"Police Matters moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined nature of police and caste in the Tamil countryside. Radha Kumar argues that the colonial police acted as tools of the state in ...deploying rigid notions of caste, refashioning rural identities in a process that has cast long postcolonial shadows. Kumar draws on unexplored police archives to enter the dusty streets and market squares where local constables walked, following their gaze and observing their actions towards potential subversives. Station records present a textured view of ordinary interactions between police and society, showing that state coercion was not only exceptional and spectacular; it was also subtle and continuous, woven into everyday life. The colonial police categorized Indian subjects based on caste to ensure the security of agriculture and trade, and thus the smooth running of the economy. Among policemen and among the objects of their coercive gaze, caste became a particularly salient form of identity in the politics of public spaces. Police Matters demonstrates that, without doubt, modern caste politics have both been shaped by, and shaped, state policing. Thanks to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories."
How many times have you read a news story about someone being shot by the police while reaching for their waistband? Or about an officer who testified at trial that the person he shot during a ...physical struggle had superhuman strength or a thousand-yard stare in his eyes? And how many times have you watched a police chief or sheriff during a press conference invoke the "21-foot rule" to justify their officer's killing of a mentally ill person with a knife?These and a host of other verbal devices are what author William Harmening calls the "deadly force script." It is a strategy that has been employed with great success by the law enforcement community in the decades following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner (1985), the case that for the first time placed significant restrictions on a police officer's use of deadly force. It is a strategy that has gone relatively unnoticed by the general public, the media, elected prosecutors, and the judges and juries who must rule on the reasonableness of an officer's actions.Now, perhaps for the very first time, William Harmening pulls back the veil to expose the deadly force script for all to see. He does this in a unique and informative way by presenting actual case studies where the script was employed following a deadly police encounter, typically right under the unsuspecting noses of local media and the prosecutor tasked with deciding whether to criminally charge the officers involved. Anyone with an interest in the twin ideals of an equitable system of justice and a professional and bias-free police force will find this book both fascinating and enlightening.
Despite constant calls for reform, policing in the United States and Britain has changed little over the past thirty years. In Policing Contingencies, Peter K. Manning draws on decades of fieldwork ...to investigate how law enforcement works on the ground and in the symbolic realm, and why most efforts to reform the way police work have failed so far. Manning begins by developing a model of policing as drama—a way of communicating various messages to the public in an effort to enforce moral boundaries. Unexpected outcomes, or contingencies, continually rewrite the plot of this drama, requiring officers to adjust accordingly. New information technologies, media scrutiny and representations, and community policing also play important roles, and Manning studies these influences in detail. He concludes that their impacts have been quite limited, because the basic structure of policing—officer assessments based on encounters during routine patrols—has remained unchanged. For policing to really change, Manning argues, its focus will need to shift to prevention. Written with precision and judiciously argued, Policing Contingencies will be of value to scholars of sociology, criminology, information technology, and cultural theory.
The State and the police are traditionally seen as closely connected phenomena. Today, however, rapid EU legal developments mean that European police forces are no longer tied to a specific national ...legal context or a specific territory in the way they used to be. Norway is not a member of the EU. Or is it? This book shows that although it lacks formal membership status, Norway has become part of almost all of the major EU police cooperation measures and agreements. Not only does this mean that foreign police forces may operate on Norwegian territory and vice versa, but in addition, a wide range of EU regulations and cooperation instruments are incorporated directly into Norwegian law. With the increased focus on international and transnational police cooperation in mind, what does it mean to be a sovereign state in Europe today? This book combines strong legal and theoretical analyses of a specific national system to show how this country is tied to and dependent on a wider international and supranational system of legal rules, technologies and concepts. This makes the book relevant not only for the Norwegian prosecution and police authorities, but also for readers outside Norway interested in exploring how and whether the police as a modern state function has changed through the implementation of international cross-border cooperation mechanisms.
In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the ...public would trust the police more and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seems to offer relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory. A procedural justice model of policing is likely to be only loosely coupled with police practice, despite the best intentions, and improvements in procedural justice on the part of police are unlikely to result in corresponding improvements in citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice.
Building on five years of research, and drawing on criminology, science and technology studies (STS), socio-legal studies and social psychology, this book is the first non-medical book written on ...electric-shock weapons, of which the best well known is the TASER brand. The police’s ability to use force is one of their most crucial powers, yet one that has been relatively neglected by criminology. This book challenges some of the myths surrounding the use of these weapons and considers their human rights implications and impact on members of the public and officers alike. Drawing on STS, it also considers the role and impact of electric-shock technologies, examines the extent to which technologies and non-human agency may also play a role in shaping officer decision making and discretion, and contributes to long standing debates about police accountability. This is essential reading for policing scholars around the world, particularly those engaged with use of force, culture and accountability, as well as those engaged with Science and Technology studies.
Just authority? Jackson, Jonathan
2013., 2013, 2013-00-00, 2012, 2012-10-12
eBook
What does it mean to trust the police? What makes the police legitimate in the eyes of the policed? What builds trust, legitimacy and cooperation, and what undermines the bond between police and the ...public? These questions are central to current debates concerning the relationship between the British police and the public it serves. Yet, in the context of British policing they are seldom asked explicitly, still less examined in depth.
Drawing on psychological and sociological explanatory paradigms, Just Authority? presents a cutting-edge empirical study into public trust, police legitimacy, and people's readiness to cooperate with officers. It represents, first, the most detailed test to date of Tom Tyler's procedural justice model attempted outside the United States. Second, it uncovers the social ecology of trust and legitimacy and, third, it describes the relationships between trust, legitimacy and cooperation.
This book contains many important lessons for practitioners, policy-makers and academics. As elsewhere the dominant vision of policing in Great Britain continues to stress instrumental effectiveness: the 'fight against crime' will be won by pro-active and even aggressive policing. In line with work from the United States and elsewhere, Just Authority? casts significant doubt on such claims. When people find policing to be unfair, disrespectful and careless of human dignity, not only is trust lost, legitimacy is also damaged and cooperation is withdrawn as a result. Absent such public support, the job of the police is made harder and the avowed objectives of less crime and disorder placed ever further from reach.
As the world becomes ever more unequal, people become ever more 'disposable'. Today, governments systematically exclude sections of their populations from society through heavy-handed policing. But ...it doesn't always go to plan. William I. Robinson exposes the nature and dynamics of this out-of-control system, arguing for the urgency of creating a movement capable of overthrowing it. The global police state uses a variety of ingenious methods of control, including mass incarceration, police violence, US-led wars, the persecution of immigrants and refugees, and the repression of environmental activists. Movements have emerged to combat the increasing militarization, surveillance and social cleansing; however many of them appeal to a moral sense of social justice rather than addressing its root - global capitalism. Using shocking data which reveals how far capitalism has become a system of repression, Robinson argues that the emerging megacities of the world are becoming the battlegrounds where the excluded and the oppressed face off against the global police state.
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