Crime In An Insecure World

'Crime in an Insecure World' investigates the alarming trend across Western societies of treating every imaginable source of harm as a crime. The book explains why selected issues of national security, social security, corporate security and domestic security are at the top of the political agenda.

All chapters in this new edition are updated and a wide range of new topics are discussed, including the Syrian civil war, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its intervention in East Ukraine, the global refugee crisis, China’s military buildup, the impact of fracking on oil and gas markets, and rapidly evolving cyberwar capabilities.

Over a decade on from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, intelligence continues to be of central importance to the contemporary world. Today there is a growing awareness of the importance of intelligence, and an increasing investment in it, as individuals, groups, organizations and states all seek timely and actionable information in order to increase their sense of security. But what exactly is intelligence? Who seeks to develop it and how? What happens to intelligence once it is produced, and what dilemmas does this generate? How can liberal democracies seek to mitigate problems of intelligence, and what do we mean by “intelligence failure?”’ In a fully revised and expanded new edition of their classic guide to the field, Peter Gill and Mark Phythian explore these and other questions. Together they set out a comprehensive framework for the study of intelligence, discussing how ‘intelligence’ can best be understood, how it is collected, analysed, disseminated and acted upon, how it raises ethical problems, and how and why it fails. Drawing on a range of contemporary examples, Intelligence in an Insecure World is an authoritative and accessible guide to a rapidly expanding area of enquiry - one which everyone has an interest in understanding.

Firozsha Baag is an apartment building in Bombay. Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new. "A fine collection...the volume is informed by a tone of gentle compassion for seemingly insignificant lives."--Michiko Kakutani,New York Times

In this provocative history of parenting, Harry Hendrick analyses the social and economic reasons behind parenting trends. He shows how broader social changes, including neoliberalism, feminism, the collapse of the social-democratic ideal, and the 'new behaviourism', have led to the rise of the anxious and narcissistic parent. The book charts the shift from the liberal and progressive parenting styles of the 1940s-70s, to the more 'behavioural', punitive and managerial methods of childrearing today, made popular by 'experts' such as Gina Ford and Supernanny Jo Frost, and by New Labour's parent education programmes. This trend, Hendrick argues, is symptomatic of the sour, mean-spirited and vindictive social norms found throughout society today. It undermines the better instincts of parents and, therefore, damages parent-child relations. Instead, he proposes, parents should focus on understanding and helping their children as they work at growing up.

A lucid, sophisticated and timely vindication of the importance of Marxist, feminist and other radical perspectives on the state and political economy to the analysis of crime, control and justice. It offers a valuable guide to issues of political philosophy for students and teachers of criminology, critically deconstructing the taken-for-granted categories of law and criminal justice. - Professor Robert Reiner, London School of Economics, UK This clear and concise book sets out the relationship between political theory and criminology. It critically analyzes key theories and debates within criminology and addresses the major political ideas that lie beneath them. Organized around key criminological concepts and issues, the book covers: " power and ideology " the nature of the state " social control and policing " punishment " economics and criminal activity " morality. The book has been carefully developed to support practical teaching and learning and contains chapter summaries, further reading and a comprehensive glossary, which combine to provide a full understanding of the themes.

Through a theoretical examination of the preventive turn in criminal law and justice which has gained momentum in Anglo-American criminal justice systems since the late-twentieth century, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law demonstrates how recent transformations in criminal law and justice are intrinsically related to and embedded in the way liberal society and liberal law have been imagined, developed, and conditioned by its social, political, and historical context. Henrique Carvalho identifies a tension between the idea of punishment as an expression of individual justice, and prevention as a manifestation of the need for security and the promotion of welfare. Tracing this tension back to an intrinsic ambivalence within the modern conception of individual liberty, which is both repressed and preserved by liberal conceptions of responsibility and punishment, Carvalho proves that as long as this ambivalence remains unexamined, liberal law has the potential to both promote and undermine individual justice. Engaging with the dominant contemporary literature on criminal law, prevention, risk, security, and criminalisation, this volume deploys a theoretical perspective developed through a critical analysis of both classical and contemporary works of social and political theory. The book reveals that the pervasiveness of prevention in 21st century criminal justice systems represents not only the consequence of new and unprecedented features of contemporary politics and society, but also the manifestation of essential aspects of the liberal legal and political tradition.