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For most Americans, The Godfather, The Sopranos, and the Cosa Nostra exemplify organized crime. In Asia the term conjures up images of Japanese yakuza and Chinese triads, in Italy the Cosa Nostra and ‘Ndrangheta, in Latin America Mexican narco-gangs and Colombian drug cartels, in the Netherlands transnational drug and human trafficking, and in Scandinavia outlaw motorcycle gangs. Some but not all those organizations are “mafias” with centuries-long histories, distinctive cultures, and complicated relationships with local communities and governments. Others are new, large but transitory and with no purpose other than maximizing profits from illegal markets.

Organized crime organizations have existed for centuries. Serious scholarly, as opposed to journalistic or law enforcement, efforts to understand them, however, date back only a few decades. Authoritative overviews were, until very recently, impossible. Rigorous, analytically acute, and methodologically sophisticated literatures did not exist. They have begun to emerge. They have developed in many countries, involve work in different languages and disciplines, and deploy a wide range of methods. 

Organizing Crime: Mafias, Markets, and Networks provides the most exhaustive overview ever published of knowledge about organized crime. It provides intensive accounts of American, Italian, and Dutch developments, covers both national mafias and transnational criminality, and delves in depth into gender, human capital, and money laundering issues. The writers are based in seven countries. To a person they are, or are among, the world’s most distinguished specialists in their subjects. At last, credible explanations and testable hypotheses are available concerning when, why, and under what circumstances mafias and other organized crime organizations come into being, what makes them distinctive, what they do and with what effects, and how to contain them.
 

In this collection, Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring present nine groundbreaking essays about the carceral system and its development over time. Topics range from activism against police brutality to the peculiar path of southern prison reform to the fraught introduction of the electric chair. The essays tell nuanced stories of rapidly changing state institutions, political leaders who sought to manage them, and African Americans who appealed to the regulatory state to protect their rights.

Contributors: Pippa Holloway, Tammy Ingram, Brandon T. Jett, Seth Kotch, Talitha L. LeFlouria, Vivien Miller, Silvan Niedermeier, K. Stephen Prince, and Amy Louise Wood

Analyses of crime and justice in an unprecedented time

While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique opportunity to study crime and the justice system’s response during this period, though they soon realized that determining the pandemic’s effects would be a complicated, nuanced process.

Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic features analyses and findings from more than thirty contributors in eleven essays. The collection examines the multifaceted social, economic, cultural, legislative, and policy responses to COVID-19 and their impacts on crime and justice. It also explores how professionals across the criminal justice system—police officers, campus police officers, attorneys, judges, correctional staff, and community supervision agents—adapted to unprecedented challenges.

The book provides real-world evidence of how unconventional solutions and groundbreaking practices were implemented in response to a global crisis. Contributors analyze how incarcerated individuals, their families, and their supervisors dealt with the fear of transmission, medical care, and death. Their findings, which are necessarily dependent on timing, place, measurement, and operationalization, include both change and stasis, both negative and positive outcomes. For instance, while minor and property-related offenses initially declined, violent crimes like homicide and intimate partner violence increased. Drug usage patterns changed, leading to a rise in opioid overdoses, and despite the rise in digital interactions, there was no significant difference in self-reported cybervictimization. Furthermore, rates of gang-related crimes did not decrease. Policy and public health responses reshaped criminal activities, influencing the methods and motivations behind theft, child and elder abuse, and other offenses. This volume includes in-depth examinations of certain often-overlooked crimes, such as labor trafficking, and provides direct insights into the job challenges faced by criminal justice professionals, from probation personnel to labor rights advocates.

Emerging innovations in health risk management within correctional facilities led to increased awareness and focus on specific types of crime. Responses to the pandemic revealed significant challenges, such as burnout among justice system personnel, difficulties in adapting and innovating, and challenges in providing services to vulnerable populations.

Through diverse perspectives and empirical approaches ranging from advanced statistical analysis to qualitative interviews, Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities that affect research results.  It showcases the resilience and innovation within the criminal justice field and details the challenges professionals in this area tackled during a universally trying time, presenting valuable lessons for future crises. 

An interpretation of the ideologies and kinships of detective fiction in Cuba and Mexico

The transplanted, inherently modern detective genre serves as an especially effective lens for exposing the fissures and divergences of modernity in post-1968 Mexico and revolutionary Cuba.