New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and Reform

Peter K. Enns is the author of Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Enns is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Executive Director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. The rise of mass incarceration in the United States is one of the most critical outcomes of the last half-century. Incarceration Nation combines close analysis of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon’s presidential campaigns with 60 years of data analysis. In contrast to conventional wisdom, Enns shows that over this time period, politicians responded to an increasingly punitive public by pushing policy in a more punitive direction. The book also shows that media coverage of rising crime rates fueled the public’s attitudes. More recently, a decline in public punitiveness helps explain the current bipartisan calls for criminal justice reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (Harvard University Press, 2015), Kim Wunschmann, DAAD Lecturer in Modern European History and a Member of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, tells the relatively unknown story of the Nazi pre-war concentration camps. From 1933 to 1939, these sites of terror isolated, ostracized, and excluded Jews from German society. Drawing on a range of unexplored archives, Wunschmann explores the evolution and systematization of the concentration camp system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to best increase police effectiveness in controlling crime rates is perennially controversial. Still, law enforcement has been in the news a lot lately. From criticism surrounding police use of force against unarmed African Americans to controversy surrounding broken windows policing or stop and frisk policies to suggestions of more community policing, we are in the midst of a national debate about the efficacy and equality of modern policing practices. Interestingly, however, these debates rarely include very many voices that fundamentally question modern police forces’ existence, structure, or purpose. Reading Sam Mitrani‘s new book about the creation of the Chicago Police Department suggests this normalization is more recent than most of us might guess today. Mitrani is an Associate Professor at the College of DuPage. In this book, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 (University of Illinois Press, 2013), Mitrani argues that the development and normalization of modern police forces occurred as in the late nineteenth century in response to the development of an industrial society in the United States. The Rise of the Chicago Police Department examines the creation of the police in Chicago, a city at the heart of the industrialization process. The book provides a number of revelations about the process that will be of great interest to any reader interested in law enforcement. First and foremost, Mitrani’s work highlights just how new modern police forces actually are. In 1850, there was nothing that would be recognizable to us today as an urban police force in cities like Chicago. Yet, by the close of the century, there was a large, stable police department in existence. That police force had already gone through a series of reforms and shifting political oversight. The new police forces were in many ways responses to the disruptions of a new industrial society. They primarily served the interests of the business elite in maintaining order over the new working classes–notably, they did not primarily serve the interest of fighting crime. Yet, Mitrani explains that the United States was one of the few nations to maintain democracy while industrializing, and he argues these new police forces were a key component in reconciling democracy with industrial capitalism. In this interview, Mitrani discusses this history of the Chicago Police Department, including discussing its implications for understanding the relationship between business elites and government, the police and violence, and law enforcement and crime control. Further, Mitrani discusses what we might take away from his work for thinking about police departments as institutions in the 19th century as well as in the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it ok–practically and ethically–to feel sympathetic toward the guards of concentration camps? Today’s interview marks the conclusion of my summer-long series of podcasts on the concentration camps and ghettos of Nazi Germany, its satellite states and the regions it controlled. Earlier this summer I talked with Geoff Megargee about the Holocaust Museums’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Sarah Helm about the women’s camp of Ravensbruck, Nik Wachsmann about the evolution of the concentration camp system and Dan Stone about the liberation of the camps. Today I’ll conclude the series with an interview with Shelly Cline about female guards in the camps. This is something of a departure for the podcast, which usually focuses on the authors of published books. But Shelly’s dissertation “Women at Work: The SS Aufseherin and the Gendered Perpetration of the Holocaust” (Ph. D. Diss, U of Kansas, 2014) is a perfect conclusion to the series. It examines carefully and thoughtfully the women who served as guards in concentration camps across Germany and its territories. In the manuscript, Shelly suggests that we will better understand the guards’ experience and perspective if we look at them from the perspective of people working at a job, a job they applied for, trained for, and worked at, one they sometimes liked, but often found stressful and difficult. It’s a fascinating notion, one that made me stop and think many times while reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast is the second in our summer series of interviews about the concentration camps in and around Nazi Germany. Earlier this summer I talked with Geoff Megargee about the US Holocaust Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos and Sarah Helm about her book on Ravensbruc. Later, I’ll talk with Dan Stone and Shelly Cline. Today I had the great pleasure to chat with Nikolaus Wachsmann about his new book titled KL:A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015).Nik began his career interested in justice and prisons in Nazi Germany. Having published a book on that subject, he made the natural jump to the concentration camp system. After pushing the research further as editor of three compilations of essays, he has now published a comprehensive survey of the camp system.The book is tremendous: a well-conceived mixture of institutional history, narrative storytelling and careful analysis. It’s not always easy to read–I read it on my Kindle as I led students across Europe and occasionally found myself putting the Kindle down and staring out the window for several minutes as I contemplated the pain his subjects had endured. But it’s a wonderful treatment of a complicated subject. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast is the second in our summer series of interviews about the concentration camps in and around Nazi Germany. Earlier this summer I talked with Geoff Megargee about the US Holocaust Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Later, I’ll talk with Nik Wachsmann, Dan Stone and Shelly Cline. Today, however, I got the chance to talk with Sarah Helm. Sarah has written a tremendous book titled Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (Nan A. Talese, 2015). The books is at turns grim, touching and, just occasionally, inspiring. It’s one of the most accessible of the many books I’ve read about the concentration camp system. And it focuses on on of the under-served groups of victims of the genocide: women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As patterns of religiosity have changed in the United States, chaplains have come to occupy an increasingly important place in the nation’s public institutions, especially its prisons, hospitals and military. In her newest book, A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Winnifred F. Sullivan offers a comprehensive study of contemporary chaplaincy, paying particular attention to how it sits at the intersection of law, government regulation, and spiritual care. She shows how much this ubiquitous but often invisible institution can tell us about religion in the US today, and moreover the role that law plays in structuring American ideas about, and experience of, religion. Winnifred F. Sullivan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and Affiliate Professor in the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University Bloomington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Standen was a hero to drug enforcement police. Not only was he a great guy but he was an extremely effective police officer. Unfortunately, he also became a partner in the illicit drug industry. Deception is a book that tells the story of how Standen turned to the dark side and how the Australian Federal Police were able to catch him. In his new book Deception: The True Story of the International Drug Plot that Brought Down Australia’s Top Law Enforcer Mark Standen (Allen and Urwin, 2012), Charles Miranda provides us with a very detailed story of greed and its consequences. Standen uses his knowledge of policing and techniques of investigation to put together a system that should have defeated the efforts of the police. However, he was also protecting his partners and left clues that exposed his operations. This is not just a cop who goes rogue but a professional who builds a sophisticated process of communication. Unfortunately for Standen, the underground world is inefficient and, ultimately, corrupt. He discovered that when you play there you cannot trust anyone and eventually you can be a victim. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the field of organized crime. It is a sobering story for police and gives academics an insight into the details of the industry that we rarely see. But above all that it is a great read! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel DiSalvo is the author ofGovernment against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015). DiSalvo is associate professor of political science at the City College of New York, CUNY, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. It is rare that an academic book attracts attention and stokes real controversy, but look to DiSalvo as the first of 2015 to set the social media afire. DiSalvo challenges many conventional notions about unions, primarily the work of public sector unions, during a period of strained state and local finance. He claims that many of the arguments for the importance of private sector unions – those representing manufacturing and other private employees – are largely inapplicable to private sector unions – those representing teachers, police and fire personnel, and other government workers. The special position of public sector unions, at once distinct from government, but also deeply entrenched in government, sets up peculiar negotiating dynamics. DiSalvo claims that public sector unions are given “two bites at the apple” on their interests, permitted to collectively bargain contracts, but also lobby those at the bargaining table in the larger political process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cathy L. Schneider is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). She is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University. Timeliness is not something that every scholarly book can claim, but Cathy Schneider has published a book of the moment. With protests occurring across the country in response to recent police-related deaths (Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and Eric Garner in New York City), Schneider explains why some of these protests have resulted in rioting in the past and others in peaceful protest. Why, she ponders, has Paris burned while New York City has not had significant rioting in decades, despite similar sociopolitical conditions? New York, Schneider argues, has effective social movement organizations in place to channel frustration surrounding past police violence toward organized protest. For anyone trying to make sense of what recent events, this book is a must read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am old enough to realise that we have entered a science fiction world in which the old systems of the market place are being sidestepped by new technology. We who follow the tried and true methods are missing out of the brave new world. The changes are particularly true for the middle men whose services are no longer needed as the web allows customers to deal directly with producers. This also applies to the participants in organised crime. James Martin‘s terrific new book Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs (Palgrave, 2014)spells out how this is occurring in the drug trade as the Tor Network allows drug users to purchase their products from anywhere in the world. No longer are they tied to a street dealer or a friend for supply. No longer do they lack choice in quality or variety. Now they can peruse a range of products from the safety of their home. They have choice that would never be available without the internet. More importantly, as Martin points out, they are now valued customers with contracts, refund policies and providers of feedback on service quality. These websites provide all types of illicit goods but, surprisingly, many have ethical frameworks that limit their product ranges to restrict the sale of unacceptable goods and services such as child pornography or, in comes cases, firearms. This book is a mind expanding (pun intended) exploration of a high tech illicit market place that is essential reading for police, academics and the public at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized father-figure who is loved by his acolytes and feared by nearly everyone else. They’re usually black Muslims, but you also see the occasional born-again Christian gang. They promise salvation and, of course, protection. And they are scary. But what’s religious life in prison really like? In order to find out, the intrepid and brave religious scholar Joshua Dubler actually moved into a prison. He lived among the inmates and those clerics who had devoted their lives to bringing them spiritual comfort. The picture he paints in his wonderful new book Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013) is nothing like the one you see on TV or in the movies. In fact, it’s so irreducibly complex that it almost defies description. The spirituality he finds behind bars is adapted to the harsh realities of prison life and the personalities of the religious (and quasi-religious) inmates themselves. Dubler reminds us that churches–of whatever type and wherever found–are made of people in all their idiosyncratic variety. Listen in to our fascinating and lively discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago? That question, along with many other equally important questions, is at the heart of Dr. David Garland‘s recent book Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (Harvard University Press, 2010). His provocative study highlights the uneven application of capital punishment America–a phenomenon widely discussed but rarely understood–and offers a succinct and thoughtful analysis of the historical roots of this contemporary problem. Comparing the modern form of state execution (lethal injection) with original, brutal, forms of state execution (pressing, dismemberment, burning, beheading), Garland dissects the sociocultural and political uses of capital punishment and how they changed over the centuries, evolving to meet the needs of a modern liberal democracy. These liberal adaptations, as Garland explains, forced executions from the public gallows into private rooms within prisons, created a mandatory legal procedure of “super due-process,” and sought to diminish cruel and unusual bodily harm to the offender. But have these adaptations nullified its original purposes? For instance, various studies have shown that the death penalty does not act a deterrent to criminals or serve retributive purposes to the victims and their families. Given these facts, what purposes does it serve, if any? Do these reasons justify retention of the practice? Listen in for more! Dr. Garland is Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Peculiar Institution is the recipient of numerous awards including: 2012 Michael J. Hindelang Award (American Society of Criminology), 2012 Edwin H. Sutherland Award (American Society of Criminology), 2011 Barrington Moore Book Award (American Sociological Association), Co-Winner 2011 Mary Douglas Prize (American Sociological Association), A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2011, and the 2010 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anyone who studies police corruption will be aware of the Knapp Commission that examined allegations of police corruption in New York City in the 1970s. Not only was this famous because of the movie Serpico, but also most of the terminology used in corruption studies of police came from the report of the commission. Michael F. Armstrong was the chief counsel to the commission and this book is a history of the formation and operation of the inquiry. Holding a major commission of inquiry is not something that is done routinely. In his own words, Armstrong says they “fumbled” along working out how one discovers, let alone investigates corrupt police. They Wished they were Honest: The Knapp Commission and New York City Police Corruption (Columbia Press, 2012)reads like an extended episode of The Wire, combining political elements with investigative planning and transcripts of surveillance recordings of bribe negotiations. It is very revealing of the nature of corruption that existed at the time. The book follows some key from Xavier Hollander, the Happy Hooker, through small time corrupt officers (grass eaters) through to hardcore predatory corrupt police (meat eaters). Not only does Armstrong provide an entertaining history of the inquiry but he reveals the full gamut of social forces that make such inquiries difficult to implement successfully. Police corruption is an essential factor in any form of large scale illicit activity, be it prostitution, gambling or drugs. Police have a service to sell, namely protection, and there are many illegal operators who are willing to pay for it to ensure their business runs without interruption. While the Knapp Commission happened 40 years ago, the corruption still exists at varying levels in all communities. Armstrong’s book helps us understand how and why it happens and, especially, how difficult it can be to stop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christopher Browning is one of the giants in the field of Holocaust Studies. He has contributed vitally to at least two of the basic debates in the field: the intentionalist/functionalist discussion about when, why and how the Germans decided to annihilate the Jews of Europe, and the question of why individual perpetrators killed. His new book, then, seems like something of a departure. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (W. W. Norton, 2010), examines the labor camp at Starachowice, Poland. Starting before the Nazi invasion, Browning tracks the members of the Jewish community in the region throughout the war, from their initial encounters with Nazi presence through their deportation to Auschwitz to their eventual return (or not) to their homes after the war. The book engages deeply questions of survival, resistance and community and family in the life of the Jewish captives. But, as Browning suggests during the interview, the book is really a continuation of his previous strategy of using case studies to shed light on questions of broad significance. This time, by studying a labor camp, Browning is able to examine both the captives and those who held them prisoner. The result is every bit as rich as his previous work. Browning speaks as carefully and thoughtfully as he writes. We talked both about the story he tells in the book and some of the methodological issues he confronted in writing it. There’s more in the book than we could get to in an hour. I hope you’ll listen to the interview and then go out and read the book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American penitentiary model began as not merely a physical construct, but as a philosophical and religious one. Prisoners were to use their time in silence and isolation to contemplate their crimes/sins and to pursue God’s grace. Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip to America began not as a study of American democracy, but of its prisons, though he would go on to write about both arguing that arguing that American social reformers were beginning to view prisons as the “remedy for all of the evils of society”. As with many of his other observations Tocqueville was both accurate and prescient. Today America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, more than four times the number of second place contender Russia. Regions like upstate NY that used to rely on logging, dairy farms, and manufacturing now rely on prison jobs for economic stability, while states like Mississippi release prisoners in the thousand because they cannot afford to continue to house them. Private prisons trade shares on the NASDAQ, promising to ‘lock up the profits’ of investors, which often means cutting corners in areas that can actually lead to rehabilitation – prisoner education, job training and substance abuse treatment. Marc Mauer‘s Race to Incarcerate (New Press, 2013) is a graphic exploration of this reality based on his earlier book by the same title. Marc was kind enough to speak with us. I hope you enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by historical standards, high and our prisons are full of people–many of whom are hardly drug kingpins–who have violated drug laws. And, of course, it all costs a fortune. What to do? In her book The War on Drugs in America, 1940-1973 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), historian Kathleen J. Frydl argues that there is a better way to control drugs. She points out that prior to the “War on Drugs” the Federal government had controlled the distribution of narcotics and other drugs largely (though not entirely) by means of taxation. The “Federal Bureau of Narcotics” was a branch of the Department of the Treasury. The run up to Nixon’s “War on Drugs” and the war itself changed all that: enforcement of drug laws was transferred to the Department of Justice. Essentially, the Fed had criminalized drug distribution and use and told the states to aggressively pursue distributors and users, or else. According to Frydl, this was a disastrous move. Better, she says, to de-criminalize and even legalize drugs, control them by means of taxation, and support prevention and treatment initiatives. It’s a controversial position, and near the end of the interview we debate it at some length. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gangster Squad (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) the book is not Gangster Squad the movie. One is a detailed and thoroughly researched account of organized crime in Los Angeles and the other is a movie. If you are really interested in organized crime then you should read the book. Paul Lieberman has produced an excellent story of the gangsters and the police who tried to close them down. He presents both sides as real human beings – each with many foibles. This is the story of the growth of Los Angeles and the attraction of people from across the nation to the new world of sunshine and opportunity. Of course, the inhabitants of this city have the same needs for illicit goods and services as any other city and there is always someone who will provide the supply to meet the demand. Having said that, the distance from the East Coast to the West Coast, and the nature of the growing city, meant that LA was largely outside the control of the Italian mafia. It has its own characters and their own methods that reflect more of the brashness of Hollywood than the tradition of La Familia. The police who make up the Gangster Squad share many features of their targets – they just add a sense of justice and social responsibility. Besides being a great read, Gangster Squad fills a gap in the field by providing a history of organized crime that is neglected by the mainstream analysis. LA is a major city and its illicit economic story is equally as important as that of New York or Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patrick Dunleavy is the author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection (Potomac Books, 2011). He provides us with a fascinating insight into the radicalization process within the prison system. This is a sensitive topic but Dunleavy does not provide a political commentary on radicalization or Islam but rather acknowledges that the process can occur and gives us a detailed recounting of one such group within the New York Correctional system. He discusses a few key characters and how they ended up in prison and the circumstances that led to their participation in radical thought. The most interesting parts of the book for me were the methods of prison life that aided the process; the ability to communicate with the outside world and the massaging of internal security routines to allow interaction and coordination with others inside the system. This is not a morality play, but rather a description of a process. We can certainly learn a lot through books such as these that reduce our naivety about the ingenuity of prison inmates who have a lot of time to think and experiment with their immediate environment. Radicalization is a serious issue but for me this was a book more about the world of incarceration than terrorism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensive and comprehendible introduction to the background to the conflict and its effects. Cartels at War: Mexico’s Drug-Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security (Potomac Books, 2012) is a relatively short book packed with detailed information. The book covers the nature of the drug war, the cartels involved, the national and international responses and the effects of this war on the local and international communities. But this is not just a descriptive work. Kan provides us with his recommendations for solutions and predictions about the future of the conflict. In particular, he draws comparisons between treating this as an insurgency and spells out how a counter-terrorist response would not be the correct way to deal with the issue. This is high intensity crime and requires a high intensity policing response. Overall the book is an excellent introduction to the very complex drug war in Mexico, as well as being a source of practical and realistic policy options for addressing a conflict this large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is easy to dismiss juveniles in prison as “bad seeds”, as people with which we have nothing in common, and of which we want only distance. David Chura, however, did not maintain his distance, and has been working with at-risk kids for other 40 years. His new book, I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup (Beacon Press, 2010), is a collection of stories from the time he taught kids in a New York County jail. These narratives paint a picture of children who have been abused, neglected, and chronically disappointed by those in their lives and in the justice and foster system. Chura exposes a number of issues in the justice system and in society at large which contribute greatly to the outcome of these kids’ lives, and seeks to inform us that far from simply being “bad”, the gulf between these children and ours are mainly due to circumstances, not to personality or inborn traits. Chura shares stories that we rarely hear, of a world we barely know, in order to give a voice to those who are often silenced. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we spoke to Maurice Punch about his new book: State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland (Pluto Press, 2012). The Troubles refers to the conflict in Northern Ireland between the IRA and the British government. The government response to the terrorist attacks involved a broad range of policing, intelligence and military agencies, including the SAS. There are many books about the actions of terrorist groups but this book looks at the actions of the government response. A number of independent inquiries have revealed serious breaches of ethics and even criminal acts by these agencies; some of which have had fatal consequences for innocent members of the community. At the very least, some others have been extra-judicial killings. Maurice examines the evidence and lists the offences. In many respects the title summarises the book and its conclusions. He explains how the many decades of conflict saw ‘organizational deviance’ on the part of the collective policing and military agencies. The book is an excellent study of how enthusiasm can lead to justification of illegal actions with deadly results. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we have Geoff Dean on the show to talk about his new book Organised Crime: Policing Illegal Business Entrepreneurialism (Oxford University Press, 2010). This is a practical book about organized crime. Geoff and his co-authors, Ivar Fahsing and Petter Gottschalk, approach organized crime from a business perspective and try to provide a means of investigating this type of crime from a market point of view. They see an organized crime enterprise like any other business enterprise, and say that it must go through the same stages or growth that are experienced by a legal commercial business. The authors are experienced researchers in the methodologies of policing and want to recognize the entrepreneurial basis of criminal enterprises, and investigative methods that pay heed to these characteristics of large criminal organizations. This is not a book about any one criminal group. Many examples and case studies are provided but they intend the book to have universal appeal. One of the books advantages is Geoff’s ability to communicate visually. He is the master of the chart and diagram. As you will hear in the interview, the book is filled with visual explanations of the ideas and concepts it addresses. While Organised Crime was not written as a textbook, I have used it in class and found that it provides a good explanation of organized crime (for advanced students) as well as a great mechanism of strategic analysis which we use as an assessment tool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most Westerners know about the Gulag (aka “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies”) thanks to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s eloquent, heart-wrenching Gulag Archipelago. Since the publication of that book in 1973 (and largely thanks to it), the Gulag has come to symbolize the horrors of Stalinism. Made up of a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Examinations of the Soviet gulag are a cottage industry in Russian studies. Since 1991, a torrent of books have been published examining the gulag’s construction, management, memory, and legacy. Few scholars, however, have investigated how Soviet citizens reacted to the return of over four million prisoners from labor camps and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gregory J. W. Urwin’s Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity (Naval Institute Press, 2010) tells the story of the Americans captured on Wake Island in December 1945. The Wake Island garrison’s defeat of the initial Japanese landing attempt was one of the few bright spots for Americans in the opening weeks of the Second World War and earned the praise of President Roosevelt. The surrender of the small Marine garrison and the civilian contractors working on the atoll on December 23, 1941 may have ended the battle, but for those men, the struggle for survival was just beginning. They spent the remaining three and a half years of the war in various Japanese prison camps. And survive most of them did. Of the 1621 Americans taken prisoner, 1378 returned – a mortality rate roughly half that suffered by Allied prisoners of the Japanese as a whole. Urwin argues that discipline, outside aid, and a good measure of luck accounted for the survival of so many of the Wake Islanders. He also highlights the important role that Japanese policy and behavior played. The captives certainly suffered their share of cruelties and the crimes of the Japanese army and navy against these men were many. But without the humanity, and even occasionally the kindness, of their captors, many more of these Americans would have died. Victory in Defeat is an impressive book that tells a gripping and important story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question as to why the leaders of the Soviet Union murdered hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens during the Great Purges is one of the most important of modern history, primarily because it shapes what we are likely to think about communism. There are two schools of thought. On... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s something remarkable: at some point in the future, something you believe to be just fine will be utterly disdained by the greater part of humanity. For instance, it is at least imaginable that one day everyone will believe that zoos were [NB] profoundly immoral. The future will condemn us... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a good friend who grew up in East Germany in the bad old days. The East German authorities suspected that her family would try to immigrate to the West (which they did), so they naturally told the Stasi–the East German secret service–to watch them (which they did). After the fall of the Wall, the Stasi files were opened and my friend requested to see her dossier. I have to say, it was disappointing. For some reason (perhaps having to do with John le Carre), I thought the Stasi was a ruthlessly efficient, super-clandestine, surveillance-repression machine. But I couldn’t find that machine in my friend’s file. It was boring. She did this, did that, she did the other thing. Why would anyone care? Read Gary Bruce‘s wonderful The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (OUP, 2010) and you can find out why. But don’t expect it to make any sense, because the picture Gary paints is of a kind of Bizarro World. Like their handlers in the Soviet Union, the East German communist party was mindlessly paranoid. They saw–or at least claimed to see–“enemies” under every rock. This (mis)perception was the pretext for the creation of the Stasi: it would protect the revolution from said “enemies.” (It would also prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West, but that was just an added bonus.) How? First, they needed agents. These weren’t hard to get in the post-war years. There were lots of idealistic communists who were quite willing to go to work for the cause. One of the revelations of Gary’s work is that many (most?) Stasi agents believed in what they were doing. Those that didn’t recognized that the pay was good. Next, you needed your trusty agents to recruit “co-workers,” that is, informants. This was not as easy. Gary’s subjects worried a lot about meeting their recruitment quotas; really good informants were hard to find. But generally they found them (or made them up). Finally, you had to have your agents work their informants, that is, meet with them regularly and pump them for valuable information. This was the hardest job of all. Gary’s work makes clear that most Stasi agents viewed the regular meeting (again, they had quotas) as a hassle. More than that, they were generally seen as completely unproductive. We now know what the Stasi agents could doubtlessly have told us long ago: there were no “enemies.” With the singular exception of Poland, no Eastern Bloc state ever hosted anything like an organized “opposition” to communism or anything else. A lot of folks were unhappy with, for example, Party hypocrisy, the price of sausage, or the inability to travel abroad. But there was no “underground” to go into to fight for, well, whatever one might fight for. This being so, the vast majority of Stasi agents worked for decades without ever turning up anything beyond the occasional extra-marital affair–hardly the kind of thing that would endanger the “republic.” What they did accomplish, and perhaps what the Stasi itself was meant to accomplish, was to frighten the populace. You don’t need to watch everyone to give the impression that everyone is being watched and, if “seen,” being punished. In the end, the myth of the Stasi was more important for the stability of the East German regime that its practice. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While researching his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (with Mike Wallace; Oxford UP 1999), Edwin Burrows uncovered the story of thousands of American soldiers who had been held prisoner by the British during the Revolutionary War in and around New York. Now he’s back to tell the tale in a full-length book: Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War(Basic Books, 2008). Burrows explains that the British faced a dilemma when deciding what to do with the Americans. On the one hand, if they granted them the status of prisoners of war, that would to some degree legitimate the American cause. Only the soldiers of legal combatants could be POWs, and in the eyes of the British the Americans weren’t legal combatants but rather rebels. On the other hand, if the British classified them as rebels, then they would be placing the Americans–as English subjects–under the protection of English law. That would mean the Americans could not be held without formal charges being brought and trials undertaken. The British weren’t ready to do that. So they opted to suspend habeas corpus and leave the Americans to rot in fetid jails and horrific prison ships. American protests went unanswered, American prisoners died like flies, and when it was all over almost no one bothered to remember. Except Ted Burrows. We should thank him for reviving a story that is all too relevant today as Americans deal with their own dilemmas regarding “enemy combatants.” Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices