The author asserts that much of what police, press, politicians, and the public understand about international crime is based on myth and misrepresentation.".

In what has been described as ''the crime wave no one talks about,'' billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year - a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category on record annually. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the legal minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal $19 billion in unpaid overtime. Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo's Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America's working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the twenty-first century.

Since 1993, crime in the United States has fallen to historic lows, seeming to legitimize the country’s mix of welfare reform and mass incarceration. The Upper Limit explains how this unusual mix came about, examining how, beginning in the 1970s, declining living standards for the poor have defined social and penal policy in the United States, making welfare more restrictive and punishment harsher. François Bonnet shows how low-wage work sets the upper limit of social and penal policy, where welfare must be less attractive than low-wage work and criminal life must be less attractive than welfare. In essence, the living standards of the lowest class of workers in a society determine the upper limit for the generosity of welfare and for the humanity of punishment in that society. The Upper Limit explores the local consequences of this punitive adjustment in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood where crime fell in the 1990s. Bonnet argues that no meaningful penal reform can happen unless living standards and the minimum wage rise again. Enlightening and provocative, The Upper Limit provides a comprehensive theory of the evolution of social and penal policy.

Murder of Chris Hatton on January 14, 1995.

In The Costs of Crime and Justice, Mark Cohen presents a comprehensive view of the financial setbacks of criminal behaviour. Victims of crime might incur medical costs, lost wages and property damage; while for some crimes pain, suffering and reduced quality of life suffered by victims far exceeds any physical damage. The government also incurs costs as the provider of mental health services, police, courts and prisons. Cohen argues that understanding the costs of crime can lead to important insights and policy conclusions - both in terms of criminal justice policy but also in terms of other social ills that compete with crime for government funding. This book systematically discusses the numerous methodological approaches and tallies up what is known about the costs of crime A must-read for anyone involved in public policy, The Costs of Crime and Justice consolidates the diverse research in this area but also makes one of the most valuable contributions to date to the study of the economics of criminal behavior.

This title presents a survey of the crime problem in Latin America, which takes a very broad and appropriately reductionist approach to analyse the determinants of the high crime levels, focusing on the negative social conditions in the region, including inequality and poverty, and poor policy design, such as relatively low police presence. The chapters illustrate three channels through which crime might generate poverty, that is, by reducing investment, by introducing assets losses, and by reducing the value of assets remaining in the control of households.

Wide ranging and accessible, this is the most up-to-date textbook in this area, taking current economic research and making it accessible to undergraduates and other interested readers.

Edited by four leading law scholars, this volume explores the political and regulatory dimensions of modern 'criminality at work' from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.