This book offers a unique and scholarly perspective on a little studied subject: maritime crime and policing. The seas and oceans cover 70 percent of the earth's surface, and 90 percent of world trade by volume travels by sea. Furthermore, the refugee crisis has produced an in-flow of people attempting to find a better life, particularly in Northwest Europe and the UK, which has had an impact on the maritime domains of European ports. While there has been attention paid to the role of maritime policing by scholars in maritime security studies, little attention has been paid by criminologists and policing studies scholars. This book aims to fill this gap.

Bringing together a range of international scholars, this book covers a variety of topics pertinent to maritime crime and its policing, such as fraud, piracy and armed robbery at sea, illegal and unregulated fishing, smuggling, people trafficking, illegal immigration, illegal dumping and pollution, arms trafficking, terrorism, and cargo theft. It brings together new perspectives on several key criminological themes such as transnational organised crime, criminalisation and securitization, and provides a bold new direction for the landlocked discipline of criminology and policing studies.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology, politics, migration studies and all those interested in the policing of the sea.

Yarin Eski is Assistant Professor at the Knowledge Hub Security and Social Resilience of the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Martin Wright is a Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Policing and Security, University of South Wales, UK.