This book is based on the experiences of a dealer in stolen goods (alias 'Sam Goodman'), whose history serves as a model for understanding the role that fences play in today's society. Steffensmeier provides a detailed analysis of how a fence develops relationships with thieves, customers, and other fences, how prices are set and negotiated, the profits derived, and the skills required for the job, and the meaning and rewards of fencing. Steffensmeier relates the potential consequences: the events surrounding Sam's eventual arrest and conviction for receiving stolen property. Sociologists, criminologists, law enforcement officers, and public policy makers will find this an book enlightening and engaging portrayal of the criminal career.

This book is about a recently developed class of strategies, known as the fence methods, which fits particularly well in non-conventional and complex model selection problems with practical considerations. The idea involves a procedure to isolate a subgroup of what are known as correct models, of which the optimal model is a member. This is accomplished by constructing a statistical fence, or barrier, to carefully eliminate incorrect models. Once the fence is constructed, the optimal model is selected from amongst those within the fence according to a criterion which can be made flexible. In particular, the criterion of optimality can incorporate consideration of practical interest, thus making model selection a real life practice.Furthermore, this book introduces a data-driven approach, called adaptive fence, which can be used in a wide range of problems involving determination of tuning parameters, or constants. Instead of relying on asymptotic theory, the fence focuses on finite-sample performance, and computation. Such features are particularly suitable to statistics in the new era.

This Handbook, first published in 2005, provides standard procedures for planning and conducting a survey of any species or habitat and for evaluating the data.