Books Received
September 2013

Listed below are books received for review over the last two months. Entries include publishing information as well as a description of the book. Unless otherwise stated, the book description is taken from the publisher’s website or the book jacket. Selected titles from this list will be chosen for a full review in forthcoming issues of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books. Previous books received are available from the links below.

Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion, ed. by Katja Franko Aas and Mary Bosworth. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 350p.

“The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion critically assesses the relationship between immigration control, citizenship, and criminal justice. It reflects on the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by mass mobility and its control and for the first time, sets out a particular sub-field within criminology, the criminology of mobility. Drawing together leading international scholars with newer researchers, the book systematically outlines why criminology and criminal justice should pay more attention to issues of immigration and border control.

Contributors consider how ‘traditional’ criminal justice institutions such as the criminal law, police, and prisons are being shaped and altered by immigration, as well as examining novel forms of penalty (such as deportation and detention facilities), which have until now seldom featured in criminological studies and textbooks. In so doing, the book demonstrates that mobility and its control are matters that ought to be central to any understanding of the criminal justice system. Phenomena such as the controversial use of immigration law for the purposes of the war on terror, closed detention centers, deportation, and border policing, raise in new ways some of the fundamental and enduring questions of criminal justice and criminology: What is punishment? What is crime? What should be the normative and legal foundation for criminalization, for police suspicion, for the exclusion from the community, and for the deprivation of freedom? And who is the subject of rights within a society and what is the relevance of citizenship to criminal justice?” From Publisher’s Website.

Choosing for Juries: Application and Development of Juries in Old and New Jury Trial Countries, by Nazim Ziyadov. Antwerpen: Maklu, 2013. 270p.

“Why do governments try to limit the application of jury trials, both in countries where jury trials are native and in countries that have more recently instituted them?

This is a critical question today as government authorities are trying to limit the role of juries, especially when it comes to complex fraud cases, national security and terrorism cases, and cases where juries seem to have a propensity for high acquittal rates. Therefore, understanding how governments are promoting and constraining jury trials is important.

This book analyzes the reasons that motivate governments to introduce jury trial practices and the factors that condition the role these types of trials play in the administration of criminal justice systems as a whole. The research derives its finding from the comparative analysis of criminal justice systems of the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan. It also assesses prospects of the application of jury trials in the Republic of Azerbaijan based on analysis of the criminal justice systems of countries where these practices already exist.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots, by Brenda Stevenson.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 432p.

“Helicopters thwopped low over the city, filming blocks of burning cars and buildings, mobs breaking into storefronts, and the vicious beating of truck driver Reginald Denny. For a week in April 1992, Los Angeles transformed into a cityscape of rage, purportedly due to the exoneration of four policemen who had beaten Rodney King. It should be no surprise that such intense anger erupted from something deeper than a single incident.

In The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins, Brenda Stevenson tells the dramatic story of an earlier trial, a turning point on the road to the 1992 riot. On March 16, 1991, fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins, an African American who lived locally, entered the Empire Liquor Market at 9172 South Figueroa Street in South Central Los Angeles. Behind the counter was a Korean woman named Soon Ja Du. Latasha walked to the refrigerator cases in the back, took a bottle of orange juice, put it in her backpack, and approached the cash register with two dollar bills in her hand-the price of the juice. Moments later she was face-down on the floor with a bullet hole in the back of her head, shot dead by Du. Joyce Karlin, a Jewish Superior Court judge appointed by Republican Governor Pete Wilson, presided over the resulting manslaughter trial. A jury convicted Du, but Karlin sentenced her only to probation, community service, and a $500 fine. The author meticulously reconstructs these events and their aftermath, showing how they set the stage for the explosion in 1992.” From Publisher’s Website.

Creativity and Crime: A Psychological Analysis, by David H. Cropley and Arthur J. Cropley. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 250p.

“Creativity is typically perceived to be a positive, constructive attribute and yet, highly effective, novel crimes are committed which illustrate that creativity can also be utilised to serve a darker and more destructive end. But how can these ‘creative criminals’ be stopped? Adopting a psychological approach, renowned subject experts Cropley and Cropley draw upon concepts such as ‘Person,’ ‘Process’, ‘Press’ and ‘Product’ to explain how existing psychological theories of creativity can be applied to a more subtle subset of ingenuity; that is to say criminal behaviour and its consequences. Creativity and Crime does not look at felony involving impulsive, reflexive or merely deviant behaviour, but rather the novel and resourceful measures employed by criminals to more effectively achieve their lawbreaking goals. The book transcends the link between crime and creativity, and proposes a range of preventative measures for law enforcers. Scholars and graduates alike will find this an invaluable and illuminating read.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime as Structured Action: Doing Masculinities, Race, Class, Sexuality, and Crime, by James W. Messerschmidt. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. 156p.

“James W. Messerschmidt’s groundbreaking book Crime as Structured Action demonstrates that to understand crime, we must understand how crime operates through a complex series of gender, race, sexual, and class practices. In the second edition of this powerful book, Messerschmidt updates both structured action theory as well as several of the original case studies, and he includes a new case study that further brings structured action theory to life. The book also features expanded discussions of whiteness and sexuality, and their relationships to crime.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime, Police and Penal Policy: European Experiences 1750-1940, by Clive Emsley. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013 (paperback edition). 298p.

“How did ideas about crime and criminals change in Europe from around 1750 to 1940? How did European states respond to these changes with the development of police and penal institutions? Clive Emsley addresses these questions using recent research on the history of crime and criminal justice in Europe. Exploring the subject chronologically, he addresses the forms of offending, the changing interpretations and understandings of that offending at both elite and popular levels, and how the emerging nation states of the period responded to criminal activity by the development of police forces and the refinement of forms of punishment.

The book focuses on the comparative nature in which different states studied each other and their institutions, and the ways in which different reformers exchanged ideas and investigated policing and penal experiments in other countries. It also explores the theoretical issues underpinning recent research, emphasising that the changes in ideas on crime and criminals were neither linear nor circular, and demonstrating clearly that many ideas hailed as new by contemporary politicians and in current debate on crime and its ‘solutions’, have a very long and illustrious history.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime Prevention through Housing Design: Policy and Practice, by Rachel Armitage. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 230p.

“This book reviews the impact of residential design on crime and considers the current, and historic, importance placed upon crime prevention within the planning system. Armitage provides a comprehensive review of policy and practice in planning crime prevention both nationally and internationally.

Bridging the gap between design and criminology, Armitage uses opportunity theories to provide practical recommendations for the implementation of design. Enhanced by extensive visual examples, the book promotes a collaborative, long-term approach of designing out crime, conveying the positive impact of design upon the environment and crime prevention.

This book will appeal to scholars in criminology, policing, urban studies and architecture as well as practitioners in the role of planning, developing and managing residential housing.” From Publisher’s Website.

Deviance and Risk on Holiday: An Ethnography of British Tourists in Ibiza, by Daniel Briggs. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 264p.

“This book represents the first attempt to step inside the holiday experience of young British tourists. Using ethnographic methods such as observation, open-ended interviewing and focus groups in San Antonio, Ibiza, this book reveals the ugly truth about ‘how’ and ‘why’ young Brits get involved in deviance and risk-taking when they go abroad, exploring vivid accounts of drug use, drug dealing, violence, prostitution, and injury.

In contrast to existing knowledge and populist depictions, Briggs argues that the root of these behaviours is not pathological but rather it is more about how this social group have come to self validate what is expected of them in their leisure time and, as a consequence, how their attitudes are subtly guided and endorsed by the commodified social context of resorts which are only interested in making money at their expense.

Exploring issues of youth culture, political economy, tourism and identity, this book will appeal to scholars in sociology, criminology, cultural studies, tourism and youth studies.” From Publisher’s Website.

Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia, ed. by Fifa Rahman and Nick Crofts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. 314p.
“Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia is a multi-author, regional look at drug policy across East and Southeast Asia, focusing on drug patterns and trends, problems faced locally, human rights abuses, regional similarities, treatment prospects and potential reforms.

Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia describes how drugs came to Asia, looks at trends in illicit drug use up to the present, especially the enormous amphetamine problem that East and Southeast Asia face, among other issues of concern. There are many issues of major controversy around illicit drugs in Asia, as elsewhere, and the book faces these issues squarely. It addresses the recent shift towards harm reduction in response to the frightening and devastating epidemics of HIV and AIDS associated with injecting of heroin in the region, and examines and suggests possible ways forward in regard to the death penalty for drug offenses. The most recent evidence about effective and humane approaches to drug treatment, to replace the abysmally inhuman current emphasis on detention, is presented.

This is the first time a regional collection of expert writing on a comprehensive range of aspects of illicit drugs has been made available to inform the critical development of drug policy in the many countries.” From Publisher’s Website.

Economics and Youth Violence: Crime, Disadvantage, and Community, ed. by Richard Rosenfeld, Mark Edberg, Xiangming Fang, and Curtis S. Florence.  New York: New York University Press, 2013. 336p.

“How do economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inflation, and economic growth impact youth violence? Economics and Youth Violence provides a much-needed new perspective on this crucial issue. Pinpointing the economic factors that are most important, the editors and contributors in this volume explore how different kinds of economic issues impact children, adolescents, and their families, schools, and communities. Offering new and important insights regarding the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and youth violence across a variety of times and places, chapters cover such issues as the effect of inflation on youth violence; new quantitative analysis of the connection between race, economic opportunity, and violence; and the cyclical nature of criminal backgrounds and economic disadvantage among families. Highlighting the complexities in the relationship between economic conditions, juvenile offenses, and the community and situational contexts in which their connections are forged, Economics and Youth Violence prompts important questions that will guide future research on the causes and prevention of youth violence.” From Publisher’s Website.

Emerging Issues in Green Criminology: Exploring Power, Justice and Harm, ed. by Reece Walters, Diane Westerhuis and Tanya Wyatt. Basingstoke, UK; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 280p.

“This edited collection brings together internationally recognized scholars to explore Green Criminology through interdisciplinary lenses of power, justice and harm. The chapters provide innovative case study analyses from North America, Europe and Australia that seek to advance theoretical, policy and practice discourses about environmental harm. This book brings together transnational debates in environmental law, policy and justice. In doing so, it examines international agreements and policy within diverse environmental discourses of sociology, criminology and political economy.” From Publisher’s Website.

European and American Extreme Right Groups and the Internet, by Manuela Caiani and Linda Parenti. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 250p.

“How do right-wing extremist organizations throughout the world use the Internet as a tool for communication and recruitment? What is its role in identity-building within radical right-wing groups and how do they use the Internet to set their agenda, build contacts, spread their ideology and encourage mobilization?

This important contribution to the field of Internet politics adopts a social movement perspective to address and examine these important questions. Conducting a comparative content analysis of more than 500 extreme right organizational web sites from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, it offers an overview of the Internet communication activities of these groups and systematically maps and analyses the links and structure of the virtual communities of the extreme right. Based on reports from the daily press the book presents a protest event analysis of right wing groups’ mobilisation and action strategies, relating them to their online practices. In doing so it exposes the new challenges and opportunities the Internet presents to the groups themselves and the societies in which they exist.” From Publisher’s Website.

Exile and Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourse on the Death Penalty, by Anthony Santoro. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2013. 328p.

“With passion and precision, Exile and Embrace examines the key elements of the religious debates over capital punishment and shows how they reflect the values and self-understandings of contemporary Americans. Santoro demonstrates that capital punishment has relatively little to do with the perpetrators and much more to do with those who would impose the punishment. Because of this, he convincingly argues, we should focus our attention not on the perpetrators and victims, as is typically the case in debates pro and con about the death penalty, but on ourselves and on the mechanisms that we use to impose or oppose the death penalty.” From Publisher’s Website.

Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies, ed. by Dermot Feenan. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 307p.

“In this insightful collection, a broad range of scholars analyzes a core issue for socio-legal studies, what is understood by the ‘socio’ of the ‘socio-legal’. Drawing from legal theory, cultural studies, and social policy, the collection’s wide scope of themes and topics provides an important stock-take and examination of the socio-legal field, offering key insights for legal studies generally and other fields more broadly where the ‘socio’ is found.

The collection draws from a diversity of fields, including legal theory, cultural studies and social policy. Moving from a broad analysis of the concept of the ‘socio’, the book proceeds through historical and theoretical analyses, addresses the role of place and practice in the constitution of the social, before finally examining, through a series of case studies, specific themes such as gender, sexuality and race.” From Publishers Website.

Family Violence from a Global Perspective: A Strengths-Based Approach, ed. by Sylvia M. Asay, John DeFrain, Marcee Metzger and Bob Moyer. Los Angeles: Sage, 2014. 328p.

“This one-of-a-kind edited collection draws on the expertise of authors from 16 countries representing 17 cultures to tell the story of domestic violence in their respective parts of the world. The book incorporates a strengths-based approach, including individual, relationship, community, and societal strengths. The collection draws on multiple perspectives (academics, counselors, organizers, activists, and victims) to determine strengths and analyze how they can translate into greater safety for victims, increased accountability of perpetrators, and improved policy formation and research. Each chapter focuses on the lived experiences of victims of intimate partner violence, child abuse, or elder abuse and includes information about the abuser, the family, the community, and the culture.” From Publisher’s Website.

Gender and Judging, ed. by Ulrike Schultz and Gisela Shaw. Oxford, UK: Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2013. 640p.

“Does gender make a difference to the way the judiciary works and should work? Or is gender-blindness a built-in prerequisite of judicial objectivity? If gender does make a difference, how might this be defined? These are the key questions posed in this collection of essays, by some 30 authors from the following countries; Argentina, Cambodia, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, Syria and the United States. The contributions draw on various theoretical approaches, including gender, feminist and sociological theories.

The book’s pressing topicality is underlined by the fact that well into the modern era male opposition to women’s admission to, and progress within, the judicial profession has been largely based on the argument that their very gender programmes women to show empathy, partiality and gendered prejudice – in short essential qualities running directly counter to the need for judicial objectivity. It took until the last century for women to begin to break down such seemingly insurmountable barriers. And even now, there are a number of countries where even this first step is still waiting to happen. In all of them, there remains a more or less pronounced glass ceiling to women’s judicial careers.” From Publisher’s Website.

Getting By or Getting Rich? The Formal, Informal and Criminal Economy in a Globalized World, ed. by Pietro Saitta, Joanna Shapland & Antoinette Verhage. The Hague, The Netherlands: Eleven International Publishing, 2013. 422p.

“The informal economy includes all those forms of economic and social relationships which escape state regulation. The book explores how people make choices and practice informality according to the available opportunities. Using empirical work, authors from across Europe look at different illegal or informal activities. They include legal and illegal markets, such as the selling of counterfeited goods and drugs, fruit picking, infrastructure construction, illegal wildlife and the illegal tropical timber trade, work in the hotel and catering sector, prostitution, stripping and street vending.

The book aims to create a nuanced and empirically based approach, in which the authors undertake critical analyses on the several ways informality operates within different societies and countries. It includes both economic analyses and detailed consideration of the social circumstances in different cities and countries. It shows how formal and informal work, legal and illegal trading, more often than not, overlap and are undistinguishable. It explores what the benefits (and disadvantages) are for workers in the informal economy – do they prosper, or is this survival work? This emphasis on topical empirical foundations matters in rapidly changing economic times, with new challenges for workers. In fact, it is in moments like these that the old certainties of those who are likely to choose what path to follow, become less clear. It is also then that the dividing lines between formal, informal and criminal start to become less visible in organisations and companies. Does a time of economic turmoil make it easier to slip from one to the other? Does the economic crisis ‘force’ people to make other choices than before? And what is the impact on individuals, organisations and regulators?

Topics covered in this book are informal economy, choice of work, economic crisis, income portfolio, empirical research, European outlook, phenomena: street vending, prostitution, stripping, fruit picking, hotel, restaurant and catering sector, social fraud, illegal wildlife, illegal tropical timber trade.” From Publisher’s Website.

Historical Memory and Criminal Justice in Spain: A Case of Late Transitional Justice, by Josep M. Tamarit Sumalla. Cambridge, UK; Mortsel Belgium: Intersentia, 2013. 210p.

“The Spanish transition from the Franco regime to democracy has not been a very popular subject amongst researchers examining transitional justice at the international level. However, Spain presents certain peculiarities that make it an interesting case in which to explore comparative law and sociology. It has sometimes been seen as a model of peaceful transition, but has also been labelled as an example of an “amnesic” transition to a democratic system in which victims’ rights, justice and truth were forgotten. In contrast to other transitions, demands of justice were not expressed during what was the purely transitional period, but they have been on the increase since then. That is why, in this case, we can speak of “post-transitional justice” or, more properly, of “late transitional justice”.

This book analyses, above all, the laws, policies and judicial decisions adopted in Spain that were related to the construction of the past and could therefore be understood as measures of transitional justice. By comparing this experience with transitional decisions adopted in other countries, the book highlights the main features of the Spanish case and the lessons that can be learned from it. Measures adopted during the transitional period, such as the amnesty and subsequent decisions aimed at giving some kind of partial reparation to the victims of the repression, are here studied. Demands for reviewing the past, the 2007 Act of Historical Memory, and the controversial use of criminal justice are also considered. Criminal Law is hardly applicable to the facts of the past, but the purely amnesic option can no longer be defended. Therefore, the author proposes a plan of action including different measures, such as the creation of a commission of memory, which would be in charge of investigating not only violent crimes or torture, but also other related crimes, including child abduction and politically motivated unlawful adoptions and those perpetrated in a systematic way during the Dictatorship. A victim-centred approach requires ensuring that each victim has the right to be considered on the basis of his or her own suffering, needs and rights and not as a member of a large group.” From Publisher’s Website.

A History of Infanticide in Britain: c. 1600 to the Present, by Anne-Marie Kilday. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 352p.

“This work provides a detailed history of infanticide in mainland Britain from 1600 to the modern era for the very first time. It examines continuity and change in the nature and characteristics of new-born child murder in Scotland, England and Wales over a chronology of more than four centuries. Alongside offering a comparative analysis of the types of individuals suspected of the offence, and a detailed appreciation of the different ways in which the crime was carried out, the work also exposes the broad nexus of causal factors which underpinned its enactment. In addition, the work investigates the evolving attitude in social, medical and legal contexts to the killing of young infants in Britain over a substantive time period. Thus the work as a whole is both compelling and innovative as it provides the reader with much more than a mere history of infanticide. The book also contributes much to our understanding of criminal history, gender history, legal history, medical history and social history in its analyses of the different contexts allied to the offence. It does this also through its exploration of the complex characteristics of accusers, commentators and perpetrators across cultures, borders and time.” From Publisher’s Website.

Hooked in Film: Substance Abuse on the Big Screen, by John Markert. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 392p.

“Though drug use was widespread in the nineteenth century, the negative influence of narcotics was mostly unknown. Cinema of the early twentieth century was instrumental in making viewers aware of the harmful effects of drugs. Throughout the decades, images of drugs such as marijuana, LSD, and heroin in films impacted—both negatively and positively—the national perception of their use. In fact, the use, popularity, and opinion of certain drugs often follow their status on the big screen.

In Hooked in Film, John Markerttakes a close look at the correlation between social policies and the public view of drugs and their portrayals in film. In this volume, Markert examines the changing social attitudes toward illegal drugs and their cinematic depictions from as early as the 1894 film Chinese Opium Den to the present. The first section of this book focuses on the demonization of drugs between 1900 and 1959, followed by an assessment of marijuana on the big screen after 1960, when the drug was shown as part of everyday life with no serious consequences. Post-1960 depictions of heroin use, which have remained consistently negative, are also analyzed. Markert then takes a close look at the portrayals of powdered cocaine after the 1960s and the emergence of crack in the mid-1980s. Finally, Markert discusses hallucinogens, Ecstasy, and methamphetamines and their roles on the big screen.

Tracking hundreds of films spanning more than a century, Hooked in Film looks at camp classics like Reefer Madness, comedies such as Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, Dazed and Confused, and Pineapple Express, and dramas, including Panic in Needle Park and Requiem for a Dream. Scholars and students of cinema, popular culture, media studies, and sociology will find this book a valuable examination of how cinematic portrayals of drugs have changed over time, and how those images have influenced public perception of drugs and even public policy.” From Publisher’s Website.

How Can You Represent Those People? Ed. by Abbe Smith and Monroe H. Freedman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 244p.

“How Can You Represent Those People? is the first-ever collection of essays offering a response to the “Cocktail Party Question” asked of every criminal lawyer: how do you represent guilty criminals?

The contributors are a diverse group of prominent lawyers and rising stars, each offering a different—and often very personal— perspective on “the Question.” Many share stories—comic and tragic, stirring and heartbreaking—about how it feels to defend people accused of crimes ranging from the “ordinary” to the horrific. This fascinating collection is a must-read for anyone interested in crime, punishment, race, poverty, and the motivations of criminal lawyers.” From Publisher’s Website.

Human Trafficking: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, by Mary C. Burke. New York; London: Routledge, 2013. 344p.

“The practice of one human being exploiting another in slavery-like conditions is not new. Today, it is called human trafficking. Social, political, and economic forces over the past 60 years have changed how and why this human rights abuse occurs. In order to solve this or any social problem, it is important that it is fully understood. With a range of contributing subject experts from different disciplines and professions, this text comprehensively explains human trafficking as it exists and is being addressed in the twenty-first century. Human Trafficking is essential reading for professionals working in many fields, including law enforcement, human services, and health care, and for concerned citizens interested in human rights and how to make a difference in their communities.” From Publisher’s Website.

Illegal Enterprise: The Work of Historian Mark Haller, by Mark Haller, ed. by Matthew G. Yeager. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2013. 298p.

“Representing over four decades of work, this monograph by historian Mark H. Haller includes his work on organized crime in Chicago, particularly the origins of John Landesco’s now classic work titled Organized Crime in Chicago (1929), written for the Illinois Crime Survey. Essays on organized crime in both Philadelphia and Chicago, as well as vignettes on Al “Scarface” Capone, Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, and Max “Boo Boo” Hoff, provide readers with a lively selection of Haller’s commentary. Finally, this book incorporates Haller’s critique of the Mafia model of organized crime and his elaboration of the illegal enterprise model of gangsters and their role in the American subeconomy, including the historical importance of prohibition and 19th century gambling syndicates in urban America.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Innocent and the Criminal Justice System, by Michael Naughton. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 280p.

“What happens when the criminal justice system convicts an innocent person? This book examines competing perspectives on, and definitions of, miscarriages of justice. Rich with cases and statistics, the book helps students of sociology, criminology and law to understand the workings of the criminal justice system and its limitations” From Publisher’s Website.

Modern Bribery Law: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Jeremy Horder and Peter Alldridge. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 381p.

“The Bribery Act 2010 is the most significant reform of UK bribery law in a century. This critical analysis offers an explanation of the Act, makes comparisons with similar legislation in other jurisdictions and provides a critical commentary, from both a UK and a US perspective, on the collapse of the distinction between public and private sector bribery. Drawing on their academic and practical experience, the contributors also analyse the prospects for enforcement and the difficulties facing lawyers seeking asset recovery following the laundering of the proceeds of bribery. International perspectives are provided via comparisons with the law in Spain, Hong Kong, the USA and Italy, together with broader analysis of the application of the law in relation to EU anti-corruption initiatives, international development and the arms trade.” From Publisher’s Website.

Municipal Policing in the European Union: Comparative Perspectives, by Daniel Donnelly. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 240p.

“In the past, defining municipal policing was easier as it incorporated local authority duties, crime prevention and police patrol. However in the contemporary setting, police resources are regularly overstretched and novel ways of alleviating their workloads are continually being sought. One method of achieving this goal is by involving other people and technology to assist the police in their everyday tasks. A system of partnership and technology, underpinned by legislation, has made this ambition possible. This book reviews how traditional municipal policing has evolved in a number of European Union countries discussing topics such as history, police civilianization, police auxiliaries, community policing, surveillance, politics and governance, with predictions as to what may lie ahead for municipal policing in the EU. Municipal Policing in Europe provides an exclusive vista of the evolving model of local policing in the EU member states at a time when police forces are increasingly collaborating together.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Murder Mystique: Female Killers and Popular Culture, by Laurie Nalepa and Richard Pfefferman. Santa Monica, CA: Praeger, 2013. 177p.

“Although they account for only ten percent of all murders, those attributed to women seem especially likely to captivate the public. This absorbing book examines why that is true and how some women, literally, get away with murder.

Combining compelling storytelling with insightful observations, the book invites readers to take a close look at ten high-profile killings committed by American women. The work exposes the forces that underlie the public’s fascination with female killers and determine why these women so often become instant celebrities. Cases are paired by motive—love, money, revenge, self-defense, and psychopathology. Through them, the authors examine the appeal of women who commit murders and show how perceptions of their crimes are shaped.

The book details both the crimes and the criminals as it explores how pop culture treats stereotypes of female murderers in film and print. True crime aficionados will be fascinated by the minute descriptions of what happened and why, while pop culture enthusiasts will appreciate the lens of societal norms through which these cases are examined.” From Publisher’s Website.

Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade, by Janice Raymond. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2013. 272p.

“A generation ago, most people did not know how ubiquitous and grave human trafficking was. Now many people agree that the $35.7 billion business is an appalling violation of human rights. But when confronted with prostitution, many people experience an odd disconnect because prostitution is shrouded in myths, among them the claims that “prostitution is inevitable,” and “prostitution is a job or service like any other.” In Not a Choice, Not a Job, Janice Raymond challenges both the myths and their perpetrators.

Raymond demonstrates that prostitution is not sex but sexual exploitation, and that legalizing and decriminalizing the system of prostitution—as opposed to the prostituted women—promotes sex trafficking, expands the sex industry, and invites organized crime. Specifically, Raymond exposes how legalized prostitution in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Nevada worsens crime and endangers women. In contrast, she reveals, when governments work to prevent the demand for prostitution by prosecuting pimps, brothels, and prostitution users—as in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland—trafficking does not increase, women are better protected, and fewer men buy sex. Raymond expands the boundaries of scholarship in women’s studies, making this book indispensable to human rights advocates around the world.” From Publisher’s Website.

Participation in Crime: Domestic and Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Alan Reed and Michael Bohlander. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 512p.

“Following on from the earlier edited collection, Loss of Control and Diminished Responsibility, this book is the first volume in the Substantive Issues in Criminal Law series. It serves as a leading point of reference in the area relating to participation in crime and identifies the need for a consistent approach to the doctrinal and theoretical underpinnings of complicity liability. With a section on the UK analysing points of current interest, the book also has a large comparative section dealing with foreign jurisdictions and examines on the basis of a unified research grid how different legal systems treat core issues of participation in the context of criminal law.” From Publisher’s Website.

Payback: The Case for Revenge, by Thane Rosenbaum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. 328p.

“We call it justice—the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the incarceration of corrupt politicians or financiers like Rod Blagojevich and Bernard Madoff, and the climactic slaying of cinema-screen villains by superheroes. But could we not also call it revenge? We are told that revenge is uncivilized and immoral, an impulse that individuals and societies should actively repress and replace with the order and codes of courtroom justice. What, if anything, distinguishes punishment at the hands of the government from a victim’s individual desire for retribution? Are vengeance and justice really so very different? No, answers legal scholar and novelist Thane Rosenbaum in Payback: The Case for Revenge—revenge is, in fact, indistinguishable from justice.

Revenge, Rosenbaum argues, is not the problem. It is, in fact, a perfectly healthy emotion. Instead, the problem is the inadequacy of lawful outlets through which to express it. He mounts a case for legal systems to punish the guilty commensurate with their crimes as part of a societal moral duty to satisfy the needs of victims to feel avenged. Indeed, the legal system would better serve the public if it gave victims the sense that vengeance was being done on their behalf. Drawing on a wide range of support, from recent studies in behavioral psychology and neuroeconomics, to stories of vengeance and justice denied, to revenge practices from around the world, to the way in which revenge tales have permeated popular culture—including Hamlet, The Godfather, and Braveheart—Rosenbaum demonstrates that vengeance needs to be more openly and honestly discussed and lawfully practiced.” From Publisher’s Website.

Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in a Twenty-first Century World, ed. by Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby. Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2013. 282p.

“Policing Cities brings together international scholars from numerous disciplines to examine urban policing, securitization, and regulation in nine countries and the conceptual issues these practices raise. Chapters cover many of the world’s major cities, including New York, Beijing, Paris, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Melbourne, and Toronto, as well as other urban areas in Britain, United States, South Africa, Germany, Australia and Georgia.

The collection examines the activities and reforms of the traditional public police, but also those of emerging public and private policing agents and spaces that fall outside the public police’s purview and which previously have received little attention. It explores dramatic changes in public policing arrangements and strategies, exclusion of urban homeless people, new forms of urban surveillance and legal regulation, and securitization and militarization of urban spaces. The core argument in the volume is that cities are more than mere background for policing, securitization and regulation. Policing and the city are intimately intertwined. This collection also reveals commonalities in the empirical interests, methodological preferences, and theoretical concerns of scholars working in these various disciplines and breaks down barriers among them. This is the first collection on urban policing, regulation, and securitization with such a multi-disciplinary and international character.” From Publisher’s Website.

Positive Obligations in Criminal Law, by Andrew Ashworth. Oxford, UK; Portland OR: Hart Publishing, 2013. 232p.

“This book offers a set of essays, old and new, examining the positive obligations of individuals and the state in matters of criminal law. The centrepiece is a new, extended essay on the criminalisation of omissions-examining the duties to act imposed on individuals and organisations by the criminal law, and assessing their moral and social foundations. Alongside this is another new essay on the state’s positive obligations to put in place criminal laws to protect certain individual rights.

Introducing the volume is the author’s much-cited essay on criminalisation, ‘Is the Criminal Law a Lost Cause?’. The book sets out to shed new light on contemporary arguments about the proper boundaries of the criminal law, not least by exploring the justifications for imposing positive duties (reinforced by the criminal law) on individuals and their relation to the positive obligations of the state.” From Publisher’s Website.

Prison Rape: An American Institution? By Michael Singer. Santa Monica, CA: Praeger, 2013. 195p.

“Rape is a fact of life for the incarcerated. Can American society maintain the commitment expressed in recent federal legislation to eliminate the rampant and costly sexual abuse that has been institutionalized into its system of incarceration?

Each year, as many as 200,000 individuals are victims of various types of sexual abuse perpetrated in American prisons, jails, juvenile detention facilities, and lockups. As many as 80,000 of them suffer violent or repeated rape. Those who are outside the incarceration experience are largely unaware of this ongoing physical and mental damage—abuses that not only affect the victims and perpetrators, but also impose vast costs on society as a whole. This book supplies a uniquely full account of this widespread sexual abuse problem.

Author Michael Singer has drawn on official reports to provide a realistic assessment of the staggering financial cost to society of this sexual abuse, and comprehensively addressed the current, severely limited legal procedures for combating sexual abuse in incarceration. The book also provides an evaluation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 and its recently announced national standards, and assesses their likely future impact on the institution of prison rape in America.” From Publisher’s Website.

“Punishment in Europe: A Critical Anatomy of Penal Systems, ed. by Vincenzo Ruggiero and Mick Ryan. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 304p.

“This collection brings together leading international scholars and practitioners to provide a critical guide to penal systems across Europe. Each chapter forms a case study outlining the main contours of each national penal system, identifying and interpreting the combination of forces driving penal practice in that country.

Through its exploration of twelve different Western and Eastern European countries, this collection identifies the national particularities, but also the commonalities and cross talk between penal systems, such as the overuse of imprisonment and the harsher sanctions against the poor when breaking the law. The book challenges this bias with a call for a more critical, public criminology, raising fundamental questions about how we justify and deliver punishment in Europe.

Includes contributions from Iñaki Rivera Beiras, Emma Bell, Miranda Boone, Bernd Dollinger, Patrizio Gonnella, Philip Gounev, Hanns von Hofer, Vassilis Karydis, Nikolaos K. Koulouris, Andrea Kretschmann, Mónica Aranda Ocaña, Laura Piacentini, Monika Platek, Philippe Robert, Mary Rogan, René van Swaaningen and Enrik Tham. “ From Publisher’s Website.

Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation, by Estelle B. Freedman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 416p.

“Rape has never had a universally accepted definition, and the uproar over “legitimate rape” during the 2012 U.S. elections confirms that it remains a word in flux. Redefining Rape tells the story of the forces that have shaped the meaning of sexual violence in the United States, through the experiences of accusers, assailants, and advocates for change. In this ambitious new history, Estelle Freedman demonstrates that our definition of rape has depended heavily on dynamics of political power and social privilege.

The long-dominant view of rape in America envisioned a brutal attack on a chaste white woman by a male stranger, usually an African American. From the early nineteenth century, advocates for women’s rights and racial justice challenged this narrow definition and the sexual and political power of white men that it sustained. Between the 1870s and the 1930s, at the height of racial segregation and lynching, and amid the campaign for woman suffrage, women’s rights supporters and African American activists tried to expand understandings of rape in order to gain legal protection from coercive sexual relations, assaults by white men on black women, street harassment, and the sexual abuse of children. By redefining rape, they sought to redraw the very boundaries of citizenship.

Freedman narrates the victories, defeats, and limitations of these and other reform efforts. The modern civil rights and feminist movements, she points out, continue to grapple with both the insights and the dilemmas of these first campaigns to redefine rape in American law and culture.” From Publisher’s Website.

Secrecy, National Security and the Vindication of Constitutional Law, ed. by David Cole, Federico Fabbrini and Ariana Vedaschi. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013. 368p.

“Virtually every nation has had to confront tensions between the rule-of-law demands for transparency and accountability and the need for confidentiality with respect to terrorism and national security. This book provides a global and comparative overview of the implications of governmental secrecy in a variety of contexts. Expert contributors from around the world discuss the dilemmas posed by the necessity for – and evils of – secrecy, and assess constitutional mechanisms for checking the abuse of secrecy by national and international institutions in the field of counter-terrorism.

In recent years, nations have relied on secret evidence to detain suspected terrorists and freeze their assets, have barred lawsuits alleging human rights violations by invoking ‘state secrets’, and have implemented secret surveillance and targeted killing programs. The book begins by addressing the issue of secrecy at the institutional level, examining the role of courts and legislatures in regulating the use of secrecy claims by the executive branch of government. From there, the focus shifts to the three most vital areas of anti-terrorism law: preventive detention, criminal trials and administrative measures (notably, targeted economic sanctions). The contributors explore how assertions of secrecy and national security in each of these areas affect the functioning of the legal system and the application of procedural justice and fairness.

Students, professors and researchers interested in constitutional law, international law, comparative law and issues of terrorism and security will find this an invaluable addition to the literature. Judges, lawyers and policymakers will also find much of use in this critical volume.” From Publisher’s Website.

Sentencing Guidelines: Exploring the English Model, ed. by Andrew Ashworth and Julian V. Roberts. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 300p.

“The politics of criminal sentencing has recently crystallized around the issue of whether and how a system of structured sentencing should inform judicial approaches to punishing criminals. Increasingly, structured sentencing guidelines are being introduce to frame judicial discretion. This volume is the first to examine the experience in England and Wales in the light of international developments.

This collection of essays begins with a clear and concise history of the guidelines as well as a description of how they function. Topics addressed include the effect of guidelines on judicial practice, the role of public opinion in developing sentencing guidelines, the role of the crime victim in sentencing guidelines, and the use of guidelines by practicing barristers. In addition, the international dimension offers a comparative perspective: the English guidelines are explored by leading academics from the United States and New Zealand.

Although there is a vast literature on sentencing guidelines across the United States, the English guidelines have attracted almost no attention from scholars. As other jurisdictions look to introduce more structure to sentencing, the English scheme offers a real alternative to current US schemes. Contributors include practicing lawyers, legal and socio-legal academics, and also scholars from several other countries including New Zealand and the United States, providing a multidisciplinary and cross-jurisdictional approach to sentencing. This book will be of interest to academics from law, sociology and criminology, legal practitioners, and indeed anyone else with an interest in sentencing, around the world.” From Publisher’s Website.

Sick Justice: Inside the American Gulag, by Ivan G. Goldman. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2013. 256p.

“In America, 2.3 million people—a population about the size of Houston’s, the country’s fourth-largest city—live behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of America’s prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there.

Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guards’ unions, California’s exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point.

Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story that’s long overdue. By illuminating the system’s brutality and greed and the prisoners’ gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty.” From Publisher’s Website.

Slavery in International Law: Of Human Exploitation and Trafficking, by Jean Allain. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012. 428p.

“With the advent, in the twenty-first century, of the trafficking conventions and the criminalisation of enslavement before the International Criminal Court, the need to establish the black-letter law dealing with human exploitation has become acute.

Slavery in International Law sets out the applicable law of human exploitation in the various sub-areas of international law, including general international law, human rights law, humanitarian law, labour law and the law of the sea; so as to create an overall understanding of what constitutes, in law, slavery and lesser types of human exploitation including: forced labour and servitudes such as debt bondage or servile marriage, as set out in the established definition of ‘trafficking in persons’.” From Publisher’s Website.

Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services since 1914, by Clive Emsley. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 256p.

“The belief that crime declines at the beginning of major wars, as young men are drawn into the armed forces, and increases with the restoration of peace, as brutalised veterans are released on to a labour market reorganising for peace, has a long pedigree in Britain. But it has rarely been examined critically and scarcely at all for the period of the two world wars of the twentieth century. This is the first serious investigation of criminal offending by members of the British armed forces both during and immediately after these wars. Its particular focus is the two world wars but, recognising the concerns and the problems voiced in recent years about veterans of the Falklands, the Gulf wars, and the campaign in Afghanistan, Clive Emsley concludes his narrative in the present.” From Publisher’s Website.

Spectacles of Blood: A Study of Masculinity and Violence in Postcolonial Films, ed. by Swaralipi Nandi and Esha Chatterjee. Zubaan Books (Distributed by the University of Chicago Press), 2012. 210p.

“This superb collection of essays illuminates the film portrayal of violence, masculinity, and power in a postcolonial context, showing how the cinema challenges, normalizes, or contests these major issues. Taking an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, drawing from literature, sociology, and media studies, the essays shed light on films about societal violence in postcolonial cultures, whether it be terrorism, suicide bombings, the underworld, organized crime, or mob violence.

The contributors to Spectacles of Blood look at the dynamics of the representation of these issues as cinematic plots and techniques, drawing attention to the affective value of the films in generating and foregrounding the feelings invoked by the onscreen violence, and the impact of these emotions on the formation of national and cosmopolitan identity. International in scope, covering films from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, these essays enrich both literary studies and social studies with a nuanced borrowing and intermixing of their primary texts and modes of interpretation.” From Publisher’s Website.

State Terrorism and Post-Transitional Justice in Argentina: An Analysis of Mega Cause I Trial, by Coreen Davis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 92p.

”Mega Cause I was one of the largest in a recent surge of trials in Argentina for human rights violations committed during the dictatorship of 1976-1983. In 2011, the judges condemned 16 of the 18 defendants, all ex-naval officers from the ESMA clandestine detention center. This study analyzes the role of the state and human rights organizations in the trial; the successes and difficulties of the trial and their relation to Mega Cause II; and the trial’s implications for truth, memory, and reconciliation. Data were collected in Buenos Aires in June 2012 through interviews with seven prominent members of the prosecution, an internship at the Ulloa Center, archive research, and attendance at human rights trials, demonstrations, and former detention centers.” From Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

Street Sex Workers’ Discourse: Realizing Material Change Through Agential Choice, by Jill McCracken. New York; London: Routledge, 2013. 240p.

“Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers — the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers’ bodies, identities, and spirits — are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. As an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, this book disrupts some of the more prevalent academic and lay understandings about street prostitution by providing a thorough analysis of the material conditions surrounding street work and their connection to discourse. McCracken offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.” From Publisher’s Website.

Television Courtroom Broadcasting Effects: The Empirical Research and the Supreme Court Challenge, by Paul Lambert. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2013. 494p.

“Court and policy makers have increasingly had to deal with—and sometimes even embrace—technology, from podcasts to the Internet. Televised courtroom broadcasting especially remains an issue. The debate surrounding the US Supreme Court and federal courts, as well as the great disparity between different forms of television courtroom broadcasting, rages on. What are the effects of television courtroom broadcasting? Does research support the arguments for or against? Despite three Supreme Court cases on television courtroom broadcasting, the common thread between the cases has not been highlighted. The Supreme Court in these cases maintains a common theme: there is not a sufficient body of research on the effects of televising courtroom proceedings to resolve the debate in a confident manner.” From Publisher’s Website

Territories of Violence: State, Marginal Youth, and Public Security in Honduras, by Lirio Gutierrez Rivera. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 180p.

“Territories of Violence examines the persistence of social violence and public insecurity in contemporary Honduras. Using a spatial perspective, the author looks at the Honduran state’s security polices – known as Mano Dura – and the challenges authorities face in decreasing violence, delinquency, and crime in marginal neighborhoods, which are controlled by the maras, Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street Gang, and certain regions, due to the presence of organized crime. She argues that security policies fail not only because of the weakness of Honduras’ state institutions, but also because of the state’s historical difficulty producing and ordering political territory and space, which has led to the emergence of territories of violence.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups, by Jennifer L. Hesterman. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013. 351p.

“Postmodern global terrorist groups engage sovereign nations asymmetrically with prolonged, sustained campaigns driven by ideology. Increasingly, transnational criminal organizations operate with sophistication previously only found in multinational corporations. Unfortunately, both of these entities can now effectively hide and morph, keeping law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the dark and on the run.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that al Qaeda, Hezbollah, FARC, drug cartels, and increasingly violent gangs—as well as domestic groups such as the Sovereign Citizens—are now joining forces. Despite differing ideologies, they are threatening us in new and provocative ways. The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups frames this complex issue using current research and real-world examples of how these entities are sharing knowledge, training, tactics, and—in increasing frequency—joining forces.

Providing policy makers, security strategists, law enforcement and intelligence agents, and students with new evidence of this growing threat, this volume:

  • Examines current and future threats from international and domestic criminal and terror groups
  • Identifies specific instances in which these groups are working together or in parallel to achieve their goals
  • Discusses the “lifeblood” of modern organizations—the money trail
  • Describes how nefarious groups leverage both traditional funding methods and e-commerce to raise, store, move, and launder money
  • Explores the social networking phenomenon and reveals how it is the perfect clandestine platform for spying, communicating, recruiting, and spreading propaganda
  • Investigates emergent tactics such as the use of human shields, and the targeting of first responders, schools, hospitals, and churches

This text reveals the often disregarded, misunderstood, or downplayed nexus threat to the United States. Proving definitively that such liaisons exist despite differing ideologies, the book provides a thought-provoking new look at the complexity and phenomena of the terrorist-criminal nexus.”  From Publisher’s Website.

Transnational Organized Crime: An Overview from Six Continents, ed. by Jay Albanese and Philip Reichel. Los Angeles: Sage, 2014. 224p.

“This unique text explores the expansive topic of transnational organized crime, incorporating expert perspectives found throughout the world’s six inhabited continents: North America, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Editors Jay S. Albanese and Philip L. Reichel gather the knowledge and expertise of numerous authors, researchers, and practitioners in this field who are either native to each world region, have extensively travelled and worked there, or are recognized scholars for those regions. Through this text, readers will begin to understand the geographic, cultural, and regional similarities and differences underying the common threat of transnational organized crime, as well as how to address the global expansion of organized crime today.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Trials of Laura Fair: Sex, Murder, and Insanity in the Victorian West, by Carole Haber. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. 328p.

“On November 3, 1870, on a San Francisco ferry, Laura Fair shot a bullet into the heart of her married lover, A. P. Crittenden. Throughout her two murder trials, Fair’s lawyers, supported by expert testimony from physicians, claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. The first jury disregarded such testimony, choosing instead to focus on Fair’s disreputable character. In the second trial, however, an effective defense built on contemporary medical beliefs and gendered stereotypes led to a verdict that shocked Americans across the country. In this rousing history, Carole Haber probes changing ideas about morality and immorality, masculinity and femininity, love and marriage, health and disease, and mental illness to show that all these concepts were reinvented in the Victorian West.

Haber’s book examines the era’s most controversial issues, including suffrage, the gendered courts, women’s physiology, and free love. This notorious story enriches our understanding of Victorian society, opening the door to a discussion about the ways in which reputation, especially female reputation, is shaped.” From Publisher’s Website.

Those Damned Immigrants: America’s Hysteria over Undocumented Immigration, by Ediberto Roman. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 197p.

“The election of Barack Obama prompted people around the world to herald the dawning of a new, postracial era in America. Yet a scant one month after Obama’s election, Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, a 31-year old Ecuadorian immigrant, was ambushed by a group of white men as he walked arm and arm with his brother. Yelling anti-Latino slurs, the men beat Sucuzhanay into a coma. He died 5 days later.

The incident is one of countless attacks—ranging from physical violence to raids on homes and workplaces to verbal abuse—that Latino/a immigrants have confronted for generations in America. And these attacks—physical and otherwise—are accepted by a substantial number of American citizens and elected officials, who are virulently opposed to immigrant groups crossing the Mexican border. Quick to cast all Latino/a immigrants as illegal, opponents have placed undocumented workers at the center of their anti-immigrant movement, and as such, many different types of native Spanish-speakers in this country (legal, illegal, citizen, guest), have been targeted as being responsible for increasing crime rates, a plummeting economy, and an erosion of traditional American values and culture.

In Those Damned Immigrants, Ediberto Román takes on critics of Latina/o immigration, drawing on empirical evidence to refute charges of links between immigration and crime, economic downfall, and a weakening of Anglo culture. Román utilizes government statistics, economic data, historical records, and social science research to provide a counter-narrative to what he argues is a largely one-sided public discourse on Latino/a immigration.” From Publisher’s Website.

Understanding the Modern Russian Police, by Olga B. Semukhina and K. Michael Reynolds. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013. 337p.

“Understanding the Modern Russian Police represents the culmination of ten years of research and an ongoing partnership between the Volgograd Academy of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry (VA MVD) and the Volgograd branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (VAPA). The book provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the historical development, functions, and contemporary challenges faced by the modern Russian police. Spanning more than two centuries of history, the book covers:

  • The tsarist police evolution that witnessed the creation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD) in 1802 and concluding with the 1917 October Revolution
  • The Soviet era from the 1917 October Revolution until Stalin’s death in 1953
  • The Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, and the Soviet police’s maturation into a professionally educated and well-equipped law enforcement system
  • The transformational period of police development beginning with Gorbachev’s perestroika and concluding with the first term of Putin in 2008
  • The structure, authority, and workforce of the modern Russian police
  • Public-police relationships existing today in Russia
  • Reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on corruption and abuse of power, along with a legal analysis of practices by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
  • The 2011 Police Reform by Medvedev

The book concludes with some predictions on the future of the Russian police and its potential reforms. Encompassing the efforts of many great researchers from Russia, this exhaustive review of the history of policing in Russia enables readers to comprehend the societal and political forces that have shaped policing in this country.” From Publisher’s Website.

Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control, by Bridget Anderson. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 264p.

“Us and Them? explores the distinction between migrant and citizen through using the concept of ‘the community of value’. The community of value is comprised of Good Citizens and is defined from outside by the Non-Citizen and from the inside by the Failed Citizen, that is figures like the benefit scrounger, the criminal, the teenage mother etc. While Failed Citizens and Non-Citizens are often strongly differentiated, the book argues that it is analytically and politically productive to consider them together. Judgments about who counts as skilled, what is a good marriage, who is suitable for citizenship, and what sort of enforcement is acceptable against ‘illegals’, affect citizens as well as migrants. Rather than simple competitors for the privileges of membership, citizens and migrants define each other through sets of relations that shift and are not straightforward binaries. The first two chapters on vagrancy and on Empire historicise migration management by linking it to attempts to control the mobility of the poor. The following three chapters map and interrogate the concept of the ‘national labour market’ and UK immigration and citizenship policies examining how they work within public debate to produce ‘us and them’. Chapters 6 and 7 go on to discuss the challenges posed by enforcement and deportation, and the attempt to make this compatible with liberalism through anti-trafficking policies. It ends with a case study of domestic labour as exemplifying the ways in which all the issues outlined above come together in the lives of migrants and their employers.” From Publisher’s Website.

When Women Sexually Abuse Men: The Hidden Side of Rape, Stalking, Harassment, and Sexual Assault, by Philip W. Cook with Tommy L. Hodo. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013. 193p.

“It is easy to make the incorrect assumption that only males commit crimes like sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, and rape. However, research indicates that equal numbers of men and women felt that they have been threatened or pressured into having sex against their will. Incidents of stalking by women against men are also on the rise—and it’s not just celebrities who are being targeted.

Revealing the shocking and detailed accounts of how adult women stalk, sexually assault, and even rape adult men, this book portrays an eye-opening reality: women can act as aggressive predators and victimize men.

Crimes of a sexual nature perpetrated by adult females against males constitute a serious problem in our society. A woman can rape a man, and this crime occurs far more often than most imagine. This book addresses an entire range of crimes beyond rape, however; stalking, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are all covered in detail.

When Women Sexually Abuse Men: The Hidden Side of Rape, Stalking, Harassment, and Sexual Assault illuminates the long-overlooked subject of adult female against adult male sex crimes. Combining personal accounts, information on criminal cases, relevant research on adult female against adult male sexual offenses, and statistical data from the FBI and other government sources, the authors comprehensively document how some women can be aggressive sexual predators, just like their male counterparts; highlight the changes in the criminal behavior of women; and provide fascinating stories of true crime as well as shocking revelations about human behavior.” From Publisher’s Website.

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