The White Labyrinth
The White Labyrinth

Author: Rensselaer Wright Lee

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1989-01-01

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9781412839648

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Powerful forces work against efforts to control the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States from the Third World. The potential for conflict and recrimination is built into the situation. The main consumer countries are poor and predominantly agricultural. Cocaine traffic in the Western Hemisphere is a particularly serious example of how this conflict of interests plays out. Producing countries and consuming countries each blame the other, and depending on which side they are on, advocate either demand-side or supply-side solutions-controlling the demand of users in the United States for cocaine versus controlling the demand of users in the United States for cocaine versus controlling the supply from South America. U.S. concerns are fairly unambiguous. Cocaine imports have increased five to tenfold since 1977 and abuse of cocaine and its derivative “crack” has become a serious social problem in the United States. The position of producing countries is also clear-cut. Political elites in Third World countries view antidrug crusades with hostility because they impose significant new burdens and create formidable new challenges. The White Labyrinth explains why it is so difficult to take effective action against the cocaine problem. It looks closely at problems faced by producing countries: the economic and political pressures that make it so difficult to address the problem from a supply-side perspective. It analyzes the devastating pressure tactics of “coca lobbies” and cocaine trafficking syndicates. It explores the complex relationships between the cocaine industry and leftist revolutionary movements. It examines the negative consequences of actions taken by the United States. The White Labyrinth is an in-depth examination of a problem that is of paramount public concern. It will be of interest to all those concerned with the development of effective policies, from parents to public officials.

Space, Time, and Organized Crime
Space, Time, and Organized Crime

Author: Alan A. Block

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-01

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1040282679

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Most research on organized crime reveals only a limited sense of its history. Our understanding suffers as a result. Space, Time, and Organized Crime shows how arguments about the sources, consequences, and extent of crime are distorted as a consequence of crude empiricism. Originally published in Europe in 1991 as Perspectives on Organizing Crime, this book is a timely blend of history, criticism, and research. Fully one-fourth of this new edition contains hitherto unpublished materials especially relevant to the American experience.Space, Time, and Organized Crime describes the background of Progressive Era New York. It then broadens its scope by exploring the changes in drug production and distribution in Europe from about 1925 to the mid-1930s. Block addresses such little explored issues as the ethnicity of traders, the structure of drug syndicates, and the impact of legislation that attempted to criminalize increasing aspects of the world's narcotic industry prior to the Second World War. He then goes on to present organized crime's involvement with transnational political movements, intelligence services, and political murders. Space, Time, and Organized Crime concentrates on ambiguities evident in organized crime control, such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's protection of criminal off-shore financial interests, and the contradictions found in America's war on drugs.Space, Time, and Organized Crime demonstrates that the essential nature of crime in the twentieth century (regardless of where it takes place) cannot be understood without sound historical studies and a more sophisticated criminological approach. Block's unique blend of stratification in a historical context will be of special interest to historians, sociologists, criminologists, and penologist.

Dangerous Ground
Dangerous Ground

Author: Donald J. Rebovich

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1351523740

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For many years, if businesses were caught dumping waste, it was treated more as a nuisance than as a crime; the common images of the criminal and the dumper were worlds apart. In Dangerous Ground, originally published in 1992, Donald J. Rebovich closes this perceptual gap, providing essential information about and analysis of hazardous waste crime and the hazardous waste criminal. This paperback edition includes new material, noting important changes since the book's original publication. Rebovich finds that the criminal dumper is usually an ordinary businessman. The author's research discovers that hazardous waste disposal crimes are more likely driven by the cost of legitimate disposal options, rather than by organized crime figures. It is also a world where one's criminal position is often determined by industry connections and personal relationships. Dangerous Ground places the criminal dumping culture in perspective by detailing the basics of hazardous waste generation, its legitimate disposal, government responses, and efforts to control illegal disposal. An epilogue concludes with an analysis of new threats to our environment posed by gas and oil drilling, declining federal prosecutions, progressive sentencing for offenders, and recommendations on how the global community can effectively address international environmental crime.

Environmental Law and American Business
Environmental Law and American Business

Author: Joseph F. DiMento

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1489905650

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We are in the second decade of modem environmental law. By some indicators this body of regulation has matured greatly. We can point to statutes and codes at the federal, state, and local levels which address almost every conceivable form of pollution and environmental insult. Yet, despite the existence of this large body of law, despite considerable expenditures on enforcement, and despite the energetic efforts of people sympathetic to environmental objectives, violations are numerous. Serious pollution problems are commonplace. Love Canal, the Valley of the Drums, Times Beach, and Stringfellow Acid Pits epitomize the national environmental quality challenge. Daily, a major illegal disposal of haz ardous waste is recorded; a new mismanaged dump site is discovered; a toxic substance is found in our drinking water; or a failure to meet a water or air quality standard is identified. Many of these violations involve American business. Failures to comply are of several types. A small businessman in Pennsylvania mistakenly allows a spillover of a pollutant into a protected stream. An industrialist in the Midwest adds to his fortune by illegally dumping dangerous chemicals. A series of errors by several firms, some of which no longer exist, combine to create a health threatening conflagration on the West Coast. An automobile company interprets one of the almost innumerable air pollution rules differently from government: It produces a car which the government says fails to comply with the Clean Air Act.