This book presents a study of street children’s involvement as workers in Bangladeshi organised crime groups based on a three-year ethnographic study in Dhaka. The book argues that ‘mastaans’ are Bangladeshi mafia groups that operate in a market for crime, violence and social protection. It considers the crimes mastaans commit, the ways they divide labour, and how and why street children become involved in these groups. The book explores how street children are hired by ‘mastaans’, to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money, commit political violence and conduct contract killings. The book argues that these young people are neither victims nor offenders; they are instead ‘illicit child labourers’, doing what they can to survive on the streets. This book adds to the emerging fields of the sociology of crime and deviance in South Asia and ‘Southern criminology’.

Although the literature and cultural practices of the South Asian region demonstrate a rich understanding of criminology, this handbook is the first to focus on crime, criminal justice, and victimization in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. South Asia’s rapid growth in population and economy continues to introduce transformations in social behaviors, including those related to criminality and victimization. Readers of this handbook will gain a comprehensive look at criminology, criminal justice, and victimology in the South Asian region, including processes, historical perspectives, politics, policies, and victimization. This collection of chapters penned by scholars from all eight of the South Asian nations, as well as the US, UK, Australia, and Belgium, will advance the study and practice of criminology in the South Asian region and carry implications for other regions. The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Criminology provides a wealth of information on criminological issues and their effect on the countries and governments’ efforts to mitigate them. It is essential reading for students and scholars of South Asian criminology, criminal justice, and politics.

Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and the injustices they face. The analysis focuses on two specific historical eras: 2002-2003 and 2020-2022 and shows that despite recent improvements in employment opportunities and greater mobility for young women, their lives reflect ongoing challenges reminiscent of those faced two decades earlier. While national and global organizations acknowledge the nation's economic and social progress, those on the outskirts of society continue to grapple with enduring poverty. They are excluded from the advantages of economic growth, oppressed by unjust local, national, and global systems, discriminatory laws, and policies. Their struggles go unnoticed as they confront a slew of challenges, including slum evictions, enforced lockdowns, income losses, food insecurity, and ongoing crises related to health, injuries, fatalities, and exploitation and harassment by law enforcement and influential individuals within the slum and the city. After two decades, these obstacles persist, and life remains tenuous, with health severely compromised. This book will appeal to students, academics, and researchers in the fields of Public Health, Medical Anthropology, Gender Studies, Urban Studies, Development Studies, Social Sciences, as well as professionals engaged in urban health and poverty-related work.

The first comprehensive collection of its kind, this handbook addresses the problem of knowledge production in criminology, redressing the global imbalance with an original focus on the Global South. Issues of vital criminological research and policy significance abound in the Global South, with important implications for South/North relations as well as global security and justice. In a world of high speed communication technologies and fluid national borders, empire building has shifted from colonising territories to colonising knowledge. The authors of this volume question whose voices, experiences, and theories are reflected in the discipline, and argue that diversity of discourse is more important now than ever before. Approaching the subject from a range of historical, theoretical, and social perspectives, this collection promotes the Global South not only as a space for the production of knowledge, but crucially, as a source of innovative research and theory on crime and justice. Wide-ranging in scope and authoritative in theory, this study will appeal to scholars, activists, policy-makers, and students from a wide range of social science disciplines from both the Global North and South, including criminal justice, human rights, and penology.

Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies is rooted in the instability, inequality and liquidity of the post-industrial era. It understands the gang as a complex and contradictory phenomenon; a socio-historical agent that reflects, responds to and creates a certain structured environment in spaces which are always in flux. International in scope and drawing on a range of sociological, criminological and anthropological traditions, it looks beyond pathological, ahistorical and non-transformative approaches, and considers other important factors that produce the phenomenon, whether the historically entrenched racialized power structure and segregation in Chicago; the unconstrained state-abandoned development of favelas in Brazil; or the colonization, displacement and dependency of people in Central America. This handbook reflects and defines the new theoretical and empirical traditions of critical gang studies. It offers a variety of perspectives, including: A view of gangs that takes into consideration the global context and appearance of the "gang" in its various forms and stages of development; An appreciation of the gang as a socio-cultural formation; A race-ethnic and class analysis of the gang that problematizes domain assumptions such as the "underclass"; Gender variations of the gang phenomenon with a particular emphasis on their intersectional properties; Relations between gangs and the political economy that address the dominant mode of production and exchange; Treatments that demonstrate the historically contingent nature of gangs and their changes across time; The contradictory impact of gang repressive policies, institutions and practices as part of a broader discussion on the nature of the state in specific societies; and Critical methodologies on gangs that involve discussions of visual and textual representations and the problematics of data collection and analysis. Authoritative, multi-disciplinary and international, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists and anthropologists alike, particularly those engaged with critical criminology/sociology, youth crime, delinquency and global social inequality. The Handbook will also be of interest to policy makers and those in the peacebuilding field.

This book compiles the fieldwork experiences of 55 researchers, addressing the challenges, ethical considerations, and methodologies employed to study 30 diverse populations and phenomena within Criminology and Security Studies. This volume contributes to filling a gap in academic literature by highlighting the often unspoken realities and intricacies of fieldwork. The book is systematically structured into five thematic sections: The Powerful, The Invisible, The Vulnerable, The Violent, and The Cyber. These categories encompass various aspects and dimensions of fieldwork, including managing emotional distress, negotiating access through gatekeepers, ensuring the protection of informants, and exercising discretion in navigating sensitive issues. As a scholarly resource, this book is invaluable for academics, practitioners, and students involved in criminology, security studies, anthropology, sociology, and political science. By offering in-depth reflections and insights, this volume enhances the reader’s understanding of the nuances of fieldwork, and informs the development of robust and ethical research practices. Chapters 2, 9 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.