In a major new theory of criminal behavior, Mark Colvin argues that chronic criminals emerge from a developmental process characterized by recurring, erratic episodes of coercion. Colvin's differential coercion theory, which integrates several existing criminological perspectives, lays out a compelling argument that coercive forces create social and psychological dynamics that lead to chronic criminal behavior. While Colvin's presentation focuses primarily on chronic street criminals, the theory is also applied to exploratory offenders and white-collar criminals. In addition, Colvin presents a critique of current crime control measures, which rely heavily on coercion, and offers in their place a comprehensive crime reduction program based on consistent, non-coercive practices.

This is the first book to study the role coercion plays as a pathway into crime for women who are arrested alongside other defendants. Drawing on court files and newspaper accounts, it analyzes four cases of women who were arrested alongside a partner and who argued in their defense that they had been coerced. Charlotte Barlow examines these cases from a feminist perspective that allows her to highlight the importance of gender expectations and gendered discourse in both the trials themselves and the way the media covered them.

Drawing on in-depth research in the Philippines, this book reveals how local forms of political and economic monopoly may thrive under conditions of democracy and capitalist development.

This book offers a critical appreciation of the nature and impact of coercive control in interpersonal relationships. It examines what this concept means, who is impacted by the behaviours it captures, and how academics, policymakers, and policy advocates have responded to the increasing recognition of the deleterious effects that coercive control has on especially women’s lives. The book discusses the historical emergence of this concept, who its main proponents have been, and how its effects have been understood. It considers the role of coercive control in making sense of women’s pathway into crime as well as their experiences of it as victims. Coercive control has been presented predominantly as a gendered process, and consideration is given in this book to the efficacy of this assumption as well as the extent to which the concept makes sense for a wide constituency of marginalized women. In recent years, much energy has been given to efforts to criminalize coercive control, and the concerns that these efforts generate are discussed in detail, alongside what the limitations to such initiatives might be. In conclusion, the book situates the rising pre-occupation with coercive control within the broader concerns with policy transfer, ways of taking account of victim-survivor voices, alongside the importance of working towards more holistic policy responses to violence(s) against women. The book will be of particular interest to academics, policymakers, and practitioners working in criminal justice who wish to understand both the nature and extent of coercive control and the importance of appreciating the role of nuance in translating that understanding into practice.

Drawing on cases, Stark identifies the problems with our current approach to domestic violence, outlines the components of coercive control, and then uses this alternate framework to analyse the cases of battered women charged with criminal offenses directed at their abusers.

The number of people incarcerated in the U.S. now exceeds 2.3 million, due in part to the increasing criminalization of drug use: over 25% of people incarcerated in jails and prisons are there for drug offenses. Judging Addicts examines this increased criminalization of drugs and the medicalization of addiction in the U.S. by focusing on drug courts, where defendants are sent to drug treatment instead of prison. Rebecca Tiger explores how advocates of these courts make their case for what they call “enlightened coercion,” detailing how they use medical theories of addiction to justify increased criminal justice oversight of defendants who, through this process, are defined as both “sick” and “bad.” Tiger shows how these courts fuse punitive and therapeutic approaches to drug use in the name of a “progressive” and “enlightened” approach to addiction. She critiques the medicalization of drug users, showing how the disease designation can complement, rather than contradict, punitive approaches, demonstrating that these courts are neither unprecedented nor unique, and that they contain great potential to expand punitive control over drug users. Tiger argues that the medicalization of addiction has done little to stem the punishment of drug users because of a key conceptual overlap in the medical and punitive approaches—that habitual drug use is a problem that needs to be fixed through sobriety. Judging Addicts presses policymakers to implement humane responses to persistent substance use that remove its control entirely from the criminal justice system and ultimately explores the nature of crime and punishment in the U.S. today.

This book explores the controversial relationship between mental health and offending and looks at the ways in which offenders with mental health problems are cared for, coerced and controlled by the criminal justice and mental health systems. It provides a much-needed criminological approach to the field of forensic mental health. Beginning with an exploration into why the relationship between mental health and offending is so complex, readers will be introduced to a range of perspectives through which mental health and its relationship to offending behaviour can be understood. The book considers the politics surrounding mental health and offending, focusing particularly on the changing policy response to mentally disordered offenders since the mid-1990s. With dedicated chapters concerning the police, courts, secure services and the community, this book explores a range of issues including: • The tensions between the care, coercion and control of mentally disordered offenders • The increasingly blurred boundaries between mental health and criminal justice • Rights, responsibilities, accountability and blame • Risk, public protection and precaution • Challenges involved with treatment, recovery and rehabilitation • Staffing challenges surrounding multi-agency working • Funding, privatisation and challenges surrounding service commissioning • Methodological challenges in the field. Providing an accessible and concise overview of the field and its key perspectives, this book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in mental health offered by criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, nursing and public policy departments. It will also be of interest to a wide range of mental health and criminal justice practitioners.