The Protection Racket State
The Protection Racket State

Author: William Stanley

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 1996-06-08

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9781566393911

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In 1932 security forces in El Salvador murdered 25,000 peasants and workers. Between 1978 and 1991 the Salvadoran government killed an additional 50,000 civilians. Death squads maimed and tortured their victims, who included labor organizers, priests, and teachers. By the later months of 1980, government forces were slaughtering 1,000 civilians a month. Most of those killed were poor or worked with the poor. In per capita terms Salvadoran state terror was among the worst in the hemisphere. States have killed more people than have rebellions, but we know very little about what factors influence this genocide. Why do states kill? In this provocative and chilling book, William Stanley demonstrates that the Salvadoran military state was essentially a protection racket. It offered protection to the elites from civilian uprising and in return received a concession to govern. This protection took the form of wide-scale murder. As Stanley puts it, "State violence was a currency of relations between state and non-state elites." There are valuable lessons in this book for all those concerned with state-sponsored terror. It indicts the United States for having strengthened the might of the Salvadoran military. It challenges conventional wisdom about governments and repression and shows state-sponsored violence as much more than just a response to opposition.

The Politics of Protection Rackets in Post-New Order Indonesia
The Politics of Protection Rackets in Post-New Order Indonesia

Author: Ian Douglas Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 113504208X

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Gangs and militias have been a persistent feature of social and political life in Indonesia. During the authoritarian New Order regime they constituted part of a vast network of sub-contracted coercion and social control on behalf of the state. Indonesia’s subsequent democratisation has seen gangs adapt to and take advantage of the changed political context. New types of populist street based organisations have emerged that combine predatory rent-seeking with claims of representing marginalised social and economic groups. Based on extensive fieldwork in Jakarta this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing relationship between gangs, militias and political power and authority in post-New Order Indonesia. It argues that gangs and militias have manufactured various types of legitimacy in consolidating localised territorial monopolies and protection economies. As mediators between the informal politics of the street and the world of formal politics they have become often influential brokers in Indonesia’s decentralised electoral democracy. More than mere criminal extortion, it is argued that the protection racket as a social relation of coercion and domination remains a salient feature of Indonesia’s post-authoritarian political landscape. This ground-breaking study will be of interest to students and scholars of Indonesian and Southeast Asian politics, political violence, gangs and urban politics.

Bringing the State Back In
Bringing the State Back In

Author: Social Science Research Council (U.S.). Committee on States and Social Structures

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1985-09-13

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780521313131

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Papers from a conference held at Mount Kisco, N.Y., Feb. 1982, sponsored by the Committee on States and Social Structures, the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies, and the Joint Committee on Western European Studies of the Social Science Research Council. Includes bibliographies and index.

War is a Racket
War is a Racket

Author: Smedley Butler

Publisher: Jovian Press

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 23

ISBN-13: 1537820796

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War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler frankly discusses how business interests commercially benefit (including war profiteering) from warfare. He had been appointed commanding officer of the Gendarmerie during the United States occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915 to 1934.

Government's Place in the Market
Government's Place in the Market

Author: Eliot Spitzer

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-04-18

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 0262295113

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In his first book, the former New York governor and current CNN cohost offers a manifesto on the economy and the public interest. As New York State Attorney General from 1998 to 2006, Eliot Spitzer successfully pursued corporate crime, including stock price inflation, securities fraud, and predatory lending practices. Drawing on those experiences, in this book Spitzer considers when and how the government should intervene in the workings of the market. The 2009 American bank bailout, he argues, was the wrong way: it understandably turned government intervention into a flashpoint for public disgust because it socialized risk, privatized benefit, and left standing institutions too big to fail, incompetent regulators, and deficient corporate governance. That's unfortunate, because good regulatory policy, he claims, can make markets and firms work efficiently, equitably, and in service of fundamental public values. Spitzer lays out the right reasons for government intervention in the market: to guarantee transparency, to overcome market failures, and to guard our core values against the market's unfair biases such as racism. With specific proposals to serve those ends—from improving corporate governance to making firms responsible for their own risky behavior—he offers a much-needed blueprint for the proper role of government in the market. Finally, taking account of regulatory changes since the crash of 2008, he suggests how to rebuild public trust in government so real change is possible. Responses to Spitzer by Sarah Binder, Andrew Gelman, and John Sides, Dean Baker, and Robert Johnson, raise issues of politics, ideology, and policy.

The Social Order of the Underworld
The Social Order of the Underworld

Author: David Skarbek

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 019932851X

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When most people think of prison gangs, they think of chaotic bands of violent, racist thugs. Few people think of gangs as sophisticated organizations (often with elaborate written constitutions) that regulate the prison black market, adjudicate conflicts, and strategically balance the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. Yet as David Skarbek argues, gangs form to create order among outlaws, producing alternative governance institutions to facilitate illegal activity. He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls. The ramifications of his findings extend far beyond the seemingly irrational and often tragic society of captives. They also illuminate how social and political order can emerge in conditions where the traditional institutions of governance do not exist.

The Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making
The Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making

Author: Wim Bernasco

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-05-08

Total Pages: 777

ISBN-13: 0190674741

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Although the issue of offender decision-making pervades almost every discussion of crime and law enforcement, only a few comprehensive texts cover and integrate information about the role of decision-making in crime. The Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making provide high-quality reviews of the main paradigms in offender decision-making, such as rational choice theory and dual-process theory. It contains up-to-date reviews of empirical research on decision-making in a wide range of decision types including not only criminal initiation and desistance, but also choice of locations, times, targets, victims, methods as well as large variety crimes including homicide, robbery, domestic violence, burglary, street crime, sexual crimes, and cybercrime. Lastly, it provides in-depth treatments of the major methods used to study offender decision-making, including experiments, observation studies, surveys, offender interviews, and simulations. Comprehensive and authoritative, the Handbook will quickly become the primary source of theoretical, methodological, and empirical knowledge about decision-making as it relates to criminal behavior.

The Right to Earn a Living
The Right to Earn a Living

Author: Timothy Sandefur

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1935308343

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America’s founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn’t need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government’s powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race.

Political Policing
Political Policing

Author: Martha Knisely Huggins

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13:

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Reconstructing eighty years of history, Political Policing examines the nature and consequences of U.S. police training in Brazil and other Latin American countries. With data from a wide range of primary sources, including previously classified U.S. and Brazilian government documents, Martha K. Huggins uncovers how U.S. strategies to gain political control through police assistance--in the name of hemispheric and national security--has spawned torture, murder, and death squads in Latin America. After a historical review of policing in the United States and Europe over the past century, Huggins reveals how the United States, in order to protect and strengthen its position in the world system, has used police assistance to establish intelligence and other social control infrastructures in foreign countries. The U.S.-encouraged centralization of Latin American internal security systems, Huggins claims, has led to the militarization of the police and, in turn, to an increase in state-sanctioned violence. Furthermore, Political Policing shows how a domestic police force--when trained by another government--can lose its power over legitimate crime as it becomes a tool for the international interests of the nation that trains it. Pointing to U.S. responsibility for violations of human rights by foreign security forces, Political Policing will provoke discussion among those interested in international relations, criminal justice, human rights, and the sociology of policing.