The expansion of organized crime across national borders has become a key security concern for the international community. In this theoretically and empirically vibrant portrait of a global phenomenon, Jana Arsovska examines some of the most widespread myths about the so-called Albanian Mafia. Based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with victims, offenders, and law enforcement across ten countries, as well as court files and confidential intelligence reports, Decoding Albanian Organized Crime presents a comprehensive overview of the causes, codes of conduct, activities, migration, and structure of Albanian organized crime groups in the Balkans, Western Europe, and the United States. Paying particular attention to the dynamic relationships among culture, politics, and organized crime, the book develops a framework for understanding the global growth of the criminal underworld and provides a model for future comparative research.
The expansion of organized crime across national borders has become a key security concern for the international community. In this theoretically and empirically vibrant portrait of a global phenomenon, Jana Arsovska examines some of the most widespread myths about the so-called Albanian Mafia. Based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with victims, offenders, and law enforcement across ten countries, as well as court files and confidential intelligence reports, Decoding Albanian Organized Crime presents a comprehensive overview of the causes, codes of conduct, activities, migration, and structure of Albanian organized crime groups in the Balkans, Western Europe, and the United States. Paying particular attention to the dynamic relationships among culture, politics, and organized crime, the book develops a framework for understanding the global growth of the criminal underworld and provides a model for future comparative research.
Albanian Mafia Wars is a fast-paced account of how one of the world's most dangerous criminal societies has seized control of Britain's £5 billion cocaine trade. War in the Balkans during the late 1990s brought a small but determined Albanian underworld to London. Some muscled in on vice, while others stood their ground against Turkish and British crime groups as they staked their claims in the heroin trade. A few were simply psychopathic killers with a Tony Montana complex who inflicted pain and misery on those around them.Picking up where hit TV show like Narcos and Besa leave off, this book goes beyond the headlines to chronicle the expansion of one of the world's most mysterious mafias, from its origins in war-torn Eastern Europe, to its rivalry with New York's Five Families, and to the chaos unleashed on the streets of Britain by narco gangs with access to cocaine pipelines from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Featuring a cast of real-life characters including international drugs barons, psychotic hitmen, vengeful warlords and blinged-up street gangsters, the saga takes in everything from the anarchy of Albania's civil war, to the squalor of sex trafficking in Soho, and the bloody street wars behind the rise of Britain's new kings of cocaine. This book brings the story bang up to date, revealing how organised crime syndicates have infiltrated every level of the Albanian state while their godfathers escape justice, paving the way for huge profits to be made in the rest of the world. It also features gritty reportage from the front line of Britain's drug wars, detailing how Albanian drug gangs operate in the capital and beyond while maintaining close links with crime lords back home.This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys Netflix shows such as Narcos and wants to understand the emerging threat to Britain from the world's newest global mafia.ABOUT THE AUTHORJohn Lucas is a journalist who has written for some of Britain's best-selling national newspapers, including The Sun, The Daily Mirror, the Mail on Sunday and The Times.He has covered many of the nation's most important crime stories in recent years, including the London Bridge and Westminster terror attacks, the Hatton Garden raid, the murder of gangster John 'Goldfinger' Palmer and the Salisbury poisonings. John's first book, Britain's Forgotten Serial Killer, led to a review of the decision to move notorious inmate Patrick Mackay to an open prison after the matter was raised in Parliament. Praise for Britain's Forgotten Serial Killer: "An instant classic"- True Crime Enthusiast."I really cannot commend the detail contained throughout the book enough. You'll find all those obscure things that an author would have proper had to dig out - specific amounts of fines, times, dates for example - all contained within. But it doesn't just read as a list of statistics to impress - they have been researched and put together to support the engaging context that make this an unmissable book, and an instant true crime classic." "Highly recommended"- Brutally Honest Reviews. "Lucas does not shy away from describing the brutal nature of Mackay's crimes or from delving into the background of abuse and deprivation which certainly contributed to Mackay's antisocial attitude, but it's Lucas' sympathy for the innocent victims and sensitive writing about their deaths which really stands out."
How do mafias work? How do they recruit people, control members, conduct legal and illegal business, and use violence? Why do they establish such a complex mix of rituals, rules, and codes of conduct? And how do they differ? Why do some mafias commit many more murders than others? This book makes sense of mafias as organizations, via a collative analysis of historical accounts, official data, investigative sources, and interviews. Catino presents a comparative study of seven mafias around the world, from three Italian mafias to the American Cosa Nostra, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Triads, and Russian mafia. He identifies the organizational architecture that characterizes these criminal groups, and relates different organizational models to the use of violence. Furthermore, he advances a theory on the specific functionality of mafia rules and discusses the major organizational dilemmas that mafias face. This book shows that understanding the organizational logic of mafias is an indispensable step in confronting them.
The Encyclopedia of RESEARCH METHODS IN CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE The most comprehensive reference work on research designs and methods in criminology and criminal justice This Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice offers a comprehensive survey of research methodologies and statistical techniques that are popular in criminology and criminal justice systems across the globe. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, it offers a clear insight into the techniques that are currently in use to answer the pressing questions in criminology and criminal justice. The Encyclopedia contains essential information from a diverse pool of authors about research designs grounded in both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It includes information on popular datasets and leading resources of government statistics. In addition, the contributors cover a wide range of topics such as: the most current research on the link between guns and crime, rational choice theory, and the use of technology like geospatial mapping as a crime reduction tool. This invaluable reference work: Offers a comprehensive survey of international research designs, methods, and statistical techniques Includes contributions from leading figures in the field Contains data on criminology and criminal justice from Cambridge to Chicago Presents information on capital punishment, domestic violence, crime science, and much more Helps us to better understand, explain, and prevent crime Written for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers, The Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice is the first reference work of its kind to offer a comprehensive review of this important topic.
Organized Crime: Analyzing Illegal Activities, Criminal Structures, and Extra-legal Governance provides a systematic overview of the processes and structures commonly labeled “organized crime,” drawing on the pertinent empirical and theoretical literature primarily from North America, Europe, and Australia. The main emphasis is placed on a comprehensive classificatory scheme that highlights underlying patterns and dynamics, rather than particular historical manifestations of organized crime. Esteemed author Klaus von Lampe strategically breaks the book down into three key dimensions: (1) illegal activities, (2) patterns of interpersonal relations that are directly or indirectly supporting these illegal activities, and (3) overarching illegal power structures that regulate and control these illegal activities and also extend their influence into the legal spheres of society. Within this framework, numerous case studies and topical issues from a variety of countries illustrate meaningful application of the conceptual and theoretical discussion.
Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.
This work examines the structure and illegal activities of organized crime groups in Taiwan and explores the infiltration of crime groups into the business and political arenas. It looks at the intricate relationship among government officials, elected deputies, businessmen, and underworld figures.
What makes someone responsible for a crime and therefore liable tof punishment under the criminal law? Modern lawyers will quickly and easily point to the criminal law's requirement of concurrent actus reus and mens rea, doctrines of the criminal law which ensure that someone will only be found criminally responsible if they have committed criminal conduct while possessing capacities of understanding, awareness, and self-control at the time of offense. Any notion of criminal responsibility based on the character of the offender, meaning an implication of criminality based on reputation or the assumed disposition of the person, would seem to today's criminal lawyer a relic of the 18th Century. In this volume, Nicola Lacey demonstrates that the practice of character-based patterns of attribution was not laid to rest in 18th Century criminal law, but is alive and well in contemporary English criminal responsibility-attribution. Building upon the analysis of criminal responsibility in her previous book, Women, Crime, and Character, Lacey investigates the changing nature of criminal responsibility in English law from the mid-18th Century to the early 21st Century. Through a combined philosophical, historical, and socio-legal approach, this volume evidences how the theory behind criminal responsibility has shifted over time. The character and outcome responsibility which dominated criminal law in the 18th Century diminished in ideological importance in the following two centuries, when the idea of responsibility as founded in capacity was gradually established as the core of criminal law. Lacey traces the historical trajectory of responsibility into the 21st Century, arguing that ideas of character responsibility and the discourse of responsibility as founded in risk are enjoying a renaissance in the modern criminal law. These ideas of criminal responsibility are explored through an examination of the institutions through which they are produced, interpreted and executed; the interests which have shaped both doctrines and institutions; and the substantive social functions which criminal law and punishment have been expected to perform at different points in history.
Transnational organized crime crosses borders, challenges States, exploits individuals, pursues profit, wrecks economies, destroys civil society, and ultimately weakens global democracy. It is a phenomenon that is all too often misunderstood and misrepresented. This handbook attempts to redress the balance, by providing a fresh and interdisciplinary overview of the problems which transnational organized crime represents. The innovative aspect of this handbook is not only its interdisciplinary nature but also the dialogue between international academics and practitioners that it presents. The handbook seeks to provide the definitive overview of transnational organized crime, including contributions from leading international scholars as well as emerging researchers. The work starts by examining the origins, concepts, contagion and evolution of transnational organized crime and then moves on to discuss the impact, governance and reactions of governments and their agencies, before looking to the future of transnational organized crime, and how the State will seek to respond. Providing a cutting edge survey of the discipline, this work will be essential reading for all those with an interest in this dangerous phenomenon.
