Urban Politics Crime Rates And Police Strength

Stucky (criminal justice, Indiana-Purdue U. at Indianapolis) analyzes the relationship between politics, crime, and police employment, expenditures, and arrests. Using political resource theory, he examines how resources are managed and provides an institutional resource perspective about crime and politics, while discussing social disorganization,

This book is a study of urban police and their interest in obtaining power as individuals within the organization and collectively within the community. Urban society, beset by increases in crime and violence and the growing irrelevancy of primary socializing agents, must look to the police, the institutionalized control agency, for the preservation of peace, order, and tranquility in the community. The dilemma of a democratic society is how to give the police sufficient power to perform their role effectively, while at the same time maintaining restraints on the police in order to prevent abuses to democratic principles. This book looks at the discretionary conduct of policemen and whether adequate accountability measures exist -- and, if not, whether they can be realized, while allowing for the necessary development of police capabilities in the performance of requisite functions. In its focus on the behavior of police officials and the relationship of the police bureaucracy to the urban political system, the work strives to be both descriptive and prescriptive. The author uses examples from a cross-section of American cities and focuses on Memphis, Tennessee to illustrate the political events and social factors which effect policing. Collective police power is measured by the extent of their discretionary authority and freedom from external controls, individual power is perceived by the rational strategies on the part of police officials striving to attain or consolidate their personal power positions in the organization. Implicit in the police's struggle for power -- both personal and collective -- is the existence of conflict with challenging institutional and environmental forces and actors.

Introduction -- American exceptionalism : perspectives -- American exceptionalism in crime, punishment, and disadvantage : race, federalization, and politicization in the perspective of local autonomy / Nicola Lacey and David Soskice -- The concept of American exceptionalism and the case of capital punishment / David Garland -- Penal optimism : understanding American mass imprisonment from a Canadian perspective / Cheryl Marie Webster and Anthony N. Doob -- The complications of penal federalism : American exceptionalism or fifty different countries? / Franklin E. Zimring -- American exceptionalism in crime -- American exceptionalism in comparative perspective : explaining trends and variation in the use of incarceration / Tapio Lappi-Seppälä -- How exceptional is the history of violence and criminal justice in the United States? : variation across time and space as the keys to understanding homicide and punitiveness / Randolph Roth -- Making the state pay : violence and the politicization of crime in comparative perspective / Lisa L. Miller -- Comparing serious violent crime in the United States and England and Wales : why it matters, and how it can be done / Zelia Gallo, Nicola Lacey, and David Soskice -- American exceptionalism in community supervision : a comparative analysis of probation in the United States, Scotland, and Sweden / Edward E. Rhine and Faye S. Taxman -- American exceptionalism in parole release and supervision : a European perspective / Dirk van Zyl Smit and Alessandro Corda -- Collateral sanctions and American exceptionalism : a comparative perspective / Nora V. Demleitner -- Index

This book examines the rapid spread of uniformed police forces throughout late nineteenth-century urban America. It suggests that, initially, the new kind of police in industrial cities served primarily as agents of class control, dispensing and administering welfare services as an unintentioned consequence of their uniformed presence on the streets.

A diverse, critical analysis of racial and ethnic disparities within the American criminal justice system that encourages critical thinking by providing various sides to the issues. Low-income African Americans, Latin Americans, and American Indians bear the statistical brunt of policing, death penalty verdicts, and sentencing disparities in the United States. Why does this long-standing inequity exist in a country where schoolchildren are taught to expect "justice for all"? The original essays in this two-volume set not only examine the deep-rooted issues and lay out theories as to why racism remains a problem in our prison system, but they also provide potential solutions to the problem. The work gives a broad, multicultural overview of the history of overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in our prison system, examining white/black disparities as well as racism and issues of ethnic-based discrimination concerning other ethnic minorities. This up-to-date resource is ideally suited for undergraduate students who are enrolled in criminal justice or racial/ethnic studies classes and general readers interested in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Basic Concepts in Criminology is an introduction to criminology. It is intended to serve as resource material for prospective students of criminology and particularly for law enforcement officers in training and in the field. Criminology as a social science discipline is structured from a combination of concepts of sociology, psychology, and lawall relevant subjects to the law enforcement profession. Remarkably, criminology is not very popular as a stand-alone subject among disciplines of choice for undergraduate students or even for those going in for graduate studies. Instead, what we notice in most universities curricula are related disciplines, like criminal justice, criminal investigation, crime scene investigation, forensic, law enforcement, and so forth. Material contained in this book will be particularly useful to law enforcement officers; the Police, Corrections, and Security officers. In this book, I have attempted to approach and make this subject much easier and interesting to prospective students of Criminology in general and to law enforcement officers in particular, to whom knowledge of this subject is an important professional asset. I hope it will stir and arouse their interest and that of prospective students of Criminology in general.