Cop in the Hood
Cop in the Hood

Author: Peter Moskos

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-08-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1400832268

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When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."

Quality Policing
Quality Policing

Author: David C. Couper

Publisher: Police Executive Res Forum

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 9781878734228

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This survey documents the number of crimes committed by persons using imitation guns and the number of confrontations by police with persons who had imitation guns which were thought to be real. The survey was sent to all municipal police and consolidated police departments serving populations of 50,000 or more inhabitants, all sheriff's departments with 100 or more sworn employees, and all primary State police agencies. The total survey response rate was 70 percent with a usable response rate of 65.5 percent. Findings indicate that between January 1, 1985 and September 1, 1989, 458 police departments (65.5 percent) reported 5,654 robberies known to be committed with an imitation gun. In the same period, police departments reported 8,128 known assaults with imitation guns. One hundred eighty-six police departments reported 1,128 incidents where an officer warned or threatened to use force and 252 cases where actual force had been used based on the belief that an imitation gun was real. 5 tables, 12 figures, 8 illustrations, appendix.

Zero Tolerance
Zero Tolerance

Author: Andrea Mcardle

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2001-03

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 081475631X

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Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Anthony Baez, Patrick Dorismond. New York City has been rocked in recent years by the fate of these four men at the hands of the police. But police brutality in New York City is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that refers not only to the hyperviolent response of white male police officers as in these cases, but to an entire set of practices that target homeless people, vendors, and sexual minorities. The complexity of the problem requires a commensurate response, which Zero Tolerance fulfills with a range of scholarship and activism. Offering perspectives from law and society, women's studies, urban and cultural studies, labor history, and the visual arts, the essays assembled here complement, and provide a counterpoint, to the work of police scholars on this subject. Framed as both a response and a challenge to official claims that intensified law enforcement has produced New York City's declining crime rates, Zero Tolerance instead posits a definition of police brutality more encompassing than the use of excessive physical force. Further, it develops the connections between the most visible and familiar forms of police brutality that have sparked a new era of grassroots community activism, and the day-to-day violence that accompanies the city's campaign to police the "quality of life." Contributors include: Heather Barr, Paul G. Chevigny, Derrick Bell, Tanya Erzen, Dayo F. Gore, Amy S. Green, Paul Hoffman, Andrew Hsiao, Tamara Jones, Joo-Hyun Kang, Andrea McArdle, Bradley McCallum, Andrew Ross, Eric Tang, Jacqueline Tarry, Sasha Torres, and Jennifer R. Wynn.

Proactive Policing
Proactive Policing

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-03-23

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0309467136

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Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

Against Prediction
Against Prediction

Author: Bernard E. Harcourt

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0226315991

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From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they’re a more cost-effective way to fight crime. In Against Prediction, Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, Harcourt shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be against prediction.

Illusion of Order
Illusion of Order

Author: Bernard E. Harcourt

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2005-02-15

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780674038318

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This is the first book to challenge the broken-windows theory of crime, which argues that permitting minor misdemeanors, such as loitering and vagrancy, to go unpunished only encourages more serious crime. The theory has revolutionized policing in the United States and abroad, with its emphasis on policies that crack down on disorderly conduct and aggressively enforce misdemeanor laws. The problem, argues Bernard Harcourt, is that although the broken-windows theory has been around for nearly thirty years, it has never been empirically verified. Indeed, existing data suggest that it is false. Conceptually, it rests on unexamined categories of law abiders and disorderly people and of order and disorder, which have no intrinsic reality, independent of the techniques of punishment that we implement in our society. How did the new order-maintenance approach to criminal justice--a theory without solid empirical support, a theory that is conceptually flawed and results in aggressive detentions of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens--come to be one of the leading criminal justice theories embraced by progressive reformers, policymakers, and academics throughout the world? This book explores the reasons why. It also presents a new, more thoughtful vision of criminal justice.

Improving the Use of Quality Circles in Police Departments
Improving the Use of Quality Circles in Police Departments

Author: Harry P. Hatry

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

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This report examines the practical issues that police departments face when considering the adoption, design, and implementation of "quality circle" programs, in which small groups of employees, primarily nonmanagement personnel from the same work unit, meet regularly to identify, analyze, and recommend solutions to problems confronting their work unit. This book reports on a 2-year (1983 and 1984) study of quality circles that involved a relevant literature review, a mail survey of police departments, telephone interviews with department personnel responsible for quality circles, a review of materials, and onsite field work. The study resulted in indications of the likely outcomes of police quality circles and information about specific ways to better apply quality circles and similar employee participation programs in police departments. The study concludes that the use of quality circles in police departments has the potential to achieve a number of small-scale service improvements in work units that use them. The effective use of quality circles, however, requires modest expenditures for training, overtime pay, and other activities of quality circles. There is no evidence to date that quality circles produce any major improvements in service delivery or productivity. The circles have typically focused on improving working conditions and the resolution of relatively minor, narrowly focused operating problems. Absent continuing maintenance of the circles and the identification of issues that impact employees' work, quality circles tend to deteriorate after a year or two. The long-term survival of quality circles depends on voluntary participation, a motivated facilitator who is given time to devote to the circle's operation, and explicit support and recognition from upper management. Detailed recommendations are offered for the development and maintenance of quality circles so they can fulfill their potential for improving work unit operations and employee morale. 24 notes and 101 references.

Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing
Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2004-04-06

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0309084334

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Because police are the most visible face of government power for most citizens, they are expected to deal effectively with crime and disorder and to be impartial. Producing justice through the fair, and restrained use of their authority. The standards by which the public judges police success have become more exacting and challenging. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing explores police work in the new century. It replaces myths with research findings and provides recommendations for updated policy and practices to guide it. The book provides answers to the most basic questions: What do police do? It reviews how police work is organized, explores the expanding responsibilities of police, examines the increasing diversity among police employees, and discusses the complex interactions between officers and citizens. It also addresses such topics as community policing, use of force, racial profiling, and evaluates the success of common police techniques, such as focusing on crime "hot spots." It goes on to look at the issue of legitimacyâ€"how the public gets information about police work, and how police are viewed by different groups, and how police can gain community trust. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing will be important to anyone concerned about police work: policy makers, administrators, educators, police supervisors and officers, journalists, and interested citizens.