The Police State And Society

Revised version of papers presented at a conference held at New Delhi during 9-11 February 2004.

A critical look at the terrifying ways the police are used to control'surplus' populations worldwide.

“A NATION OF SHEEP WILL BEGET A GOVERNMENT OF WOLVES”–EDWARD R. MURROW America is fast moving into a state of lockdown. Surveillance cameras, drug-sniffing dogs, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, blood draws at DUI checkpoints, mosquito drones, tasers, privatized prisons, GPS tracking devices, zero tolerance policies, overcriminalization, free speech zones—these are all symptoms of the emerging police state in America. A GOVERNMENT OF WOLVES paints a chilling portrait of a nation in the final stages of transformation into outright authoritarianism, whose citizens have become little more than a nation of suspects to be cowed, corralled, and controlled. Pulling from his extensive knowledge of constitutional law, history, and futuristic films, John W. Whitehead helps readers navigate this treacherous terrain and provides them with a blueprint for hopefully finding their way back to freedom.

This book formulates a theory of the origin and evolution of the police function, using both historical and cross-cultural analysis. It explains the incremental changes in the police function associated with the transition from kinship-based to class-dominated societies, and examines the implications of these changes for modern police-community relations. It suggests that the police institution has a double and contradictory function: at the same time, and in the same society, it seeks to be the agent of the people it polices and of the dominant class. The authors critique community policing and suggest how communities may be reconstituted in order to create a community police. A comprehensive bibliography enhances this study for students, teachers, and professionals in the fields of criminal justice and sociology.

Probing the relationship between German political economy and everyday fiscal administration, The Disordered Police State focuses on the cameral sciences—a peculiarly German body of knowledge designed to train state officials—and in so doing offers a new vision of science and practice during the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. Andre Wakefield shows that the cameral sciences were at once natural, technological, and economic disciplines, but, more important, they also were strategic sciences, designed to procure patronage for their authors and good publicity for the German principalities in which they lived and worked. Cameralism, then, was the public face of the prince's most secret affairs; as such, it was an essentially dishonest enterprise. In an entertaining series of case studies on mining, textiles, forestry, and universities, Wakefield portrays cameralists in their own gritty terms. The result is a revolutionary new understanding about how the sciences created and maintained an image of the well-ordered police state in early modern Germany. In raising doubts about the status of these German sciences of the state, Wakefield ultimately questions many of our accepted narratives about science, culture, and society in early modern Europe.

What does it take to reform a post-Soviet police force? This book explores the conditions in which a meaningful transformation of the police is likely to succeed and when it will fail. Based on the analysis of five post-Soviet countries that have officially embarked on police reform efforts, Erica Marat examines various pathways to transforming how the state relates to society through policing.

The Police, State and Society: Perspectives from India and France is a parallel study between criminal justice systems in India and France. It covers the institutional, democratic and functional aspects of the police and law in the two countries. It discusses the modern aspects of policing and human rights issues in the criminal justice system against a backdrop of violence and conflict. It is useful for students and scholars of sociology, law, criminal justice, political science policymakers and general readers.