reinvention that reflect the rich social networks and forms of creativity, authorship, commerce, and consumption that characterize informal economies. From a perspective informed by contemporary scenarios in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, and the United States, they engage in a discussion of alternatives that-predicated on the importance of protecting culture-allow for other ways of conceiving prosperity at local, national, regional, and global levels. Examples discussed include video games, clothing, trinkets, music, film, TV, and books. Designed to help understand the broader implications of IP and piracy for the field of Latin American studies, this book will be a major contribution to Global South studies, as well as to the growing bibliography on globalization, informal markets, and piracy.

This book aims to provide the readers a better understanding of rural China through the particular perspective of the rural underworld. It proposes new concepts to describe social changes of rural China by comparing the contemporary rural society with the acquaintance society-the classic model for depicting the traditional Chinese society. The author's down-to-earth fieldwork has revealed that, with a permeating gang influence, the society of rural China has actually changed in nature. Such change in social nature is summarized as "the estrangement of acquaintances" or "moral ambiguity". As a result of the rural gangster's unlawful acts of lining their pockets with national resources, rural China is going through "rural governance involution." In short, this book develops new models and concepts to establish a comprehensive scientific conceptual system for explaining social reality. With hard-to-come-by information and a prudent and multi-faceted analysis on a neglected topic, this book gradually reveals to the readers the true picture of rural China.

Despite a rapidly changing economic and legal landscape, Italian mafias remain prominent actors in the global criminal underworld. This book provides an extensive and up-to-date view of how they adapt to shifting economic opportunities and intensifying legal and civic backlash. Surveying the main Italian mafias active today - Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra and the Sacra Corona Unita - the contributors provide a broad overview of key themes and research findings, offering new theoretical and methodological lenses for analysing how Italy's four native mafias have adapted to recent challenges. Investigating their global and national impact, this book analyses new insights into the operations and trajectories of Italian mafias in the 21st century. Employing fresh empirical material, this book is essential reading for students of Italian studies at all levels, as well as those of criminology, security, political science, sociology and organised crime studies. Policy-makers and practitioners tackling organised crime will also benefit from this book's critical insight into the history, operation and pathways of Italian mafias today. Contributors include: F. Allum, L. Brancaccio, D. Bright, E. Ciconte, I. Clough Marinaro, A. Colletti, G. Corica, J. Dagnes, N. Dalla Chiesa, A. Dino, D. Donatiello, M. Giuditta Borselli, A. La Spina, V. Martone, M. Massari, R. Merlino, V. Mete, S. Sberna, R. Sciarrone, L. Storti, A. Vannucci

Whilst corruption and organized crime have been widely researched, they have not yet been specifically linked to sport. Corruption, Mafia Power and Italian Soccer offers an original insight into this new research area. Adopting a psycho-social approach based mainly on Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology, the book demonstrates that corruption and the mafia presence in Italian soccer reflect the Italian socio-political and economic system itself. Supported by interviews with security agency officials, anticorruption organisations and antimafia organisations, and analysing empirical data obtained from a case study of 'Operation Dirty Soccer', this important study explains why mafia groups are involved in soccer, what the links are to political corruption and what might be done to control the problem. It also examines the mechanisms that make it possible for mafia groups and affiliates to enter the football industry and discusses how mafia groups exploit and corrupt Italian football. This is important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics working in the areas of sociology, criminology, policing, anthropology, the sociology of sport, sport deviance, sport management and organised crime. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners in the football industry.

This book is the first to consider the intersection between mafia power and deviant masonic lodges within the political sphere of the contemporary Italian state. At its core, it offers an analysis of the shifting interactions across powerful actors and the ways in which they balance reciprocal obedience, and a unique insight into the political processes where mafia actors and deviant lodges play a significant role in the allocation of resources. Mafia, Deviant Masons and Corruption draws on a wealth of literature from across criminology and political science and a range of primary data sources including judicial files indictments, arrest warrants, intercepted materials and sentences for key cases, official documentation from Parliamentary commissions and special committees of inquiry, rituals of affiliation and codes of initiation, and interviews with prosecutors, journalists and experts. In doing so it redefines how we have come to understand the relationship between mafias and power in Italy. It considers how criminal groups are defined and enriched by a relational capital in shifty environments where every actor assumes often a double nature: the mafia boss acts as an entrepreneur; the entrepreneur acts as a politician; the politician mixes with masons; a deviant mason supports mafia organisations. This book is a major contribution to the literature on mafias and organised crime across criminology, sociology and political science, and will be of great interest to students, researchers, scholars and engaged general readers.

In recent decades the international community has focused its attention on trafficking in persons, which is surely one of the most worrying phenomena of the 21st century. In Part I, this book examines trafficking in persons in the light of the recent definition of the phenomenon given by the UN Trafficking Protocol, and various other international legal instruments including treaties and 'soft law'. It analyses trafficking causes and consequences, and the most common forms of exploitation related to it.
Part II reviews the most important international conventions against slavery and the slave trade, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. It also analyses the most important policy documents setting the basic standards of protection for trafficked victims - namely the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights' Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking - and comments on the extension of the jus cogens principle of international law that prohibits slavery, to argue that trafficking in persons ought rightly to be considered a part of it.
Part III deals with the Council of Europe and the European Union, and their fight against trafficking in people, arguing that the focus has been placed mistakenly on the prosecution of traffickers rather than on the protection of trafficked victims.
The book concludes with a recommendation to shift towards a more balanced approach to the phenomenon, and the overriding need to conduct further research on specific issues related to the spread of trafficking and the exploitation of its victims.