Despite widespread integration of genetic research by most disciplines, genetics has largely been excised by the field of criminology, a field that continues to be guided almost exclusively by a sociological paradigm. Part of the reason for why genetic research has not been synthesized into the criminological scholarship is due to concerns about the policy implications that might flow directly from it. Specifically, critics of genetic and biosocial research routinely argue that studying the genetic basis to criminality likely would lead to oppressive crime-control policies and perhaps even a new eugenics movement. If criminologists had an accurate understanding of how genetic influences relate to criminal involvement, then these concerns would largely be assuaged. Against this backdrop, the current chapter uses Belsky’s differential susceptibility model as the centerpiece to show that genetic research is not only useful in understanding the etiology of criminal involvement but also that it holds great promise in guiding the development of crime prevention and rehabilitation programs.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States further propelled the global focus on terrorism. Despite international efforts, the threat of terrorism remains throughout the world. In this chapter, the challenges in defining and analyzing terrorism are established by articulating the characteristics, structures, and motivations of groups that terrorize others. These definitions of terrorism, and the features of relevant groups, are then placed within the wider context of intrastate conflict. Key questions addressed include: Why does terrorism more frequently occur in war-torn countries? And how does its occurrence lower prospects for sustainable peace? This analysis is then used to inform modern counterterrorism methods, and how their evolution is critical for future international and national security along with peace mediation studies.

In the 1970s, Black and white media raised an alarm over “Black-on-Black crime,” drawing a line between law-abiding Black citizens and criminals who were making their neighborhoods unlivable. The narrative of Black-on-Black crime would become one of the leading alibis of the wars on crime and drugs, and it originated not with the Nixon or Reagan administrations but in boxing. Chapter 3 follows a cast of magazine writers – John Lardner, A. J. Liebling, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton – who taught the nation to root for the right kind of Black fighter against the wrong kind. Their stories showed advocates for the wars on crime and drugs how anti-Blackness could survive civil rights: It had to come wrapped in pro-Blackness.

This chapter deals with cash (banknotes and coins), the oldest and most traditional form of money in existence. Cash involves a paradox: On the one hand, it is technologically less advanced that modern means of payments like cards and apps, so one could presume that it should decline in use and eventually disappear. On the other, however, evidence for almost the whole world shows that the demand for cash is increasing, although it is used less frequently for certain types of transactions like online commerce, retail stores, and restaurants. Criminal activities may explain part of the puzzle, but not much. One advantage of cash is that it can be seen and touched, therefore appealing to the senses and conveying a sense of security. Another is that it ensures absolute privacy of transactions. Other important characteristics explaining the popularity of cash are that it is simple (it requires no technology or complication whatsoever); definitive (it instantly settles any financial obligation); private and personal (it appeals to the desire of confidentiality); and self-sufficient (it does not depend on any other infrastructure functioning). We conclude therefore that physical cash is a useful complement of a robust and diversified monetary system, in which digital means of payments gradually prevail.

Are civil conflicts driven by resource crises? Research suggests that the root of conflict, in part, is explained when analyzing how economic deprivation drives groups into turmoil. Resource ownership, especially when unevenly distributed, often leads to violence. Research remains divided, however, on which resources drive violence, and the precise mechanisms that are involved. While many scholars argue that inequality drives violence, there exist many other factors that can help to explain civil wars. Evidence in this chapter suggests that while oil dependence may trigger conflicts, the duration of conflict is heavily influenced by factors beyond resources alone. Contrarily, agricultural commodities lack significant ties to civil war onset or duration, challenging our understanding of deprivation on a country-specific basis. Conflict is inextricably tied to maintaining political order, which for resource-rich countries hinges on interacting factors that governance structures facilitate. Further analysis on these topics – like the greed, state capacity, and grievance frameworks – offers strong insights into why violence emerges, giving multiple avenues and case studies as evidence for explaining civil wars overall.

Tribes struggle with many socioeconomic problems, including poverty and crime. Though the United States claims to support tribal self-determination, tribes remain subject to unique, federally imposed constraints on their sovereignty. This book argues removing the federal limitations on tribal sovereignty is the key to improving life in Indian country.

This chapter describes steps that can be taken to advance deterrence theory using comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT). It discusses, for example, the possibility of identifying second-level principles that integrate CDT’s first-level principles. There is, too, the possibility of advancing CDT by investigating causes of the intrinsic elements and modifying the principles or creating new ones. Another avenue to pursue entails identifying how deterrent processes and effects may vary across different individuals, groups, conditions, types of crime, and units of analysis. Still other avenues involve incorporating offending theories into CDT and contemplating how deterrence processes may vary when considering offending onset, persistence, and desistance.

This chapter explains why right-wing strategies of adaptation and survival had varying degrees of success during and after the left turn. It argues that right-wing parties were most likely to survive and remain competitive in national elections when they relied on strong party brands and organizations. These strong party brands and organizations depended, in turn, on when the parties were founded and whether they had roots in an authoritarian regime.

In this chapter, we test the effects of community policing in the Sorsogon Province of the Philippines. The intervention generated a four-fold increase in police-citizen interactions in treated villages, but consistent with meta-analysis of all six sites in this volume, we found no effects of the intervention on crime rates or citizens’ attitudes about public safety. To disaggregate the effects of different aspects of community policing, we sequenced the implementation of community engagement (CEP) and problem-oriented policing (POP) but found no effects on the harmonized outcomes of either CEP on its own or the combination of CEP and POP. Finally, we present suggestive evidence of positive impacts on the specific types of crimes that barangays’ problem-oriented policing teams elected to focus on, indicating that while community policing cannot address all of a community’s problems en masse, it may improve specifically targeted issues.

In this chapter, we test the efficacy of community policing in thirteen districts throughout rural Uganda. As in many authoritarian regimes, police in Uganda serve the dual role of providing security to citizens on the one hand and quelling dissent and opposition on behalf of the regime on the other. Community policing may help citizens delink the political arm of the police from less politicized local officers. The community policing initiative we study was locally designed and funded by the Ugandan police. Our evaluation combines administrative crime data from the Uganda Police Force with surveys of thousands of Ugandan citizens, local leaders, and police officers. While the initiative we study succeeded in increasing the frequency of interactions between citizens and the police in these far-flung villages and improved citizens’ understanding of the criminal justice system, we find no evidence that it reduced crime, enhanced perceptions of safety, improved attitudes towards the police, or strengthened norms of cooperation with the police. These results are consistent with other chapters in this volume and point to the potential limitations of community policing in low-income countries.

This chapter describes patterns of crime and insecurity in the six study countries where the coordinated randomized trials took place and how these places compare to other countries. It then provides a theoretical framework for understanding the causes of crime, why crime rates often diverge from citizen perceptions of insecurity, and how crime and perceived insecurity can be reduced. The chapter concludes by surveying the set of policy tools used to reduce crime, and how policing fits into those tools.

What is the effect of community policing in settings where the rule of law is weak and communities gripped by crime turn to vigilantism to deter and prevent crime? In this chapter, I test the effectiveness of the Liberia National Police’s model of community policing, which focuses not only on building citizens’ trust and cooperation but also on providing communities with an alternative to vigilantism via its Community Watch Forum initiative. Drawing on large-scale crime surveys and administrative data, I find that the program led to moderate improvements in perceptions of police intentions, norms of cooperation, and perceptions of police capacity. I also find that the program increased community contributions to local security groups, reduced support for mob violence, and reduced reports of actual mob violence incidents by 39 percent. Despite these improvements, the program had no significant effect on other forms of crime victimization, crime reporting, crime tips, or residents’ sense of security.

This chapter summarizes the findings from our study, based on the meta-analysis averaging across the effects from the six experiments. We found that increases in locally appropriate community policing practices led to no improvements in citizen–police trust, no greater citizen cooperation with the police, and no reduction in crime. Despite a strong commitment from leadership in each context at the outset, the police implemented the interventions unevenly and incompletely. Although citizens reported more frequent and robust exposure to the police in places where community policing was implemented, we have limited evidence of police action in response to citizen reports.