Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how certain types of violence can occur, and organized multi-perpetrator abuse certainly fits into this category. Ritual abuse, sadistic abuse and pedophilia rings are often things we see in episodes of “Law and Order,” without having to think of the reality of the victims that actually experience this type of cruelty. In Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013), Michael Salter attempts to bring to light this often-hidden and seldom-believed type of crime. He describes his own experience being the caretaker of someone who was continuously abused and harassed well into adulthood, including his attempts to reach out to law enforcement and hospital workers, most of whom had trouble believing that this kind of abuse was actually taking place. Salter also talks about the connection between views of hypermasculinity and abuse, and the ways in which violence is often a “collective masculine performance.” Through in-depth qualitative research, Salter takes us, he proposes, into a horrifying journey of a reality that we cannot afford to ignore.

Reading Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter‘s book Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade (Columbia Press, 2013) is the most fun I have had doing this podcast. Maguire makes a point during the interview that police officers preferred to arrest marijuana smugglers because they were so laid back and safe to handle. You get the same feeling reading his account of the members of the roaming hippy/surfer community who fund their lifestyle through ‘scams’, that is, smuggling marijuana into Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Maguire is a former pro-surfer and he communicates the culture of the surfer and their dedication to their past-time. Drug smuggling has a very utilitarian role. While the surfers smoke drugs and have the connections to buy them; a good smuggling run can fund many years on the international surfing trail. Thus they are not drug smugglers who surf but surfers who take advantage of the profit margin of smuggling.

Reading the book made me think that they were almost outside the scope of the podcast; this is not organised crime but the occasional foray into crime. It is also the story of invincible young men taking on the impossible in an often amateurish manner and succeeding. However, as Maguire explains, the lure of money can change people and some of the people in the story reverse this equation. This is a story of a time that has passed. There was an innocence in the story during the 1960s and 70s that has been overtaken by the hard edge of the international drug trade. This is an important and overlooked story in the history of crime. The book provides an insight into how people can turn to crime in a manner that contradicts the strongly held theories of the life-course criminologists. I hope the book inspires others to study these marginal areas of crime. As you will hear in the interview, I have volunteered to do so myself.

Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond the abilities of someone from a large nation and beyond the scope of a single book, namely, the history of all the gangs in a country. Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand (Auckland UP, 2013) is, as you will hear in the interview, partly a history of society and politics in New Zealand. Gangs arise from influences of culture and demographics. People form and join gangs for reasons of security and belonging but once in them develop strong in-group behaviours and out-group prejudices. All of this is evident in this book. Jarrod traces the history from the 1950s when the locals copied the Hells Angels through to modern gangs where again the locals are copying American culture and creating imitations of the Bloods and the Crips. It is also interesting to see the responses of government and police in dealing with stereotypes and real criminal activity. I think anyone who reads this book will see familiar practices acted out by the gangs, the authorities and the community. This is a very human story and well worth the read.

 

Joseph Albini and Jeffrey S. McIllwain, Deconstructing Organized Crime: An Historical and Theoretical Study (MacFarlane, 2012) is not, as some academics might think, a post-modern analysis of organized crime. It is however, an exercise of deconstructing by trying to look past the common assumptions and myths to explain the phenomenon we call organized crime.

The book starts with a debunking of mythology around the American Mafia and its popular history. It then moves on to define organized crime and analyse what it means to organise crime. This is often overlooked in many books on the topic. How does organization assist criminals and what types of crime can be organized? The authors also present a good analysis of the illicit market place and the difficulties of running a free market without rules. So it’s a sort of Libertarians meet Hobbes making for large profits but a potentially nasty, brutish and short life. The final chapters of the book look at the nature of the marketplace in a modern globalised society.

I have read many, many books on this topic and I still found this book to be quite refreshing. It definitely meets its goal of jumping over the unanswered questions and myths and getting to the heart of organized crime. It would be an excellent text for undergraduate classes in the topic as it will sweep away the mainstream media typologies and make them think about the nature of the criminal world and its reason for existence.

In West Germany in September and October of 1977, a group of self-described urban guerrillas of the Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer. In exchange for Schleyer, the RAF demanded the release of its imprisoned leaders, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. Those months in 1977 following the abduction of Schleyer are often referred to as the German Autumn, and they represent a crescendo of leftist political violence that had its origins, in some ways, almost a decade before.

Terror prompted a crisis in the 70s for the West German government and German democracy. Of course, 1977 was not the first time in history that a German republic had been tested by a group of radicals intending to bring it down. That had already happened in the 1930s. But 1977 turned out very differently than 1933–when the Nazis “captured” power in a profoundly embattled and dysfunctional democracy. In fact, as Karrin Hanshew argues in her fascinating book, “West Germany’s terrorist crisis helped to usher in the relatively stable civil society that still defines Germany today. Karrin Hanshew‘s new book Terror and Democracy in West Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2012) is, at once, a political history of the FRG, a history of democracy, a history of political theory in the abstract and in action, and a history of social movements, among many other things. I learned so much from it and I think that you will too.

Benedetta Berti is the author of Armed Political Organizations: from Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Berti is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

The book investigates the inner workings of three organizations: Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Irish Republican Army. Berti’s intricate research reveals the history and institutional components of each group beyond what we have come to accept about each. These are organizations that have used violence and military strategies, but also have social service wings that provide education and public health programs. Over time, each adopted increasingly political aims and the mechanisms to participate in elections. Berti’s claims that changes in political opportunity structure help explain the timing of these moves into electioneering.

The findings from this comprehensive book can advance comparative politics scholarship on armed conflict and social movements, but also should be read by public administration and organizational theory researchers.

There are many books about the war against Al Qaeda. Most of these focus on counter-terrorism or counter insurgency military tactics or espionage operations. These books have become more frequent with the death of Osama Bin Laden. Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (Times Books, 2011) is more than you can expect from its competitors. Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker have been reporting on this issue for many years and cover the topic from a number of angles. Most importantly they are the first to give full recognition to the non-military methods used to counter Al Qaeda. They recognize that there is an intellectual chess game at play as well as the brute force of military intervention or drone strikes. Subtle and patient schemes are being used by US governments to undermine the social networks and social capital of the terrorist group. Ploys are used to coax key figures out of hiding. Counter propaganda campaigns are waged to break down support from potential sources of new members. As well as covering the broader and nuanced techniques, the authors also have a clear understanding of the nature of the terrorist threat. Al Qaeda is a terrorist group but not all terrorists are in Al Qaeda. They recognize that this is a group with a unique history and specific goals that needs non-generic responses to break down its strengths. Al Qaeda still exists but is not what it once was. It has weakened but adapted. Schmitt and Shanker provide an excellent coverage of recent history that will allow you to get a more insightful understanding of counter terrorism in modern America.

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There is a fascinating area of study of how communities around the world realized there was such a concept as organized crime. This topic is driven by social attitudes and, to an increasing degree, by media images such as the Godfather movies. Some criminal groups actually model their movie icons, with generational differences for those who saw the Godfather, or Scarface and now Sopranos. In Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK (Oxford University Press, 2013), Dick Hobbs provides us with an analysis of how the image of organized crime grew and changed over time in the UK. As he points out, the types of crimes that are associated with organized crime have always existed, but the recognition of the concept is relatively new. It is driven in part by xenophobic attitudes to migrants and also by the need for government agencies to define the type of work they do. As you will hear in the interview, the same issues that apply in the UK are definitely present in Australia, and there are a number of authors who point to a similar phenomenon in the US. Hobbs has given us an ethnographic history of the social nature of these crimes in the UK. He points out that the crimes are a means of providing services that are accepted by the community but depending and how and by whom they are delivered, they can be classified as either a criminal plague or a social ecology. However, regardless of the academic goals of the book, Lush Life is a great read. I must admit to participating in one of Hobbs’ symptoms that supports the mythology of organized crime, namely, I really enjoyed reading about the characters and their ‘business’ practices. For those of you who are interested in researching this topic please listen to the end of the interview when I asked Dick for his suggestions on the best way to conduct studies in organized crime.

I have read quite a few books on terrorism but always from an English language perspective. This has meant that I was missing the alternative stories from other nations. Guido Steinberg has done me a favour by publishing his German study in English. German Jihad: On the Internationalisation of Islamist Terrorism (Columbia UP, 2013)provides an excellent, detailed analysis of the recent history of the growth of Jihad inspired terrorism by German residents of both European and Asian heritage. He begins the book with one of the best explanations of the near enemy (apostate Islamic governments) and the far enemy (Western nations who are seen as supporting the near enemy), that I have read. He then explains the importance of the demographics of migration to Germany and its role in the Jihadist movement. Germany has a largely Turkish migrant population. As such they did not have the same influences or inspirations as Jihadists from an Arabic background. Importantly, they also did not have the same network of connections which allowed them to easily join international organisations such as Al Qaeda. These circumstances led to a particular series of connections and a lack of awareness by local law enforcement of the growing threat of terrorist activity. Guido gives us a professional and thorough analysis of this history and has sufficient detail to keep a research student engrossed for weeks. I highly recommend the book.

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Today I spoke to Ioan Grillo about his book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury, 2012). This book is an excellent introduction to the state of conflict between drug cartels themselves, the government and the Mexican community. This is not an academic study of criminology. Ioan has reported from Mexico for many years and he has brought together his accumulated wisdom into this book. The final product provides the multi-dimensional story and analysis of the events in that country. He explains how external factors such as the war on drugs in Columbia and internal issues relating to the nature of governance in Mexico have influenced the current situation. But this is more than just a retelling of criminal activity. Ioan gives an insight into the social aspects of the drug culture including the glorification of the participants in popular music and the religious justifications used by some cartels. El Narco is a fascinating book that read to me like a sci-fi almost post-apocalyptic world that actually exists. It is hard for someone from a more stable Western environment to comprehend this alien culture. Having said that Ioan’s account is not a sensationalized account of the events in Mexico but more an empathic expose of a very violent and ungoverned part of the world. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in organized crime and the broader social context in which it operates.