From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals (original) (raw)
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Police Practice and Research, 2016
What I have been asked to do today is to reflect, with you, upon the nature of policing and its development. I will do so by relating two stories. The first is a story about the processes by and through which safety is actually produced. The second is an aspirational story about how safety should be produced. As with many aspirational stories, this second story has captured imaginations, and, in doing so, has shaped the way policing has been understood .
Chapter 1: Introduction to Policing in an Age of Reform
This first chapter provides an introduction to this book Policing in an Age of Reform: An Agenda for Research and Practice. The book itself draws on both scholarly research and practical experiences as all chapters are authored or coauthored by policing scholars who have had careers in policing either in Europe, Australia, or North America. We begin this chapter with a brief description of the calls for police reform in the United Kingdom, United States, and France. The views of the editors and chapter authors coalesce and diverge in important ways, which are briefly described. They affect the way we think about police reform in a changing world, and so we introduce two primary focuses of reform, i.e., police methods and police mandate. Depending on which one of these two types of reform is the primary aim of the reformer, four perspectives emerge:1) maintaining, 2) retrofitting, 3) coopting, and 4) transforming. These are explained as the chapter evolves.
The myth(?) of the police sub-culture
This study examines empirically the extent to which there is evidence of an endemic sub-culture of policing among a sample of sheriffs' deputies. While failing to observe widespread adherence to the sub-cultural norms and values suggested in the literature, such adherence is observed among a subset of our sample. Advanced statistical techniques (i.e. cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis) are then used to create, replicate, and validate a numerical taxonomy of policing. The taxonomy reveals three types of law enforcement orientations: ``Sub-Cultural Adherents,'' ``COP Cops,'' who represent a nouveau sub-culture strongly committed to public service, and``Normals,'' who, on average, are quite average and are not especially committed to either sub-cultural form. Both those working in the sociology of work and occupations and those in industrial/occupational psychology acknowledge that employees tend to adopt job-specific sub-cultural responses (i.e. shared beliefs, attitudes, values, and norms) to the contingencies they experience in their organizational and. Criminologists working within these perspectives have consistently noted the unique sub-cultural responses of criminal justice practitioners, especially law enforcement and correctional officers, given the particular characteristics of these fields. That is, the occupational environment of criminal justice includes exposure to human misery, exposure to great situational uncertainty, and exposure to intrinsic danger, all coupled with high levels of coercive authority and``invisible discretion'' granted to these officers which enable them to carry out their mandates. Moreover, most criminal justice employees work in unique organizational environments which expose them to rigid, militaristic authority structures with fixed lines of command and communication that are coupled with often vague and conflicting The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
The Cambridge handbook …, 2002
Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au This chapter provides an overview of law enforcement and private security. It begins with a brief discussion of the historical foundation of police in Australia, from the convict era to the transplantation of the traditional British model. Themes to be discussed are the integration of policing in the Australian federal system, the professionalisation of Australian law enforcement, and the rise of private security and its interrelationship with sworn police. Policing in Australia is complex, contradictory, and controversial. There is recurring debate about its value to taxpayers in terms of demonstrable performance outcomes. While the rapidly increasing crime trends apparent in the 1970s and 1980s appear to have reached something of a plateau, it is unclear whether crime has been capped by the agencies responsible for maintaining order or by forces outside their control. It would seem likely, nonetheless, that the proliferation of 'policing' agencies, including the significant growth of private security, did contribute to the containment of crime in the last decade. These achievements have come at great cost to the public and private purse, of course, and have not been free of difficulty. For example, despite some innovations in research-driven preventive strategies, public sector policing appears to have remained locked in a narrow reactive style of crime control. Moreover, revelations of crime and misconduct by police have proved to be a major distraction from the business of crime prevention. Efforts to control corruption have resulted in an additional layer of bureaucracy-'policing the police'-on top of the already complex policing structure. Be that as it may, as policing progresses into the twenty-first century, its various functionaries must respond to two primary challenges entailed in the process of professionalisation. The first is how to establish the highest standards of ethical conduct. The second is how to balance obligations of reactive policing with pressures to find more effective proactive strategies to reduce crime.
Reflections on the Nature of Policing and its Development
2015
What I have been asked to do today is to reflect, with you, upon the nature of policing and its development. I will do so by relating two stories. The first is a story about the processes by and through which safety is actually produced. The second is an aspirational story about how safety should be produced. As with many aspirational stories, this second story has captured imaginations, and, in doing so, has shaped the way policing has been understood.
Essay on the Issue of Policing and Police Reform in the United States
Beyond all doubt, the U.S. American society of the 21 st century is facing massive problems. Many of these problems are not new, they are rather old and tedious companions, accompanying the history of the land of the free for far too long. These are problems which are not just present in North-American metropolises, but also in counties, small-towns and villages. They are present in districts, schools, stores, streets and as previously shown at universities. Those are problems which no other western country had faced in a way the United States has and they are of such a constant nature that, without profound structural and ideological change, these difficulties are going to remain in every realm of public life. The sad tragedies overshadowing the media for more than a year now are reflecting the issues of discrimination and racial biases in an alarming manner. They have revitalized the public debate about equality and racism for one thing, but it is now also necessary to develop a logical and reasonable discourse about how politicians, scholars, police officials and of course civilians can come up with actual solutions concerning the problem of policing in the United States. The immanent process of change therefore initiated, is not going to be simple. Neither it is going to be inexpensive or easy to effectuate. But it is, for the sake of the wellbeing of American society, inevitable required. To give some thought-provoking impulses, one has to analyze and interpret the tensions created by pride and prejudice closely. Taking ones side will not be sufficient, one has to advocate an objective and neutral viewpoint addressing both, the civilian and the police party. In order to comprehend the difficulties of the criminal justice system, the indicators leading to the above described tensions, have to be discussed by referring to incidents which took place in Ferguson, Staten Island, North Charleston and Baltimore.