Hidden Crime

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that “banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum.” This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa’s and Southeast Asia’s postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia? Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Edgar Award finalist, Best Fact Crime American Masters (PBS), “1 of 5 Essential Culture Reads” One of CrimeReads’ “Best True Crime Books of the Year” “A fast–paced, meticulously researched, thoroughly engaging (and often infuriating) look–see into the systematic criminalization of gay men and widespread condemnation of homosexuality post–World War I.” —Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle Stories of murder have never been just about killers and victims. Instead, crime stories take the shape of their times and reflect cultural notions and prejudices. In this Edgar Award–finalist for Best Fact Crime, James Polchin recovers and recounts queer stories from the crime pages―often lurid and euphemistic―that reveal the hidden history of violence against gay men. But what was left unsaid in these crime pages provides insight into the figure of the queer man as both criminal and victim, offering readers tales of vice and violence that aligned gender and sexual deviance with tragic, gruesome endings. Victims were often reported as having made “indecent advances,” forcing the accused's hands in self–defense and reducing murder charges to manslaughter. As noted by Caleb Cain in The New Yorker review of Indecent Advances, “it’s impossible to understand gay life in twentieth–century America without reckoning with the dark stories. Gay men were unable to shake free of them until they figured out how to tell the stories themselves, in a new way.” Indecent Advances is the first book to fully investigate these stories of how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.

In The Doomsday Mother, bestselling true crime author John Glatt tells the twisted tale of Lori Vallow, accused of having her two children murdered to start a new life with her new husband, doomsday prepper Chad Daybell. At first, the residents of Kauai Beach Resort took little notice of their new neighbors. The glamorous blonde and her tall husband fit the image of the ritzy gated community. The couple seemed to keep to themselves—until the police knocked on their door with a search warrant. Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell had fled to Hawaii in the midst of being investigated for the disappearance of Lori’s children back in Idaho—Tylee and JJ—who hadn’t been seen alive in five months. For years, Lori Vallow had been devoted to her children and her Mormon faith. But when her path crossed with Chad Daybell, a religious zealot who taught his followers how to prepare for the end-times, the tumultuous relationship transformed her into someone unrecognizable. As authorities searched for Lori’s children, they uncovered more suspicious deaths with links to both Lori and Chad, including the death of Lori’s third and fourth husbands, her brother, and Chad’s wife. In June 2020, the gruesome remains of JJ and Tylee were discovered on Chad’s property, and the newlyweds were arrested and charged with murder. And in a shocking development, horrifying statements revealed that the couple’s fanatical beliefs had convinced them the children had become zombies--a belief that may have led to their deaths. Bestselling author and journalist John Glatt takes readers deeper into the devastating story of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell in an attempt to unravel the lethal relationship of this doomsday couple.

Cats and dogs shouldn’t fall in love. Like any wolf, RPD detective Nate knows this. He can’t help it if the tigress he’s been trading quips with at the supermarket is the most alluring woman he’s ever met. Evina is aware their flirtation can’t lead to more. Still, she relishes trading banter with the hot werewolf. This hardworking single mom hasn’t felt so female since her twins’ baby daddy left. Plus, as a station chief in Resurrection’s Fire Department, she understands the demands of a dangerous job. Their will-they-or-won’t-they tango could go on forever if it weren’t for the mortal peril the city’s children fall into. To save them, Nate and Evina must team up, a choice that ignites the sparks smoldering between them . . . “One hell of a hot paranormal romance!”—Bitten by Love “Weaving the police procedural with her inventive love scenes [made] this book one I could not put down.”—The Romance Reviews

Annotation In the US, murderers, particularly those sentenced to death, are usually considered as entirely different from the rest of us. Sociologist Susan F. Sharp challenges perspective by reminding us that those facing a death sentence, in addition to being murderers, are brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, daughters or sons.

This book offers unparalleled insight into the ways in which hate crime affects individuals and communities across the world. Drawing from the testimonies of more than 2,000 victims of hate crime, the book identifies the physical, emotional and community-level harms associated with hate crimes and key implications for justice in the context of punitive, restorative, rehabilitative and educative interventions. Hate crime constitutes one of the biggest global challenges of our time and blights the lives of millions of people across the world. Within this context the book generates important new knowledge on victims’ experiences and expectations, and uses its compelling evidence-base to identify fresh ways of understanding, researching and responding to hate crime. It also documents the sensitivities associated with undertaking complex fieldwork of this nature, and in doing so offers an authentic account of the very necessary – and sometimes unconventional – steps which are fundamental to the process of engaging with ‘hard-to-reach’ communities.

"This Study of the Early American conservation movement reveals the hidden history of three of the nation's first parks: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Karl Jacoby traces the effects that the criminalization of such traditional rural practices as hunting, fishing, and foraging had on country people in these areas. Despite the presence of new environmental regulations, poaching arson, and timber stealing became widespread among the Native Americans, poor whites, and others who had long relied on the natural resources now contained within conservation areas. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes," providing a rich and multifaceted portrayal of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." "Crimes against Nature includes previously unpublished historical photographs depicting such subjects as poachers in Yellowstone and a Native American "squatters' camp" at the Grand Canyon. This study demonstrates the importance of considering class for understanding environmental history and opens a new perspective on the social history of rural and poor people a century age."--Jacket of 2001 edition