Explores criminal activities in New Orleans during the Roaring Twenties.

Winner of the 9984 Leslie T. Wilkins Award for the best book in criminology and criminal justice. Bookmaking, numbers, and loansharking are reputed to be major sources of revenue for organized crime, controlled by the "visible hand" of violence. For years this belief has formed the basis of government policy toward illegal markets. Drawing on police files, confiscated records, and interviews with police, prosecutors, and criminal informants, Reuter systematically refutes the notion that the Mafia, by using political connections and the threat of violence, controls the major illegal markets. Instead, he suggests that the cost of suppressing competition has ensured that these markets are populated with small enterprises, many of them marginal and ephemeral. Peter Reuter is a Senior Economist at the Rand Corporation. Disorganized Crime is included in The MIT Press Series on Organization Studies, edited by John Van Maanen.

Raised in a mob-controlled suburb of Chicago, Sidney Heard grew up wanting to be a gangster. He was on probation by the age of thirteen, and continued building his criminal resume over the next half a century. He was a professional arsonist for nearly twenty years; escaped from jail twice; ran a gold scandal grossing over a quarter of a million dollars, and that's just to name a few of his illegal escapades. To top it off, he played a role in one of the most important Supreme Court Decisions of all time (Gideon vs. Wainwright). Sidney's underworld connections ran from the Chicago-based Italians, to the Mexican Mafia. He even worked undercover for the Federal Government at one point in his life. However, all of Sidney's so-called glory would come with a price. While working undercover for the D.E.A., Sidney became hooked on drugs. He soon found himself staring at another round of jail time, a massive criminal record, and pushing his fiftieth birthday. Would he ever find peace? Can a professional criminal ever change his ways and become a productive member of society?

Before police can solve a crime, they need to find their suspects. In especially difficult cases, law enforcement officials use criminal profiling to help catch their perpetrators. The science of criminal profiling combines forensics and psychology to understand the type of person who commits crimes. Through thoroughly-researched text, including informative quotes from experts in the field and statistical fact boxes, readers learn how profilers are able to use evidence to accurately determine an offender's age, motives, and state of mind. They also learn what to do to pursue a career in this field in the future.

Investigates causes of urban riots and civil disturbances to determine how to prevent their reoccurrence.