On the day Pedro Sanjuan moved into his new office at the UN Secretariat in 1984, he had the foresight to unscrew his telephone receiver. Out fell a little packet of high-grade cocaine. When he confronted the undersecretary to the chief Soviet diplomat—really a KGB colonel and the top Russian spy—the agent laughed good-naturedly and congratulated him on passing the test. That was the beginning of Sanjuan’s long, peculiar odyssey into the looking-glass world of the United Nations Secretariat. Pedro Sanjuan had been appointed by then–Vice President George H. W. Bush to a high-ranking UN post. His real mission: to keep an eye on Soviet espionage activities. Over the years, the Russians had managed to install nearly four hundred KGB and GRU agents in strategic positions throughout the Secretariat, and had turned it into a massive spy facility, operating openly and with absolute impunity on American soil. But this, it turned out, was the least of the problem. Sanjuan soon discovered that incompetence, corruption, anti-Semitism, and outright criminality were rife throughout the UN Secretariat. Among the shady activities that he personally observed or documented were rigged bidding for major service contracts; drug transactions conducted in the UN’s parking garage; sale of shotguns and beryllium directly out of the UN building; ties to global organized crime figures; use of UN Information Centers and other agencies to disseminate anti-US and pro-PLO propaganda; systematic theft and abuse of UN facilities and budgets in East Africa; graft and corruption in Vienna; widespread sexual harrassment; use of the UN employee’s lounge to plan anti-Israel and anti-US activities by Muslim delegates; open celebration of 9/11 by said delegates in the halls of the UN; and inexplicable tolerance of all of the above on the part of the secretary general and the US government. Sanjuan’s cast of characters includes every secretary general from Kurt Waldheim to Kofi Annan, and a large number of bureaucratic rogues and scoundrels. Much of what he documents in The UN Gang is absurdly comical. But its seriousness should not be overlooked. Ultimately, Sanjuan argues, the weakness and corruption of the UN is our own responsibility. During the Cold War, the superpowers conspired to render it a useless forum for international pronouncements and posturing. Now, however, it has become the focal point of global resistance to American interests and policies. Will we continue to host an unholy convention of anti-Semitic, America-hating hypocrites? Or will we take steps to reform this once-proud institution and make it serve the ends of peace, justice, and international order? Only time will tell.

The overall goal of the research in this book was to understand gang phenomenon in the United States. In order to accomplish this goal, the author investigated gangs in different cities in order to understand what was similar in the way all gangs behaved and what was idiosyncratic to certain gangs. The research for this book took place over ten years and five months from 1978 to 1989 and will give the reader a comprehensive overview of gang behavior in the United States in that time period.

A searing look at one of Canada's most dangerous gangs Gang violence is nothing new to Vancouver, but the brutality of the Bacon Brothers—Jonathan, Jarrod, and Jamie—has become legendary. The Notorious Bacon Brothers follows the chaotic rise of these three gangland figures to the pinnacle of Vancouver's lucrative drug trade. Chronicling not only the Bacon Brothers themselves, but also the gangs they infiltrated on their way to the top, and the catastrophic wave of violence they brought to the streets of Vancouver, the book explores how the bothers' adeptness at making and breaking allegiances and propensity for violence is now being replicated by gangs across Canada. With one Bacon brother dead and the other two behind bars, a power vacuum has developed for control of the drug trade in the Greater Vancouver area. The result has been full on war among the Hells Angels, Red Scorpions, UN Gang, and Independent Soldiers, as they fight to take the position once occupied by the Bacon Brothers—a lasting legacy to their place in Canada's gang history. Presents an incisive look at the violent lives of the Bacon Brothers, some of Canada's most notorious criminals Shows how the Bacon Brothers set a new precedence for gang violence that is being mimicked throughout the country Explores how the void left by the Brothers has spurred on increasing violent gang warfare on the streets of Vancouver Hard-hitting and insightful, The Notorious Bacon Brothers is a powerful look at the seedy underbelly of contemporary Canadian organized crime.

A New York Times Bestseller "A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from vivid tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined." —The Economist "A sensitive, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype." —Finanical Times Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT’s protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang’s complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart. Sudhir Venkatesh’s latest book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York’s Underground Economy—a memoir of sociological investigation revealing the true face of America’s most diverse city—is also published by Penguin Press.

“One of the year’s most important books, a gripping meticulously reported account of the rise of one of the world’s most notorious street gangs.” —Mitch Weiss, Pulitzer Prize winner Winner of the Lukas Prize An NPR Best Book of the Year The MS-13 was born from war. In the 1980s, Alex and his brother fled El Salvador for the US and formed the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners. Initially bound by a love of heavy metal music, the group soon took on a harder edge, selling drugs, stealing cars and killing rivals. Gang members like Alex were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger. Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth—and also largely misunderstood. Longtime organized crime investigator Steven Dudley brings readers inside the nefarious group to tell a broader story of flawed US and Central American policies and the exploitative, unequal systems that shape them. “A remarkable feat of reporting; the ways in which the United States is complicit in the creation and preservation of MS-13 might well keep you awake deep into the night, as it did me.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises “By detailing the experiences of gang members and victims alike, he anatomizes the complex, fluid dynamics of this elusive transnational network. A startling book.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times–bestselling author of Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks “The definitive account of MS-13 . . . An outstanding book for true crime readers.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Zombie Files is the true story about the Zombie Hunters Union, a group of Security Specialists who worked together in a hostile environment against criminal gangs in Haiti. They operated in the shadows since an evil cabal rules the country with the power of violent gangs and the black magic of Voodoo. They came together in their fight against the violent street gangs in the worst slums of the northern hemisphere and soon became the biggest threat to the evil forces in power. They were more effective and successful in combating organized kidnapping gangs than thousands of blue helmet soldiers deployed with the United Nations Mission MINUSTAH. The international peacekeeping forces had to follow the directives of the Haitian government, which was controlled by the cabal. The Zombie Hunters Union didn't have directives, officially they never existed. Max Kail was a United Nations Security Officer who wanted to make a difference in his last mission and joined the Zombie Hunters with some of his colleagues. This is his confession.

Inner city communities in the US have become junkyards of dreams, to quote Mike Daviswastelands where gangs package narcotics to stimulate the local economy, gunshots occur multiple times on any given day, and dreams of a better life can fade into the realities of poverty and disability. Laurence Ralph lived in such a community in Chicago for three years, conducting interviews and participating in meetings with members of the local gang which has been central to the community since the 1950s. Ralph discovered that the experience of injury, whether physical or social, doesn t always crush dreams into oblivion; it can transform them into something productive: renegade dreams. The first part of this book moves from a critique of the way government officials, as opposed to grandmothers, have been handling the situation, to a study of the history of the historic Divine Knights gang, to a portrait of a duo of gang members who want to be recognized as authentic rappers (they call their musical style crack music ) and the difficulties they face in exiting the gang. The second part is on physical disability, including being wheelchair bound, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among heroin users, and the experience of brutality at the hands of Chicago police officers. In a final chapter, The Frame, Or How to Get Out of an Isolated Space, Ralph offers a fresh perspective on how to understand urban violence. The upshot is a total portrait of the interlocking complexities, symbols, and vicissitudes of gang life in one of the most dangerous inner city neighborhoods in the US. We expect this study will enjoy considerable readership, among anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars interested in disability, urban crime, and race."

Central American nations have recently had the highest per capita homicide rates in the world—surpassing the per capita death toll even in war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan—and gang violence has been the dominant explanation for this tragic state of affairs. But why has gang activity become endemic in the region? Photojournalist Donna De Cesare began covering Central America during the civil wars of the 1980s, focusing especially on the disrupted lives of children and youths, and continued her photography project in Central American refugee communities in the United States in the 1990s and postwar Central America in the 2000s. She documents a history of repression, violence, and trauma, in which gangs are as much a symptom as a cause of trauma, trapped as they are by social neglect. With profound empathy for a reality that is too easily defined and dismissed as repugnant, Unsettled/Desasosiego takes us on a visual journey into the lives of children deeply affected by civil war and gang violence. De Cesare’s photographs and bilingual personal narrative trace the evolution and expansion of the notorious 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha gangs from the barrios of Los Angeles to the shanties of Central America. They show how decades of war and violence—as well as the illegal drug trade—have created a culture that allows gangs to flourish. At the same time, her photographs portray the humanity of gang members and their families, encouraging us to understand the lives of youths at the margins and to take responsibility for the consequences of political and social actions that have ruptured Central American society for generations.

The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.

This edited book significantly contributes to the knowledge on how to address gang problems from a broad community perspective, which takes into account criminal justice agencies, social service providers, and community leaders, along with police, who have implemented collaborative anti-gang policies and practices. As community-wide efforts become more common, it is increasingly important to investigate effective strategies to address social problems. Beyond Suppression: Community Strategies to Reduce Gang Violence explores a demonstration project of one state's efforts to reduce gang and youth violence through use of a comprehensive initiative, the Comprehensive Gang Model (CGM). The relevance of the CGM as a conceptual framework to guide gang policy and practice is illustrated throughout the book, and tailored gang reduction strategies derived from that framework and rooted in the ecological constitution of communities are showcased. The chapters highlight implementation strategies employed by various communities using a case study methodology that assists in garnering an in-depth perspective of implementation issues and key dimensions of the CGM. This book answers important questions about how communities operationalize the CGM. The results of these investigations are important for scholars, learners, and practitioners who seek to address gang violence using a customized response.