Books Received
March 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.

Adolescent-to-Parent Abuse: Current Understandings in Research, Policy and Practice, by Amanda Holt.  Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2012. 200p.

“While much has been written about the problematic behaviour of young people and their families, there has been silence on the problem of young people behaving abusively towards their parents, which may take the form of physical, economic and/or emotional abuse. This is the first academic book to focus on adolescent-to-parent abuse and brings together international research and practice literature and combines it with original research to identify and critique current understandings in research, policy and practice. It discusses what we know about parents’ experiences of adolescent-to-parent abuse and critically examines how it has been explained from psychological, sociological and sociocultural perspectives. It also outlines how policymakers and practitioners can usefully respond to the problem. This unique book adopts a range of theoretical and practice perspectives. Written in an accessible style, it is an essential tool for academics, policymakers and professionals with an interest in domestic violence, child protection and youth offending.” From Publisher’s Website.

Animal Harm: Perspectives on Why People Harm and Kill Animals, by Angus Nurse. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 306p.

“Why do people harm, injure, torture and kill animals? This book evaluates the reasons why these crimes are committed and outlines the characteristics of the animal offender. It considers ethical and value judgements made about animals and the tacit acknowledgement and justification of unacceptable criminal behaviour towards the harming of animals made by offenders. Situating animal abuse, wildlife crime, illegal wildlife trading and other unlawful activities directed at animals firmly within Green Criminology, the book contends that this is a distinct, multi-dimensional type of criminality which persists despite the introduction of relevant legislation. Taking a broad approach, the book considers the killing and harming of animals in an international context and examines the effectiveness of current legislation, policy and sentencing.

Including a section on further reading and useful organizations, this book is a valuable exploration into perspectives on the responsibility owed by man to animals as part of broader ecological and legal concerns. It will interest criminologists, ecologists, animal protectionists and those interested in law and society and law and the environment.” From Publisher’s Website.

Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, ed. by Jenna M. Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2012. 344p.

“The crisis of borders and prisons can be seen starkly in statistics. In 2011 some 1,500 migrants died trying to enter Europe, and the United States deported nearly 400,000 and imprisoned some 2.3 million people—more than at any other time in history. International borders are increasingly militarized places embedded within domestic policing and imprisonment and entwined with expanding prison-industrial complexes. Beyond Walls and Cages offers scholarly and activist perspectives on these issues and explores how the international community can move toward a more humane future.
Working at a range of geographic scales and locations, contributors examine concrete and ideological connections among prisons, migration policing and detention, border fortification, and militarization. They challenge the idea that prisons and borders create safety, security, and order, showing that they can be forms of coercive mobility that separate loved ones, disempower communities, and increase shared harms of poverty. Walls and cages can also fortify wealth and power inequalities, racism, and gender and sexual oppression.

As governments increasingly rely on criminalization and violent measures of exclusion and containment, strategies for achieving change are essential. Beyond Walls and Cages develops abolitionist, no borders, and decolonial analyses and methods for social change, showing how seemingly disconnected forms of state violence are interconnected. Creating a more just and free world—whether in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands, the Morocco-Spain region, South Africa, Montana, or Philadelphia—requires that people who are most affected become central to building alternatives to global crosscurrents of criminalization and militarization.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany, by Joy Wiltenburg. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2012. 280p.

“With the growth of printing in early modern Germany, crime quickly became a subject of wide public discourse. Sensational crime reports, often featuring multiple murders within families, proliferated as authors probed horrific events for religious meaning. Coinciding with heightened witch panics and economic crisis, the spike in crime fears revealed a continuum between fears of the occult and more mundane dangers.

In Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany, Joy Wiltenburg explores the beginnings of crime sensationalism from the early sixteenth century into the seventeenth century and beyond. Comparing the depictions of crime in popular publications with those in archival records, legal discourse, and imaginative literature, Wiltenburg highlights key social anxieties and analyzes how crime texts worked to shape public perceptions and mentalities. Reports regularly featured familial destruction, flawed economic relations, and the apocalyptic thinking of Protestant clergy. Wiltenburg examines how such literature expressed and shaped cultural attitudes while at the same time reinforcing governmental authority. She also shows how the emotional inflections of crime stories influenced the growth of early modern public discourse, so often conceived in terms of rational exchange of ideas.” From Publisher’s Website.

Criminal Law of Competition in the UK and in the US: Failure and Success, by Mark Furse. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013. 245p.

“In 2002, the UK introduced a criminal competition law into the UK legal system for the first time since the 18th century. Using a range of analytical lenses, Mark Furse re-appraises this law ten years on, and provides an extensive analysis of its features. This invigorating work details the policy arguments behind the introduction of the law, and examines – through consideration of the successful prosecutions in the US – the extent to which the law in practice may be considered to have succeeded or failed in the UK. The role of the US as global antitrust policeman is also considered. The book concludes with a consideration of the difficulties facing the UK in choosing to pursue a criminal route within the current civil framework. Including full discussions of relevant literature relating to the criminalisation of cartels, and the use of personal sanctions against cartelists, this book will appeal to postgraduates and advanced undergraduate students of competition law, competition law practitioners in the UK, EU and US, as well as competition law enforcement personnel.” From Publisher’s Website.

Deviant and Criminal Behavior in the Workplace, ed. by Steven M. Elias. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 288p.
“Workplace crimes are never far from the news. From major scandals like Enron to violent crimes committed by co-workers to petty theft of office supplies, deviant and criminal behavior is common in the workplace. Psychological factors are almost always involved when an employee engages in such behavior.

Deviant and Criminal Behavior in the Workplace offers insights at the level of the individual employee and also sheds light on the role organizations themselves may play in fostering such criminal behavior. The volume considers psychological factors involved in theft and fraud, workplace violence, employee discrimination, and sexual harassment. It also analyses a number of variables which can influence such behavior including employee personality, employee emotional processes, experience of occupational stress, organizational culture, organizational injustice, and human resource management practices. The book will be of core interest to those interested in the psychology and sociology of work, organizational behavior, and human resource management.” From Publisher’s Website.

Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline, ed. by Sofía Bahena, North Cooc, Rachel Currie-Rubin, Paul Kuttner, and Monica Ng. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review, 2012. 288p.

“A trenchant and wide-ranging look at this alarming national trend, Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline is unsparing in its account of the problem while pointing in the direction of meaningful and much-needed reforms.

The “school-to-prison pipeline” has received much attention in the education world over the past few years. A fast-growing and disturbing development, it describes a range of circumstances whereby “children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” Scholars, educators, parents, students, and organizers across the country have pointed to this shocking trend, insisting that it be identified and understood—and that it be addressed as an urgent matter by the larger community.

This new volume from the Harvard Educational Review features essays from scholars, educators, students, and community activists who are working to disrupt, reverse, and redirect the pipeline. Alongside these authors are contributions from the people most affected: youth and adults who have been incarcerated, or whose lives have been shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline. Through stories, essays, and poems, these individuals add to the book’s comprehensive portrait of how our education and justice systems function—and how they fail to serve the interests of many young people.” From Publisher’s Website.

Education in Prison: Studying Through Distance Learning, by Emma Hughes. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 206p.

“The role of education in prisons, prisoners’ decisions regarding education, the impact of prison culture on either encouraging or discouraging such activities, and the potential consequences of education for prisoners’ reentry into society all have important implications. This extended analysis of prisoner education represents a unique contribution to an under-researched field, whilst also making important and original connections between research on education in prison and the literature on adult learning in the community.

Through offering crucial insights into the varied motivations and disincentives that inform prisoners’ decisions to study in prison (whether it be through distance learning or prison-based classes), the reader is also able to consider factors that inform decisions to engage in a broader range of positive and constructive activities whilst in prison. These research findings provide insight into how prison culture and prison policies may impact upon rehabilitative endeavour and suggest ways in which prisons may seek to encourage constructive and/ or rehabilitative activities amongst their inhabitants if desired.

Based on interviews and questionnaires completed by British adult prisoners studying through distance learning, this qualitative study offers a valuable complement and counterpart to prison education studies that focus on measuring recidivism rates. The learner-centred approach used yields a nuanced and complex understanding of the varied ways in which education in prison actually operates and is experienced, and considers the consequences of this for the students’ lives. As such, the findings offer further insight into important evidence resulting from recidivism studies reviewed within the book, whilst contributing to the reemerging interest in studies of prison life and prison culture that are based on prisoner interviews.” From Publisher’s Website.

Electronically Monitored Punishment: International and Critical Perspectives, ed. by Mike Nellis, Kristel Beyens, and Dan Kaminski. Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2012. 292p.

“Electronic monitoring (EM) is a way of supervising offenders in the community whilst they are on bail, serving a community sentence or after release from prison. Various technologies can be used, including voice verification, GPS satellite tracking and – most commonly – the use of radio frequency to monitor house arrest. It originated in the USA in the 1980s and has spread to over 30 countries since then. This book explores the development of EM in a number of countries to give some indication of the diverse ways it has been utilized and of the complex politics which surrounds its use.

A techno-utopian impulse underpins the origins of EM and has remained latent in its subsequent development elsewhere in the world, despite recognition that is it less capable of effecting penal transformations than its champions have hoped. This book devotes substantive chapters to the issues of privatisation, evaluation, offender perspectives and ethics. Whilst normatively more committed to the Swedish model, the book acknowledges that this may not represent the future of EM, whose untrammelled, commercially-driven development could have very alarming consequences for criminal justice.

Both utopian and dystopian hopes have been invested in EM, but research on its impact is ambivalent and fragmented, and EM remains undertheorised, empirically and ethically. This book seeks to redress this by providing academics, policy audiences and practitioners with the intellectual resources to understand and address the challenges which EM poses.” From Publisher’s Website.

Environment and Crime among Residents in Urban Areas: A Study of Districts in Stockholm, by Olof Dahlback. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 204p.

“This groundbreaking book by Olof Dahlbäck analyzes the direct effects of the environment and the indirect effects of geographical differentiation of individuals on the offender rates of different urban areas. In order to do this, relationships between crime and independent factors are analyzed in various ways – by considering cross-sectional and longitudinal aspects, linear and non-linear models, point and change data, different time periods, micro- and macro-level interaction, and data for individuals with different patterns of moves. The offender rates analyzed refer to individuals suspected by the police. The directly crime-influencing processes focused upon imply that individuals are affected by social control and social resources. The study makes use of advanced analytical models, novel methods and comprehensive data, and it solves several problems that have hampered research.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America, by Ted Galen Carpenter. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2012. 307p.

“Since the Mexican government initiated a military offensive against its country’s powerful drug cartels in December 2006, some 50,000 people have perished and the drugs continue to flow. The growing violence has created concerns that Mexico could become a failed state, and U.S. political leaders also worry that the corruption and violence is seeping across the border into the United States.

In his compelling new book, Ted Galen Carpenter details the growing horror overtaking Mexico and explains how the current U.S.-backed strategies for trying to stem Mexico’s drug violence have been a disaster. Boldly conveyed in The Fire Next Door, the only effective strategy is to defund the Mexican drug cartels by abandoning the failed drug prohibition policy, thereby eliminating the lucrative black-market premium and greatly reducing the financial resources of the drug cartels.” From Publisher’s Website.

Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider’s Journey, by Robert J. Duran. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 272p.

“Refusing to cast gangs in solely criminal terms, Robert J. Durán, a former gang member turned scholar, recasts such groups as an adaptation to the racial oppression of colonization in the American Southwest. Developing a paradigm rooted in ethnographic research and almost two decades of direct experience with gangs, Durán completes the first-ever study to follow so many marginalized groups so intensely for so long, revealing their core characteristics, behavior, and activities within two unlikely American cities.

Durán spent five years in Denver, Colorado, and Ogden, Utah, conducting 145 interviews with gang members, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and other relevant individuals. From his research, he constructs a comparative outline of the emergence and criminalization of Latino youth groups, the ideals and worlds they create, and the reasons for their persistence. He also underscores the failures of violent gang suppression tactics, which have only further entrenched these groups within the barrio. Encouraging cultural activists and current and former gang members to pursue grassroots empowerment, Durán proposes new solutions to racial oppression that challenge and truly alter the conditions of gang life.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Globalization of Supermax Prisons, ed. by Jeffrey Ian Ross. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013. 256p.

“’Supermax’ prisons, conceived by the United States in the early 1980s, are typically reserved for convicted political criminals such as terrorists and spies and for other inmates who are considered to pose a serious ongoing threat to the wider community, to the security of correctional institutions, or to the safety of other inmates. Prisoners are usually restricted to their cells for up to twenty-three hours a day and typically have minimal contact with other inmates and correctional staff. Not only does the Federal Bureau of Prisons operate one of these facilities, but almost every state has either a supermax wing or stand-alone supermax prison.

The Globalization of Supermax Prisons examines why nine advanced industrialized countries have adopted the supermax prototype, paying particular attention to the economic, social, and political processes that have affected each state. Featuring essays that look at the U.S.-run prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo, this collection seeks to determine if the American model is the basis for the establishment of these facilities and considers such issues as the support or opposition to the building of a supermax and why opposition efforts failed; the allegation of human rights abuses within these prisons; and the extent to which the decision to build a supermax was influenced by developments in the United States. Additionally, contributors address such domestic matters as the role of crime rates, media sensationalism, and terrorism in each country’s decision to build a supermax prison. From Publisher’s Website.

‘Grooming’ and the Sexual abuse of Children: Institutional, Internet, and Familial Dimensions, by Anne-Marie McAlinden. Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 392p.

“’Grooming’ and the Sexual Abuse of Children: Institutional, Internet and Familial Dimensions critically examines the official and popular discourses on grooming, predominantly framed within the context of online sexual exploitation and abuse committed by strangers, and institutional child abuse committed by those in positions of trust.

Set against the broader theoretical framework of risk, security and governance, this book argues that due to the difficulties of drawing clear boundaries between innocuous and harmful motivations towards children, pre-emptive risk-based criminal law and policy are inherently limited in preventing, targeting and criminalising ‘grooming’ behaviour prior to the manifestation of actual harm. Through examination of grooming against the complexities of the onset of sexual offending against children and its actual role in this process, the author broadens existing discourses by providing a fuller, more nuanced conceptualisation of grooming, including its role in intra-familial and extra-familial contexts. There is also timely discussion of new and emerging forms of grooming, such as ‘street’ or ‘localised’ grooming, as typified by recent cases in Rochdale and Oldham, and ‘peer-to-peer’ grooming.

The first inter-disciplinary, thematic, and empirical investigation of grooming in a multi-jurisdictional context, ‘Grooming’ and the Sexual Abuse of Children draws on extensive empirical research in the form of over fifty interviews with professionals, working in the fields of sex offender risk assessment, management or treatment, as well as child protection or victim support in the four jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Impeccably presented and meticulously considered, this book will be of interest to criminologists and those working and studying in the field of policing and criminal justice studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the areas of child protection and sex offender management. “ From Publisher’s Website.

Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment, by Whitley R.P. Kaufman. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 203p.

“This book addresses the problem of justifying the institution of criminal punishment. It examines the “paradox of retribution”: the fact that we cannot seem to reject the intuition that punishment is morally required, and yet we cannot (even after two thousand years of philosophical debate) find a morally legitimate basis for inflicting harm on wrongdoers. The book comes at a time when a new “abolitionist” movement has arisen, a movement that argues that we should give up the search for justification and accept that punishment is morally unjustifiable and should be discontinued immediately. This book, however, proposes a new approach to the retributive theory of punishment, arguing that it should be understood in its traditional formulation that has been long forgotten or dismissed: that punishment is essentially a defense of the honor of the victim. Properly understood, this can give us the possibility of a legitimate moral justification for the institution of punishment.” From Publisher’s Website.

Incapacitation: Trends and New Perspectives, ed. by Marijke Malsch and Marius Duker. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 274p.

“In many criminal justice systems a new trend towards incapacitation can be witnessed. A ubiquitous want for control seems to have emerged as a consequence of perceived safety risks. This can be seen not only in the mass incarceration of offenders but also in the disqualification of offenders from jobs, in chemical castration in cases of sexual crimes, the increased use of electronic monitoring and in the life-long monitoring of individuals who pose certain risks. Trends towards incapacitation are now even spreading to public administration and the employment sector, in the refusal of licenses and the rejection of employees with past criminal records.

This book discusses the topic of incapacitation from various angles and perspectives. It explores how theories of punishment are affected by the more recent emphasis on incapacitation and how criminal justice practice is changing as a consequence of this new emphasis. Many contributors express criticisms with this trend towards incapacitation. They argue for a better calibration of measures to the severity of the misconduct.

In addressing an increasingly important development in criminal justice, the book will be an essential resource for students, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of criminal law, sentencing, probation and crime prevention. “ From Publisher’s Website.

The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border, by Chad Richardson and Michael J. Pisani. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012. 351p.

“Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region’s longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels.

The third volume in UT–Pan American’s Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors’ findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state’s intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón’s futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a “no-man’s-land” legacy.” From Publisher’s Website.

International Criminal Justice: Legitimacy and Coherence, ed. by Gideon Boas, William A. Schabas, and Michael P. Scharf. Cheltenham, UK: Northampton, MA: Elward Elgar. 2012. 322p.

“International criminal justice as a discipline throws up numerous conceptual issues, engaging disciplines such as law, politics, history, sociology, psychology to name but a few. This book addresses themes around international criminal justice from a mixture of traditional and more radical perspectives. While law, and in particular international law, is at the heart of much of the discussion around this topic, history, sociology and politics are invariably infused and, in some aspects of international criminal justice, are predominant elements. Fundamentally the exploration concerns questions of coherence and legitimacy, which are foundational to both the content and application of the discipline, and the book charts an illuminating path through these diverse perspectives. The contributions in this book come from some of the eminent scholars and practitioners in the area, and will provide some profound insight into and an enriched understanding of international criminal justice, helping to advance the field of study. This ambitious and necessary book will appeal to academics and students of international criminal law, international criminal justice, international law, transitional justice, comparative criminal law, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.” From Publisher’s Website.

The International Crime Drop: New Directions in Research, ed. by Jan van Dijk, Andromachi Tseloni and Graham Farrell. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 360p.

“Drawing on studies from major European countries and Australia, this exciting new collection from a group of internationally-renowned scholars extends the ongoing debate on falling crime rates from the perspective of criminal opportunity or routine activity theory. Considering the trends and discourse of the international crime fall, this book analyses the effect of Post World War II crime booms which triggered a universal improvement in security across the Western world, such as the introduction of mandatory security in motor vehicles in Europe and the US. Preliminary evidence is also presented on the impact of collective improvements in home security, analyzing levels of household burglaries and their distribution amongst the population in The Netherlands, England and Wales.

The International Crime Drop discusses how improved security against volume crime has initiated a prolonged recession on criminal markets in the West, a downturn that appears largely independent from criminal policies of individual governments. With fresh evidence for the causes of international falls in crime, this book signals a new direction in epidemiological studies of crime.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It, by Tom Diaz. New York: The New Press, 2013. 336p.

“Newtown, Connecticut. Aurora, Colorado. Both have entered our collective memory as sites of unimaginable heartbreak and mass slaughter, perpetrated by lone gunmen. Meanwhile, cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., are dealing with the painful, everyday reality of record rates of gun-related deaths. By any account, gun violence in the United States has reached epidemic proportions: we are by far the most armed nation on earth, and we have the deaths to show for it. But how did we get here, and where do we go next?

In The Last Gun, Tom Diaz lays out a lucid, incisive account of why we are facing this epidemic—and what we can do to stop it. A widely respected activist and policy analyst—as well as a former gun enthusiast and ex-member of the National Rifle Association—Diaz presents a chilling, up-to-date survey of the changed landscape of gun manufacturing and marketing. The Last Gun explores how the gun industry has shifted dramatically in the last decade and how the nature of gun violence has changed in step with industry trends, including the disturbing rise in the military-grade gun models that have brought us to a numbing new level of violence. But Diaz also argues that the once formidable gun lobby has become a “paper tiger,” marshaling a range of stunning evidence and case studies to eloquently make the case that now is the time for a renewed political effort to attack gun violence at its source—the guns themselves. Because, despite all the rhetoric, guns do kill people.

In the aftermath of Newtown, a challenging national conversation lies ahead. The Last Gun is an indispensable guide to this debate, and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we can finally rid America’s streets, schools, and homes of gun violence and prevent future Newtowns.” From Publisher’s Website.

Linking Disorders to Delinquency: Treating High-Risk Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, by Christopher A. Mallett. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner/First Forum Press, 2013. 187p.

“Christopher Mallett explores developmental pathways to juvenile delinquency, disentangling key risk factors for offending—and not least, showing how contact with the justice system may only compound the problem.

Tracing a child’s life from the earliest years through adolescence, Mallett investigates the processes by which mental health disorders, learning disabilities, experiences of abuse, and combinations of these factors may increase the likelihood of delinquency. He also finds unexpected lessons in resilience. Throughout, he draws on these insights to suggest valuable new ways of responding to issues in vulnerable populations.” From Publisher’s Website.

Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK, by Dick Hobbs. Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 344p.

“Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK opens ‘the box marked do not open, too difficult to deal with’, in the words of one Assistant Chief Constable, to explore the contested notion of British organized crime. The first book to trace the history and policing of British organized crime, it addresses how the interlocking processes of de-industrialisation, globalisation and neo-liberalism have normalised activity that was previously the exclusive domain of professional criminals.

With both historical and sociological analyses, informed by the author’s long term connection to an ethnographic site called ‘Dogtown’, a composite of several overlapping neighbourhoods in East London, this book critically addresses cliches such as criminal underworlds and the notion of the criminal firm. It considers the precursors to British organized crime, as well as the careers of famous crime families such as the Krays and the Richardsons, alongside the emergence of specialised law enforcement institutions to deal with this newly discovered threat. It also focuses on the various ways in which violence functions within organised crime, the role of rumour in formulating order within crime networks, the social construction of organised crime, the development of the cosmopolitan criminal and the all-inclusive nature of the contemporary criminal community of practice. Permeating throughout is a discussion of the flexible nature of the criminal market, the constructed nature of the notion of organised crime, and the normalisation of criminality.

Underpinned by rich, context-specific examples, case studies, stories, and other qualitative evidence based on ethnographic research and interviews, Lush Life follows on from the author’s work on normal crime (Doing the Business), and professional crime (Bad Business).” From Publisher’s Website.

Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748-53, by Nicholas Rogers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. 272p.

“After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed and sometimes unemployable soldiers and seamen found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister the town and steal when necessary. In this fascinating book Nicholas Rogers explores the moral panic associated with this rapid demobilization.

Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, Rogers captures the anxieties of a half-decade and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. He argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries and police forces.” From Publisher’s Website.

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty: The Shame of the States, by Michael L. Perlin. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. 200p.

“There is no question that the death penalty is disproportionately imposed in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities. There is clear, systemic bias at all stages of the prosecution and the sentencing process – in determining who is competent to be executed, in the assessment of mitigation evidence, in the ways that counsel is assigned, in the ways that jury determinations are often contaminated by stereotyped preconceptions of persons with mental disabilities, in the ways that cynical expert testimony reflects a propensity on the part of some experts to purposely distort their testimony in order to achieve desired ends. These questions are shockingly ignored at all levels of the criminal justice system, and by society in general. Here, Michael Perlin explores the relationship between mental disabilities and the death penalty and explains why and how this state of affairs has come to be, to explore why it is necessary to identify the factors that have contributed to this scandalous and shameful policy morass, to highlight the series of policy choices that need immediate remediation, and to offer some suggestions that might meaningfully ameliorate the situation. Using real cases to illustrate the ways in which the persons with mental disabilities are unable to receive fair treatment during death penalty trials, he demonstrates the depth of the problem and the way it’s been institutionalized so as to be an accepted part of our system. He calls for a new approach, and greater attention to the issues that have gone overlooked for so long.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Multicultural Prison: Ethnicity, Masculinity, and Social Relations among Prisoners, by Coretta Phillips. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 296p.

“The Multicultural Prison presents a unique sociological analysis of the daily negotiation of ethnic difference within the closed world of the male prison. The political economy of racialized incarceration together with penal expansion has seen the disproportionate incarceration of diverse British national, foreign and migrant populations, brought into close proximity within the confines of the prison. The impact of broad social changes – globalised migration, the deepening of North-South economic inequalities, and the assertion of minority groups’ claims for social and political recognition and equality — are considered at a time when issues of race, multiculture, and racialization inside the prison have been somewhat neglected. Recognising also the significance of religion, age, masculinity, national and local identifications, it considers how multiple identities configure social interactions among prisoners in late modern prisoner society. Using rich empirical material drawn from extensive qualitative research in Rochester Young Offenders’ Institution and Maidstone prison, the negotiation and tensions of ‘doing multiculturalism’ in prison form the central part of this book. Prisoners’ vivid accounts of economically and socially marginalised lives outside, some in multicultural, some in monocultural settings, provides a backdrop to the interior world of the prison where ethnicity shapes social relations but in a contingent fashion. Ethnic, faith, and masculine identities may be deeply invested in, disavowed, constituted through loose solidarities based on ‘postcode identities’, even providing a means for cultural hybridity in prison cultures, yet they can also act as a familiar fault line creating wary, unstable, and antagonistic relations among prisoners. The Multicultural Prison provides a unique insight into how race is written into prison social relations using stories from both white and minority ethnic prisoners. It considers challenging issues of discrimination, inequality, entitlement, and preferential treatment from the perspective of diverse groups of prisoners.” From Publisher’s Website.

Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia, by Louise McReynolds. Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 2013. 274p.

“How a society defines crimes and prosecutes criminals illuminates its cultural values, social norms, and political expectations. In Murder Most Russian, Louise McReynolds uses a fascinating series of murders and subsequent trials that took place in the wake of the 1864 legal reforms enacted by Tsar Alexander II to understand the impact of these reforms on Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. For the first time in Russian history, the accused were placed in the hands of juries of common citizens in courtrooms that were open to the press. Drawing on a wide array of sources, McReynolds reconstructs murders that gripped Russian society, from the case of Andrei Gilevich, who advertised for a personal secretary and beheaded the respondent as a way of perpetrating insurance fraud, to the beating death of Marianna Time at the hands of two young aristocrats who hoped to steal her diamond earrings.

As McReynolds shows, newspapers covered such trials extensively, transforming the courtroom into the most public site in Russia for deliberation about legality and justice. To understand the cultural and social consequences of murder in late imperial Russia, she analyzes the discussions that arose among the emergent professional criminologists, defense attorneys, and expert forensic witnesses about what made a defendant’s behavior “criminal.” She also deftly connects real criminal trials to the burgeoning literary genre of crime fiction and fruitfully compares the Russian case to examples of crimes both from Western Europe and the United States in this period.” From Publisher’s Website.

Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, by Sarah Kovner. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. 240p.

“The year was 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops poured into war-torn Japan and spread throughout the country, altering both the built environment and the country’s psychological landscape. The effect of this influx on the local population did not lessen in the years following the war’s end. In fact, the presence of foreign servicemen also heightened the visibility of certain others, particularly panpan—streetwalkers—who were objects of their desire.
Occupying Power shows how intimate histories and international relations are interconnected in ways scholars have only begun to explore. Although sex workers became symbols of Japan’s diminished status, by earning scarce dollars they helped jump-start economic recovery. But sex workers who catered to servicemen were nonetheless a frequent target. They were blamed for increases in venereal disease. They were charged with diluting the Japanese race by producing mixed-race offspring. In 1956, Japan passed its first national law against prostitution. Though empowered female legislators had joined with conservatives in this effort to reform and rehabilitate, the law produced an unanticipated effect. By ending a centuries-old tradition of sex work regulation, it made sex workers less visible and more vulnerable.

This probing history reveals an important but underexplored aspect of the Japanese occupation and its effect on gender and society. It seeks to shift the terms of debate on a number of controversies, including Japan’s history of forced sexual slavery, rape accusations against U.S. servicemen, opposition to U.S. overseas bases, and sexual trafficking.” From Publisher’s Website.

Organised Crime: Dark Sides of Globalisation, ed. by Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha. Baden Baden, Germany: Nomos, 2012. 160p.

“Along with the globalization of trade markets, organized crime has risen to a transnational phenomenon as well. This study discusses the forms of organized crime and how it is met by politics, economy, and law.” From Publisher’s Website.

Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia, by Robert M. Lombardo. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013. 288p.

“This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Robert M. Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread “alien conspiracy” theory, organized crime evolved in a linear fashion beginning with the Mafia in Sicily, emerging in the form of the Black Hand in America’s immigrant colonies, and culminating in the development of the Cosa Nostra in America’s urban centers.

Looking beyond this Mafia paradigm, this volume argues that the development of organized crime in Chicago and other large American cities was rooted in the social structure of American society. Specifically, Lombardo ties organized crime to the emergence of machine politics in America’s urban centers. From nineteenth-century vice syndicates to the modern-day Outfit, Chicago’s criminal underworld could not have existed without the blessing of those who controlled municipal, county, and state government. These practices were not imported from Sicily, Lombardo contends, but were bred in the socially disorganized slums of America where elected officials routinely franchised vice and crime in exchange for money and votes. This book also traces the history of the African American community’s participation in traditional organized crime in Chicago and offers new perspectives on the organizational structure of the Chicago Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in Chicago.” From Publisher’s Website.

Persisters and Desisters in Crime from Adolescence into Adulthood: Explanation, Prevention and Punishment, ed. by Rolf Loeber, Machteld Hoeve, N. Wim Slot, and Peter H. van der Laan. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 502p.

“Too many juvenile delinquents persist in their offending into adulthood. They constitute a major burden for individual victims, for businesses and the justice system, all contributing to the total cost of crime for society. Focusing on the transition between juvenile offending and adult crime, this book examines research based on Dutch, European and North-American studies on the persistence and discontinuity of offending between late adolescence and early adulthood. Presenting empirical studies showing why persistence or discontinuity take place, the book provides up-to-date information on preventive and remedial interventions to promote discontinuity of offending amongst young adults.

From the same team who produced ‘Tomorrow’s Criminals’, this book will be a valuable resource for criminologists, criminal justice professionals, psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists interested in juvenile and young adult offenders, as well as those interested in what makes career criminals and youth who reform.” From Publisher’s Website.

Piracy and International Maritime Crimes in ASEAN: Prospects for Cooperation, ed. by Robert C. Beckman and J. Ashley Roach. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2012. 272p.

“Southeast Asian waters are critical for international trade and the global economy. Combating maritime crimes has always been a priority as well as a challenge for ASEAN member states. While much emphasis has been placed on enhancing operational cooperation against maritime crimes, the need for an effective legal framework to combat such maritime crimes has not been sufficiently examined. This book demonstrates that ASEAN member states can establish a legal framework to combat maritime crimes by ratifying and effectively implementing relevant global and regional conventions. It also explores the issues that ASEAN member states, and ASEAN as an organization, face in establishing such a framework and suggests suitable steps that can be taken to address such issues.

This informative and detailed study will inform research and policy, and will appeal to government, treaty and policy officials, academics, researchers and students, as well as international and regional organizations concerned with piracy and other related maritime crimes, ocean affairs and the law of the sea.” From Publisher’s Website.

Policing Cooperation Across Borders: Comparative Perspectives on Law Enforcement within the EU and Australia, by Saskia Hufnagel. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 356p.

“This book provides new insights into police cooperation from a comparative socio-legal perspective. It presents a broad analysis of comparable police cooperation strategies in two systems: the EU and Australia. The evolution of regulatory trends and cooperation models is analysed for both systems and possible transferable strategies identified. Drawing on interviews with practitioners in the EU and Australia this book highlights a number of areas where the EU can be compared to a federal system and addresses the advantages and disadvantages of being a Union or a federation of states with a view to police cooperation practice. Particular topics addressed are the evolution of legal frameworks regulating police cooperation, informal cooperation strategies, Joint Investigation Teams, Europol and regional cooperation. These instruments foster police cooperation, but could be improved with a view to cooperation practice by learning from regulatory techniques and practitioner experiences of the respective other system.“ From Publisher’s Website.

The Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage, by Jennifer L. Airey. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2012. 260p.

“The Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage is the first full-length study to examine representations of sexual violence on the Restoration stage. By reading theatrical depictions of sexual violence alongside political tracts, propaganda pamphlets, and circulating broadsides, this study argues that authors used dramatic representations of rape to respond to and engage with late-century upheavals in British political culture. Beginning with an examination of rape scenes in English Civil War propaganda, The Politics of Rape argues that Roundhead authors described acts of rape and atrocity to demonize their enemies, the Irish, the Catholics, and the Cavaliers. After the Restoration, propagandists and playwrights on each side of every political conflict would follow suit, altering the rhetoric of sexual violence in response to each new moment of political upheaval: The Restoration of Charles II, the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, the Glorious Revolution, and the accession of William and Mary. The study offers an intensive look at British propaganda culture, gathering together a wealth of understudied pamphlet texts, and identifying a series of stock figures that recur throughout the century: The demonic Irishman, sexually violent villain of the 1641 Irish Rebellion tracts; the debauched Cavalier, the secretly Catholic royalist rapist; the poisonous Catholic bride, the malignant consort who encourages the rapes of Protestant women; the cannibal father, the evil patriarch who rapes his daughters-in-laws before ingesting his own sons as a symbol of monarchical overreach; and the ravished monarch, the male rape victim whose sexual violation protests his political disenfranchisement. The study also traces the appearance of these figures on the British stage, examining well-known works by Dryden, Rochester, Behn, Lee, and Shadwell, alongside lesser-known plays by Orrery, Howard, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Pix, Cibber, and Brady. The Politics of Rape thus offers a new method for understanding of the geo-political implications of theatrical sexual violence.” From Publisher’s Website.

Resilience & the City: Change, (Dis)Order and Disaster, by Peter Rogers. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 222p.

“Following the turbulent events of the first few years of the 21st century, the growth of new security and disaster measures have led to significant changes to urban design and the management of urban space. This book blends the genealogical method of Foucault with the theory of rhythms by Lefebvre to examine these changes. The spatial history of urban disaster is linked to the rhythms of everyday urban experience to offer a revised understanding of the regulation of order and disorder in the city.

In doing so, the book highlights issues of ‘hardening’ space, the drift from civil defence to civil protection to civil contingencies and resilience; this assessment realigns the potential impact of tightening security practices and resilient ways of thinking, doing and acting on societal security. This also links to growing concerns about quality of life over the use and potential abuse of security and disaster legislation for managing social unrest. Examples studied include the increased exclusion of minorities (such as young people) from democracy and public life; security oriented interventions in the ethnic minority communities, the use of automated technologies in policing civil and minor offences (e.g. digital plate recognition and speeding) and the interplay of diverse social groups in more commercially aligned and increasingly ‘securitised’ public spaces of the ‘entrepreneurial’ city.

This book highlights many significant problems with the direction of British democracy and suggests there may be both positive and negative results from becoming more resilient. While providing a critical appraisal of the realignment of neoliberal democracy at large, it also links discussion on ‘gentrification’, ‘revanchism’ and ‘urban security’ to a forward looking agenda for further research.” From Publisher’s Website.

Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination, ed. by Michael Flynn and Fabiola F. Salek. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 328p.

“Before 9/11, films addressing torture outside of the horror/slasher genre depicted the practice in a variety of forms. In most cases, torture was cast as the act of a desperate and depraved individual, and the viewer was more likely to identify with the victim rather than the torturer. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, scenes of brutality and torture in mainstream comedies, dramatic narratives, and action films appear for little other reason than to titillate and delight. In these films, torture is devoid of any redeeming qualities, represented as an exercise in brutal senselessness carried out by authoritarian regimes and institutions. This volume follows the shift in the representation of torture over the past decade, specifically in documentary, action, and political films. It traces and compares the development of this trend in films from the United States, Europe, China, Latin America, South Africa, and the Middle East. Featuring essays by sociologists, psychologists, historians, journalists, and specialists in film and cultural studies, the collection approaches the representation of torture in film and television from multiple angles and disciplines, connecting its aesthetics and practices to the dynamic of state terror and political domination.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Social Construction of Corruption in Europe, ed. by Dirk Tanzler, Konstadinos Maras and Angelos Giannakopoulos. Farnham, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. 346p.

“This volume demonstrates the suitability of the theory of social constructivism in portraying and analyzing the diversity of the phenomenon of corruption. The approach of social constructivism taken in this volume is able to reconstruct the “construction of corruption” both from a societal perspective, by assessing it as generally accepted or tolerated behaviour in more or less standardized rule-governed social situations, and from the perspective of actors who perceive corrupt behaviour as problem solving in everyday life. The volume proves the usefulness of a social construction perspective for empirical research. It contains case studies of social definitions of corruption in eleven European countries that contribute in different ways to establishing a grounded theory of the phenomenon of corruption. “ From Publisher’s Website.

The Spectacular Few: Prisoner Radicalization and the Evolving Terrorist Threat, by Mark S. Hamm. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 237p.

“The Madrid train bombers, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks—all were led by men radicalized behind bars. Today’s prisons are hotbeds for personal transformation toward terrorist beliefs and actions due to the increasingly chaotic nature of prison life caused by mass incarceration. In The Spectacular Few, Mark Hamm, a former prison warden, demonstrates how prisoners use criminal cunning, collective resistance and nihilism to incite terrorism.

Drawing from a wide range of sources, The Spectacular Few imagines the texture of prisoners’ lives. Hamm covers their criminal thinking styles, the social networks that influenced them, and personal “turning points” that set them on the pathway to violent extremism. Hamm argues that in order to understand terrorism today, we must come to terms with how prisoners are treated behind bars.” From Publisher’s Website.

Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100-1500, by Caroline Dunn. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 272p.

“This study of illicit sexuality in medieval England explores links between marriage and sex, law and disorder, and property and power. Some medieval Englishwomen endured rape or were kidnapped for forced marriages, yet most ravished women were married and many ‘wife-thefts’ were not forced kidnappings but cases of adultery fictitiously framed as abduction by abandoned husbands. In pursuing the themes of illicit sexuality and non-normative marital practices, this work analyses the nuances of the key Latin term raptus and the three overlapping offences that it could denote: rape, abduction and adultery. This investigation broadens our understanding of the role of women in the legal system; provides a means for analysing male control over female bodies, sexuality and access to the courts; and reveals ways in which female agency could, on occasion, manoeuvre around such controls.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Successes and Failures of Whistleblower Laws, by Robert G. Vaughn.  Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013. 432p.

“Drawing on literature from several disciplines, this enlightening book examines the history of whistleblower laws throughout the world and provides an analytical structure for the most common debates about the nature of such laws and their potential successes and failures.

The author explores the relationship between the actions of whistleblowers and the character of laws protecting them, as well as their administration and enforcement. The book considers the role of civil society groups in the successes of whistleblower laws and how current controversies reflect issues attached to these laws over half a century.

This study contains perspectives from which successes and failures can be evaluated and will appeal to policy makers, scholars, whistleblower advocacy and other civil society groups, as well as anyone with a general interest in the subject.” From Publisher’s Website.

Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory, by Lavinia Stan. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 306p.

“A close examination of an understudied European Union member state such as Romania reveals that, since 1989, post-communist state and non-state actors have adopted a wide range of methods, processes, and practices of working through the communist past. Both the timing and the sequencing of these transitional justice methods prove to be significant in determining the efficacy of addressing and redressing the crimes of 1945 to 1989. In addition, there is evidence that some of these methods have directly facilitated the democratization process, while the absence of other methods has undermined the rule of law. This is the first volume to overview the complex Romanian transitional justice effort, by accessing secret archives and investigating court trials of former communist perpetrators, lustration, compensation and rehabilitation, property restitution, the truth commission, the rewriting of history books, and unofficial truth projects. It details the political negotiations that have led to the adoption of relevant legislation and assesses these processes in terms of their timing, sequencing, and impact on democratization.” From Publisher’s Website.

Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure, by Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2010. 143p.

“When it comes to criminal justice reform, neither citizens nor officials have endorsed the view that problems are solved iteratively. Reluctance to be associated with programs judged failures has stifled innovation and kept criminal justice reformers spinning their wheels.

Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure argues that public policies cannot always be divided into successes and failures. The book examines well-intended programs that for one reason or another fell short of their objectives (D.A.R.E. and Operation Ceasefire being prime examples) yet also had positive aspects. Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tell the stories of committed reformers–judges, cops, attorneys, parole officers, researchers, educators, and politicians–who, despite their knowledge and ambition, did not quite achieve their goals. They introduce readers to a parole officer who has to make a tough judgment call, a legislator who endures political pressure to rewrite sentencing laws, a judge who attempts a new response to drug offenses despite local resistance, and many others.” From Publisher’s Website.

Tried and Convicted: How Police, Prosecutors, and Judges Destroy our Constitutional Rights, by Michael D. Cicchini. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 176p.

“When an individual is accused of a crime he is provided, at least in theory, with numerous constitutional rights throughout the legal process. These constitutional rights, however, are soft and flexible, and are subject to a tremendous amount of manipulation by police, prosecutors, and judges. The result is that these government agents are easily able to bypass, and in fact destroy, our constitutional protections.

This abuse of our fundamental rights is extremely dangerous. Far from being mere technicalities, constitutional rights benefit all citizens, not just the factually guilty, in ways that go unappreciated by most of us. In today’s hyper-vigilant, tough-on-crime climate, many good people from all walks of life find themselves charged with serious crimes for behaving in ways that most of us would be shocked to learn are criminal. For these reasons, it is in all of our interests to ensure strong constitutional safeguards for everyone.

Tried and Convicted explains several individual constitutional rights that are intended to protect us from the vagaries of the criminal justice system, and gives detailed examples of how government agents routinely circumvent those rights. It also exposes the underlying problems that enable government agents to circumvent the constitution, and concludes by offering potential solutions to these problems. Using real life examples throughout, Cicchini provides a wake-up call for all of us.” From Publisher’s Website.

Unleashed: The Phenomena of Status Dogs and Weapon Dogs, by Simon Harding. Bristol, UK: Polity Press, 2012. 208p.

“This is the first book in the UK or US to set on record the recent cultural phenomenon of the use of certain dog breeds – both legal and illegal – to ‘convey status’ upon their owners. Such dogs are easily visible on social housing estates throughout the UK and in projects in the USA and provide acquired authority, respect, power and control. However they are increasingly linked to urban street gangs as ‘Weapon Dogs’ and present a danger to the ordinary public especially those using parks and open spaces with increased injuries being presented at UK hospitals. Though initially slow to react, local and statutory authorities are now seeking to address the issue through action plans and interventions. Written in a fresh, engaging and accessible style, this unique book contextualizes the phenomenon in terms of sociology, criminology and public policy. It considers a complex mix of urban and social deprivation, social control of public space and the influence of contemporary media imagery and ‘gangsta’ culture. It will make essential reading for academics and policy makers in criminology and criminal justice and those working with animal rights/animal welfare groups.” From Publisher’s Website.

Up Against a Wall: Rape Reform and the Failure of Success, by Rose Corrigan. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 320p.

“Rape law reform has long been hailed as one of the most successful projects of second-wave feminism. Yet forty years after the anti-rape movement emerged, legal and medical institutions continue to resist implementing reforms intended to provide more just and compassionate legal and medical responses to victims of sexual violence. In Up Against a Wall, Rose Corrigan draws on interviews with over 150 local rape care advocates in communities across the United States to explore how and why mainstream systems continue to resist feminist reforms. In a series of richly detailed case studies, the book weaves together scholarship on law and social movements, feminist theory, policy formation and implementation, and criminal justice to show how the innovative legal strategies employed by anti-rape advocates actually undermined some of their central claims. But even as its more radical elements were thwarted, pieces of the rape law reform project were seized upon by conservative policy-makers and used to justify new initiatives that often prioritize the interests and rights of criminal justice actors or medical providers over the needs of victims.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Urban Fabric of Crime and Fear, ed. by Vania Ceccato. Dordrecht; New York; London: Springer, 2012. 365p.

“How does the city’s urban fabric relate to crime and fear, and how is that fabric affected by crime and fear? Does the urban environment affect one’s decision to commit an offence? Is there a victimisation-related inequality within cities? How do crime and fear interrelate to inequality and segregation in cities of developing countries? What are the challenges to planning cities which are both safe and sustainable? This book searches for answers to these questions in the nature of the city, particularly in the social interactions that take place in urban space distinctively guided by different land uses and people’s activities. In other words, the book deals with the urban fabric of crime and fear. The novelty of the book is to place safety and security issues on the urban scale by (1) showing links between urban structure, and crime and fear, (2) illustrating how different disciplines deal with urban vulnerability to (and fear of) crime (3) including concrete examples of issues and challenges found in European and North American cities, and, without being too extensive, also in cities of the Global South.” From Publisher’s Website.

Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body through Time, by Pieter Spierenburg. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: The Polity Press, 2013. 248p.

“This innovative book tells the fascinating tale of the long histories of violence, punishment, and the human body, and how they are all connected. Taking the decline of violence and the transformation of punishment as its guiding themes, the book highlights key dynamics of historical and social change, and charts how a refinement and civilizing of manners, and new forms of celebration and festival, accompanied the decline of violence.

Pieter Spierenburg, a leading figure in historical criminology, skillfully extends his view over three continents, back to the middle ages and even beyond to the Stone Age. Ranging along the way from murder to etiquette, from social control to popular culture, from religion to death, and from honor to prisons, every chapter creatively uses the theories of Norbert Elias, while also engaging with the work of Foucault and Durkheim.

The scope and rigor of the analysis will strongly interest scholars of criminology, history, and sociology, while the accessible style and the intriguing stories on which the book builds will appeal to anyone interested in the history of violence and punishment in civilization.” From Publisher’s Website.

Women on Ice: Methamphetamine Use among Suburban Women, by Miriam Boeri. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013. 254p.

“Methamphetamine (ice, speed, crystal, shard) has been called epidemic in the United States. Yet few communities were ready for increased use of methamphetamine by suburban women. Women on Ice is the first book to study exclusively the lives of women who use the drug and its effects on their families.

In-depth interviews with women in the suburban counties of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. chronicle the details of their initiation into methamphetamine, the turning points into problematic drug use, and for a few, their escape from lives veering out of control. Their life course and drug careers are analyzed in relation to the intersecting influences of social roles, relationships, social/political structures, and political trends. Examining the effects of punitive drug policy, inadequate social services, and looming public health risks, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the book gives voice to women silenced by shame.

Boeri introduces new and developing concepts in the field of addiction studies and proposes policy changes to more broadly implement initiatives that address the problems these women face. She asserts that if we are concerned that the war on drugs is a war on drug users, this book will alert us that it is also a war on suburban families.” From Publisher’s Website.

 

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