Criminalized power structures (CPS) are illicit networks that profit from transactions in black markets and from criminalized state institutions while perpetuating a culture of impunity. The book articulates a typology for assessing the threats of CPS and for implementing appropriate strategies to achieve sustainable peace effectively and efficiently. The international case studies address interventions undertaken either to support the implementation of a peace agreement (i.e., a peace operation) or to stabilize a country entangled in an internal conflict in the context of a power-sharing agreement among key protagonists (i.e., a stability operation). In each of these cases, at least one of the parties to the agreement was a criminalized power structure that was a leading spoiler. The final chapter identifies strategies that are most effective for each type of CPS, including the ways and means (or tools) required for effective conflict transformation. A companion volume, Combating Criminalized Power Structures: A Toolkit, provides practitioners with the means of coping with the challenges posed by CPS.

Criminalized power structures (CPS) are illicit networks that profit from transactions in black markets and from criminalized state institutions while perpetuating a culture of impunity. These criminalized power structures are the predominant spoilers of peace settlements and stability operations. This volume focuses on the means available to practitioners to cope with the challenges posed by CPS along with recommendations for improving their efficacy and an enumeration of the conditions essential for their success. The means range from economic sanctions and border controls to the use of social media and criminal intelligence-led operations. Each step of this toolkit is detailed, explaining what each tool is, how it can be used, which type of CPS it is best suited to address, and what is necessary to ensure success of the peace operations. The effectiveness of the tool is also assessed and its use is illustrated through real life situations, such as international supply chain controls to prevent the looting of natural resources in Western Africa or the intervention of international judges and prosecutors in Kosovo. A companion volume, Criminalized Power Structures: The Overlooked Enemies of Peace, articulates a typology for assessing the threats of CPS illustrated by many case studies.

This book provides an analysis of the two concepts of power and crime and posits that criminologists can learn more about these concepts by incorporating ideas from disciplines outside of criminology. Although arguably a 'rendezvous' discipline, Vincenzo Ruggiero argues that criminology can gain much insight from other fields such as the political sciences, ethics, social theory, critical legal studies, economic theory, and classical literature. In this book Ruggiero offers an authoritative synthesis of a range of intellectual conceptions of crime and power, drawing on the works and theories of classical, as well as contemporary thinkers, in the above fields of knowledge, arguing that criminology can ‘humbly’ renounce claims to intellectual independence and adopt notions and perspectives from other disciplines. The theories presented locate the crimes of the powerful in different disciplinary contexts and make the book essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, sociology, law, politics and philosophy.

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.

This book presents a comprehensive history of organized crime in the United States - and how it has been a significant part of the nation's development, rather than an external threat to its political, economic, and social structures.

Criminal law norms are socially derived, being constructed in political processes, but only recently has criminological research began to focus on the political construction of criminal law. There has been increasing interest in the quality of these political processes, the decisions that result, and the rationales and social forces guiding these decisions. In Constructing White-Collar Crime, Joachim J. Savelsberg, a sociologist, and Peter Brühl, a lawyer, have provided an interdisciplinary case study of the construction of new German laws against white-collar crime, relating their results to internationally comparative findings. The analysis is empirical; it is theoretically grounded in a sociological approach that contrasts Marxist versus pluralist or differentiation theory, and functionalist versus conflict group or action theory. The authors also analyze their findings in relation to Max Weber's theory of rationalization of law. In addition the research is methodologically innovative, introducing the technique of cognitive mapping into the study of criminal justice legislation. The book represents the authors' attempts to bridge the gap between microsociological and macrosociological approaches to the construction of criminal law. The authors analyze action rationales, communication patterns, and power structures as they play out in different stages of the law-making process: claims-making in news media; participation of scholars and practitioners in an expert commission and in parliamentary hearings; involvement of industrial lobbying groups during the drafting of the bill in the Department of Justice; and parliamentary deliberations. The analysis demonstrates the considerable weight of economic and political rationales as opposed to justice criteria in the development of criminal legislation. It also indicates that white-collar crime legislation may have counterproductive consequences. The laws are intended to increase the quality of criminal justice by criminalizing the behavior of the powerful, but the less powerful groups within the white-collar classes are more likely to feel the effects. Constructing White-Collar Crime will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of sociology, law, and criminology.