"Why have years of police reform in Singapore not produced significant changes in improving the policing of marital violence" is the fundamental question raised by this volume. Carefully exploring the police response to marital violence in Singapore, while paying due attention to the particular culture and historical context in place, the author reframes the questions about the problem of intimate violence. The book goes into the ramifications for the criminal justice system, particularly into the issues of policing, safety and protection of victims from such violence. A careful documentation of the reform process, but also the resistance encountered within the police organisation, especially by the rank-and-file police.

"Why have years of police reform in Singapore not produced significant changes in improving the policing of marital violence" is the fundamental question raised by this volume. Carefully exploring the police response to marital violence in Singapore, while paying due attention to the particular culture and historical context in place, the author reframes the questions about the problem of intimate violence. The book goes into the ramifications for the criminal justice system, particularly into the issues of policing, safety and protection of victims from such violence. A careful documentation of the reform process, but also the resistance encountered within the police organisation, especially by the rank-and-file police.

Domestic violence in Asia is explored in this analysis through questions of family ambiguity and the relationship between concept, law, and strategy. Comparative experiences in the Asian context enable an examination of the effectiveness of family regulations and laws in diverse national, cultural, and religious settings. Key questions relate to the limits and relevance of the human rights discourse in resolving family conflicts; the extent to which power and control in intimate relationships can actually be regulated by a set of inanimate, homogeneous, and uniform policies and legislations; and how the state relates to the family as an ambiguous unit given state rules of governance that perpetuate unequal gender relations. Carefully considering the many components of domestic violence--such as state intervention versus the private domain and differences in legislation across Asia--the book offers new theoretical insights to the conceptualization of the family, culture, and law, and provides reasoned new perspectives on the effectiveness or inadequacy of present policies and enforcement strategies against domestic violence in Asia.

This book examines the issues of crime and its control in the twenty-first century - an era of human history where people live in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world - providing invaluable and first-hand readings for undergraduate and postgradate students.

The enclosed papers are the culmination of a project Dr. John Crank and Dr. Colleen Kadleck carried out assessing issues facing the police into the early 21st century. The papers are future oriented, in the sense that they anticipate trends visible today. Everywhere, the contributing scholars found that the organizational concept, practice, and function of the police were undergoing transition. Yet, the seeming state-level hardening of the police function was ubiquitous. Two themes were noteworthy. On the one hand, in developing or ‘second world’ countries, police face endemic problems of corruption, organized crime, and drugs. Police, in response, are undergoing centralization and intensification of law enforcement activities. In countries with first world economies – Canada, the United States, and Australia – contributors discovered trends toward expansion of the police function, a trend described by Brodeur as toward 'high policing'. It reflects the growing reliance on surveillance for crime control and for the tracking of minority, indigenous, and immigrant populations in crime prevention efforts. The results suggest that governments, sometimes encouraged by their citizenry, seem increasingly to rely on the police to deal with a broad array of social as well as criminal problems. This book was originally published as a special issue of Police Practice and Research.

This book explores how the law and the institutions of the criminal justice system expose minorities to different types of violence, either directly, through discrimination and harassment, or indirectly, by creating the conditions that make them vulnerable to violence from other groups of society. It draws on empirical insights across a broad array of communities and locales including Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan, India, Malawi, Turkey, Brazil, Singapore, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It examines the challenges of protecting those at the margins of power, especially those whom the law is often used to oppress. The chapters explore intersecting, marginal identities influenced by four factors: rebuilding after violent regimes, economic interest behind the violence, entrenched cultural biases, and criminalisation of diversity. It provides scholars from the Global North with important lessons when attempting to impose their own solutions onto nations with a different history and context, or when applying their own laws to migrants from the Global South nations explored in this book. It speaks to legal and social science scholars in the fields of law, sociology, criminology, and social work.