Violence And Police Culture

Violence and policing are inevitably associated. Criminals use violence not only against innocent members of the public, but also against the police themselves. For our own protection and theirs, we have given police a licence to use force, sometimes with lethal consequences. But the exercise of this licence is fraught with risk to the community. The disturbing record of police shootings in Victoria, and irresponsible police violence elsewhere in recent years, vividly illustrate this risk. The public outcry against such events is understandable. To find a solution, we need to analyse the contexts and the cultural background of the use of police violence, and to think hard about its causes and proper limits. In Violence and Police Culture, eminent contributors offer valuable insights and experience to the growing debate. While Australian in origin and emphasis, the book addresses a public issue that resonates as far afield as London, New York, Tokyo and Belfast. Violence and Police Culture argues that there are features of police culture which foster abuse of the right to use violence. The book makes positive suggestions about institutional changes that might alleviate the problems bedevilling what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called 'the right of the sword'.

A study of the municipal police force in a midwestern city.

Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates. Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities. A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

This fascinating new title offers an ethnographical investigation of contemporary police culture based on extensive field work across a range of ranks and units in the UK's police force. By drawing on over 600 hours of direct observation of operational policing in urban and rural areas and interviews with over 60 officers, the author assesses what impact three decades of social, economic and political change have had on police culture. She offers new understandings of the policing of ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the ways in which reform initiatives are accommodated and resisted within the police. The author also explores the attempts of one force to effect cultural change both to improve the working conditions of staff and to deliver a more effective and equitable service to all groups in society. Beginning with a review of the literature on police culture from 30 years ago, the author goes on to outline the new social, economic and political field of contemporary British policing. Taking this as a starting point, the remaining chapters present the main findings of the empirical research in what is a a truly comprehensive analysis of present day policing culture.

Although the prevalence of police-citizen conflict has diminished in recent decades, police use of excessive force remains a concern of police departments nationwide. This timely book focuses on what is known and what still needs to be learned to understand, prevent, and remediate police abuse of force. The topics covered include: a theory of police abuse of force; the causes of police brutality; measures of its prevalence; the violence-prone police officer; public opinion about police abuse of force; the issue of race; officer selection, training, and attitudes; police unions and police culture; administrative review; procedural justice and the review of citizen complaints; the role of lawsuits; and a survey of police brutality abroad. In the final chapter Geller and Toch suggest new directions for research and practical innovations in law enforcement, from which both police and citizens can benefit. The contributors to this volume are scholars of criminology, criminal justice, social psychology, law, and public administration; former police managers; a police union leader; civilian oversight agency administrators and analysts; civil liberties advocates; police litigation expert witnesses; and media commentators. The combination of theoretical and practical perspectives makes this book ideal for students and scholars of democratic policing and for those in police departments, government, and the media charged with addressing and understanding the problem of improper exercise of force.

Police culture has been widely criticized as a source of resistance to change and reform, and is often misunderstood. This book seeks to capture the heart of police culture—including its tragedies and celebrations—and to understand its powerful themes of morality, solidarity, and common sense, by systematically integrating a broad literature on police culture into middle-range theory, and developing original perspectives about many aspects of police work.

Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

Criminology Explains Police Violence offers a concise and targeted overview of criminological theory applied to the phenomenon of police violence. In this engaging and accessible book, Philip M. Stinson, Sr. highlights the similarities and differences among criminological theories, and provides linkages across explanatory levels and across time and geography to explain police violence. This book is appropriate as a resource in criminology, policing, and criminal justice special topic courses, as well as a variety of violence and police courses such as policing, policing administration, police-community relations, police misconduct, and violence in society. Stinson uses examples from his own research to explore police violence, acknowledging the difficulty in studying the topic because violence is often seen as a normal part of policing.