referencebooks

Encyclopedia of Fraud: 2005 Edition

By Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA

Published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners

This is a 7" by 9.5" hardbound book running to 848 pages including the brief bibliography, plus appendices and a preface.

The preface states that this encyclopedia is intended for an audience of "practitioners and academics," which could easily mislead a literal-minded person. It's not practitioners of fraud who are the intended audience, of course, but academics and accountants and other investigators of fraud.

The book has entries on numerous fraud schemes, organized by both topic and type of scheme, as well as entries about fraud cases and "notable fraudsters." Here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the book:

• Adelphia
  
• Antar, Eddie
  
• Antitrust
  
• Asset Misappropriation
  
• Asset Valuation, Improper
  
• Atkins, Charles and William hack
  
• Attitudes Toward and Perceptions of Fraud
  
• Auditing for Fraud
  
• Auto Sales Fraud
  
• Automotive Repair Fraud
  
• Avant!
  
• Avocational Crime
  
• Bait and Switch
  
• Banco Ambrosiano
  
• Bankruptcy Fraud
  

Entries on types of fraud are the longer ones, often going on to easily a dozen pages. Biographical and historical entries are a little shorter but are also often several pages in length. The prose is clear and enjoyable to read, so that it's easy to get a lot of knowledge about different varieties of fraud and fraud cases quickly and easily.

One entry caught my eye in the table of contents - an entry for Marcus Garvey. This two and a half page entry summarizes the story of Marcus Garvey and J. Edgar Hoover's politically-motivated pursuit of him on fraud charges. The entry is very clear in stating that the Garvey case was not a case of fraud but of persecution for political reasons; this makes it interesting that the case is written up in the book at all. I suppose the author felt that the record still needs to be set straight.

The book is good but somewhat weak from a design standpoint, which is not surprising given that its publisher is a professional association with priorities other than publishing. It's a useful reference work for business and history students and scholars.

National Jail and Adult Detention Directory, Tenth Edition (2005-2007)

Authored and published by the American Correctional Association, 2005

This is a 6" by 9" paperback running to a total of 503 pages including numerous advertisements and a section at the end about the American Correctional Association. There is no separate preferatory section; the brief introduction and user's guide are in the regular sequence of pages.

Jails are not known as the most "open" institutions in society, so it is not surprising that the information given about jails in this directory is on the sparse side.

Following a general section that talks about organizational characteristics of jails nationwide, the directory portion of the book, which comprises most of it, goes state by state and county by county, providing contact information for the nation's jails, including their addresses and the names of the persons in charge, and sometimes a little more. Prisons are not included, just jails and "adult detention centers," which are like jails in that they are at the county and city level, but different in that they are only for convicts, and not for people awaiting trial. U.S. territories, like Puerto Rico and Guam, are not included, and neither is that most-talked-about detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, nor are other military detention centers. The book is limited to civilian jails and detention centers in the 50 states.

The additional information provided for some facilities includes capcity, dates of opening and renovation, the purpose of the facility (kind of inmate housed), jurisdiction, population, size of staff, and rehabilitation programs offered.

This is a decent and unique directory.

Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime

Lawrence M. Salinger, Ph.D., General Editor.

Published by SAGE, 2005.

This is a work in two 9" by 11" hardbound volumes that run to a total of 974 pages including the index and appendices, plus an introduction, a reader's guide, a timeline, list of contributors, and a list of articles. The volumes are laid out in large type in two columns.

The first sentence in the introduction is: "In the 2000's, white-collar crime has become a topic of almost daily news." Depite the overshadowing news of the September 11th, 2001, the Enron scandal was big enough to have a lasting effect on the way our culture thinks about corporate America. This reference work is a result of that.

The entries cover people, companies, laws, and convictions. The editor acknowledges that not everything that could be considered a white-collar crime has been included. I notice a pattern, however, in that violent crimes by corporations are generally omitted. This could include such things as violence against protesters (to the point of killing) in Africa by oil company-employed paramilitaries and violence against striking union members by thugs employed by strikebreaking law firms throughout American labor history. This reinforces the misperception that crimes by corporations all involve manipulation of numbers and documents (which can be harmful enough to real people). They mostly do involve documents, but they can also involve blood and broken limbs. The book also shies away from cases where the record shows clear guilt, but because of corruption the criminals managed to avoid conviction, as well as practices that are technically legal but morally offensive to society to the point of inspiring new policy developments.

That said, this resource has a lot of great information in it on white-collar crime. Here is the full list of entries in the "E" sequence, which is one of the shorter sequences:

• E. F. Hutton
  
• Eastern Europe
  
• Economic Espionage
  
• Edelhertz, Herbert
  
• Eisenhower, Dwight D.
  
• Eli Lilly
  
• Elite Crime
  
• Embezzlement
  
• Employee Crimes
  
• Employee Safey
  
• Enron Corporation
  
• Environmental Protection Agency
  
• Equity Funding Scandal
  
• Ethics
  
• Ethics Reform Act
  
• Extortion
  
• Exxon Valdez
  

Entries are informative, well-written, and signed by the contributor responsible. One strength of the book is the extensive provision of legal citations relating to specific cases.

This is a good and welcome reference book overall, but would be better if the editor had more courage to risk controversy.

Cybercrime: A Reference Handbook

By Bernadette H. Schell and Clemens Martin.

Published by ABC-CLIO in their Contemporary World Issues series in 2004.

This is a 6" by 9" hardcover book running to 247 pages in relatively
large type - a pretty short book.

Its intention is to provide an extensive introduction to cybercrime, or
crimes commited with computers, primarily security exploits and
hacking.

The book is divided into seven chapters, as follows (in parentheses are
selected chapter sections):

1. History and Types of Cybercrime (Basic Cybercrime Terms, The White
   Hats, The Black Hats, The Nonoffenses of Cybervigilantism and
   Hacktivism, Using Anonymity to Conceal Cybercrimes)
   
2. Issues, Controversies, and Solutions (Computer System Intrusions,
   Cracking, Flooding, Spoofing, Viruses and Worms, Operating Systems--Are
   Some More Secure Than Others?)
   
3. Chronology (Cybercrime Timeline, References)
   
4. Biographical Sketches (Ada Byron, Steve Jobs, Kevin Mitnick, Dmitry
   Sklyarov, Richard Stallman)
   
5. Cybercrime Legal Cases (Summary of Legislation, Trends and
   Observations in Cybercrime, Computer Crime Cases)
   
6. Agencies and Organizations (Government Agencies, Independent
   Organizations, Suppliers of Products and Services)
   
7. Print and Nonprint Resources (Books, Web Sites, Film)
   

As a handbook, the discussions of issues tend to be fairly comprehensive
and thorough, good for reading cover-to-cover or by chapter for
introductory knowledge.

Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities

Edited by Mary Bosworth.

Published by Sage, 2005.

This is work in two 8.5" by 11" volumes, totalling 1334 pages including a lengthy appendix on Federal prison system instititions and the lengthy bibliography and index, plus a list of entries, reader's guide, list of sidebars, list of contributors, chronology, introduction, acknowledgments, and a note about the editor. The type is fairly large.

This is a very comprehensive encyclopedia of prisons in the United States (a limitation of scope which the title ought to state).

For an idea of what's included, here is a list of all of the entries in the "F" sequence:

• Faith-Based Initiatives
  
• Families Against Mandatory Minimums
  
• Fathers in Prison
  
• Federal Prison Industries. See UNICOR
  
• Federal Prison System
  
• Felon Disenfranchisement
  
• Fine
  
• First Amendment
  
• Flogging
  
• Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley (1890-1964)
  
• Food
  
• Foreign Nationals
  
• Foster Care
  
• Foucault, Michel (1926-1984)
  
• Fourteenth Amendment
  
• Fourth Amendment
  
• Framingham, MCI (Massachusetts Correctional Institution)
  
• Freedom of Information Act
  
• Fry, Elizabeth
  
• Furlough
  Furman v. Georgia
  

Most of the entries listed above are more than two pages long; the longest is seven. The articles are clearly written and informative, and don't require any special background knowledge. While factually objective, the orientation is slightly on the socially critical side; more of the individuals rating full entries are important critics of the prison system than founders or innovators or leaders within existing prison institutions. This is not a problem but a thing to be aware of.

This is a high-quality, thorough and comprehensive reference work, useful to anyone who needs information about the U.S. prison system.