The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429352775 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. No city environment reflects the meaning of urban life better than a public place. A public place, whatever its nature—a park, a mall, a train platform or a street corner—is where people pass by, meet each other and at times become a victim of crime. With this book, we submit that crime and safety in public places are not issues that can be easily dealt with within the boundaries of a single discipline. The book aims to illustrate the complexity of patterns of crime and fear in public places with examples of studies on these topics contextualized in different cities and countries around the world. This is achieved by tackling five cross-cutting themes: the nature of the city’s environment as a backdrop for crime and fear; the dynamics of individuals’ daily routines and their transit safety; the safety perceptions experienced by those who are most in fear in public places; the metrics of crime and fear; and, finally, examples of current practices in promoting safety. All these original chapters contribute to our quest for safer, more inclusive, resilient, equitable and sustainable cities and human settlements aligned to the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Drugs, Crime, and Justice is an engaging, yet comprehensive, analysis of the interrelationships among drug use/abuse, crime, and justice. The first four chapters introduce readers to the interrelationships between drugs and crime, while the second later chapters provide readers with an overview of historical and contemporary policies, as well as a comprehensive review of research on policing drug markets, arresting drug offenders, and prosecution and sentencing of drug offenders in state and federal courts. Steven Belenko and Cassia Spohn also examine and assess the impact of the war on drugs and conclude with a discussion of recent policy changes such as drug courts and reform/repeal of mandatory minimum sentences and an examination of new and emerging drug policies in the 21st Century.

Crime and Criminal Justice: Concepts and Controversies (by Stacy L. Mallicoat) introduces students to the key concepts of the criminal justice system and invites them to explore emerging issues. Students will gain a balanced perspective of the criminal justice system through Current Controversy debates at the end of each chapter that motivate students to apply what they learned by critically analyzing and discussing the pros and cons of the issues presented. Examining important, but often overlooked, components, such as the role of victims and policy, Crime and Criminal Justice helps students develop a foundational understanding of the structures, agencies, and functions of the criminal justice system, as well as build the confidence and skills they need to effectively analyze current issues in criminal justice.

This brief fills a gap in the studies of organized crime in Mexico (Kan 2012, Ríos 2011, Dell 2011) by documenting and mapping the post-2008 assassination of Mexican border police chiefs. It traces out a “systematic” of law-enforcement assassination in Northern Tier Mexico, showing how the selective, often sequential, hits by cartels on chiefs in border towns and along key drug-trafficking corridors has proven an effective strategy by organized crime elements to serve several goals: (1) to retaliate for federal, state and local prosecution, (2) to try and neutralize police chiefs, (3) to achieve intermittent local governance and/or to seed corrupt police chiefs at the municipal level, and, (4) to reduce local governmental capacity to obtain greater freedom for movement of goods. It is argued that the tactical advantage of organized crime elements gives them relatively easy physical access to law enforcement targets and thus is thus one prime element facilitating the use of assassination as a strategy. U.S. and Mexican legal, political and judicial institutions have not been able to adequately restrict opportunity for law-enforcement assassinations. The inability to reduce access to weapons and officials, to increase security for police personnel, to reduce corruption and punish offenders sets the stage for the assassination of local law enforcement. Yet, it is the goals of organized crime elements (to clear drug-smuggling routes and to try and gain more pliant governance at the municipal level) that ultimately motivate such killings.