Letizia Paoli

Assessing the Harms of Crime provides a firm analytical foundation for making normative decisions about criminal and related policy, taking harm—and its reduction—as a conceptual starting point and supplying the means for systematic, empirical analysis in a harm assessment framework. By exploring harm's place in legal history, theory, criminology, and related fields and by considering the relevance of harm and its reduction for both criminal policy and the governance of security, the book demonstrates the centrality of harm, including its reduction, to crime, policy, and governance. It also highlights a substantial gap in methods available to the policy community to take on harm and the challenges of developing them. Working to fill that gap, the book presents the authors' "Harm Assessment Framework," consisting of tools and a process to identify, evaluate, and rank harms and to carefully distinguish between harms that result directly from activities and those that are remote or driven at least partially by policy. The book also presents applications to complex crimes, primarily involving coca and cocaine, that show the framework's value with new, actionable insight to harm and policy. On this basis, the book argues that criminology would benefit from expanding its mission to include harm and target harm reduction and from positioning harm assessment as a core task. Lastly, it posits that systematic, empirical harm-based policy analysis can contribute positively to decisions about criminal policy and the governance of security and to advancing justice.

Information technology offers unprecedented opportunities to individuals, businesses and the public sector but also creates new vulnerabilities to crime. Impressive cybercrimes have been reported in the media in recent years, demonstrating the grave harm that even a single cyberattack can cause. Yet no systematic assessment of the impact of cybercrime on Belgian society and economy had been conducted until the start of the research project Belgian Cost of Cybercrime (BCC) in 2013, which was funded by the Belgian Service Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and coordinated by the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC). Building on that large multidisciplinary project, the book assesses the impact of cybercrime on businesses based in Belgium, drawing from a thorough conceptualization of both cybercrime and itsimpact. Using data collected through two surveys sent to more than 9,000 representatives of Belgian businesses, the authors report that most of the responding businesses are confronted with at least one type of cybercrime every year and some of them suffer serious harm from these incidents. Lastly, the book calls for the identification and implementation of effective preventive measures targeting the different types of cybercrime.

?? This book examines sports doping from production and distribution, detection and punishment. Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from athletes most at risk to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and whether sports governing bodies are enabling the trade. Challenges for law enforcement and legislation, and efforts to control PED use in the worldwide sports community and among aspiring athletes, are also discussed in depth. The book's extensive research:• Estimates the demand for performance-enhancing products. • Traces the route from legal substances to illegal uses. • Identifies classes of suppliers and their methods of operation. • Tracks typical distribution systems from suppliers to users. • Examines the economics of the market: prices, profits, revenue. • Assesses the state of anti-doping law enforcement efforts. Starting with an unprecedented case study in Italy, the intensescrutiny from one pivotal country yields a potential template for research and policy on a world scale. Doping and Sport makes solid contributions to the work of researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in corruption, drug trafficking, and criminal networks; researchers in sports science and public health; and policymakers.

?? This book examines sports doping from production and distribution, detection and punishment. Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from athletes most at risk to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and whether sports governing bodies are enabling the trade. Challenges for law enforcement and legislation, and efforts to control PED use in the worldwide sports community and among aspiring athletes, are also discussed in depth. The book's extensive research:• Estimates the demand for performance-enhancing products. • Traces the route from legal substances to illegal uses. • Identifies classes of suppliers and their methods of operation. • Tracks typical distribution systems from suppliers to users. • Examines the economics of the market: prices, profits, revenue. • Assesses the state of anti-doping law enforcement efforts. Starting with an unprecedented case study in Italy, the intensescrutiny from one pivotal country yields a potential template for research and policy on a world scale. Doping and Sport makes solid contributions to the work of researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in corruption, drug trafficking, and criminal networks; researchers in sports science and public health; and policymakers.

During 2000-1 in Afghanistan, the Taliban achieved a longtime goal of national and international drug policy agencies: a large, sudden, and unanticipated reduction in world opium production. This cutback provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the dynamics of the world opiate market and ask whether further interventions could effectively reduce the flows of drugs. Based on an extended, multi-national study, the authors construct a new model for the trafficking of drugs and revenues and offer the first account of the world market in heroin and other illicit opiates during and after the 2001 ban. The authors' broader findings demonstrate how robust production, trafficking, and consumption combine to make successful long-term interventions on the supply-side rare exceedingly difficult, though specific policies can impact the organization and behavior of markets. For reductions in both production and consumption, where the cultivation of opium is entrenched in the normal life and legitimate economy of millions of people, international agencies and foreign governments must provide adequate and long-term support to foster both alternative development policies and law enforcement programs.

Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.