This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduat... more This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduate course, offered to police officers and incarcerated men, that would eventually become part of the city's recruit training academy. The initial class consisted of six veteran officers and six men serving life sentences. The programme has the potential to integrate the fundamentals of restorative justice within the occupational culture of policing in order to produce direct benefits for public safety and may also be effective for building more authentic relationships between police and communities of colour. The article explains what went into creating this class, how it progressed and what resulted.
Police recruit narratives and publicly oriented vocabularies of motive
International Journal of Police Science & Management
Although who chooses to become a police officer and why they do so is pivotal for understanding p... more Although who chooses to become a police officer and why they do so is pivotal for understanding policing, few studies explore recruit motivations. We help to fill this research void through analysis of open-ended narratives penned by police recruits during the academy in a large rust belt city explaining why they want to become police officers, supplemented with qualitative follow-up interviews conducted with randomly selected participants. Of the existing studies on police recruit motivation, nearly all use fixed-response surveys of researcher-selected answers. Despite our respondents being completely free to use their own words, their motivations demonstrate a striking similarity to the findings of previous literature. These stated motivations of altruism and community concern also stand in stark contrast to the public behaviors of police. We suggest this consistency in stated motivations and disconnect with public behavior evinces a publicly oriented vocabulary of motive in which...
“The Blackness That Incriminated Me”: Stigma and Normalization in Brothers and Keepers
Kalfou, 2021
This research situates Brothers and Keepers, the memoir of John Edgar Wideman (one of the greates... more This research situates Brothers and Keepers, the memoir of John Edgar Wideman (one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years), within the tradition of Black sociology, arguing that it politicizes the theories in Stigma, the foundational study by Erving Goffman (one of the greatest sociologists of the past hundred years), by grounding them in the lived experience of an African American man. In turn, Goffman’s writing facilitates a reading of Wideman’s work as an attempt to surrender the mask of the “exceptional” Black man among elite whites and reconcile his stellar accomplishments with his stigmatized beginnings as well as his brother’s incarceration. With this effort, Wideman begins to shift from tacit complicity with racial stigmatization to active resistance against it. Our goal in this project is to use Goffman’s concepts of “stigma” and “moral career” to explain Wideman’s growth, and in turn, add a degree of depth and breadth to Goffman’s notions of the “own” and the “w...
The field of policing has increasingly come under public scrutiny due to the events surrounding t... more The field of policing has increasingly come under public scrutiny due to the events surrounding the deaths of citizens at the hands of officers. While this has spurred a call for changes to police training and practices, conspicuously absent from the conversation are the voices of officers themselves. This study addresses this lacuna by examining the attitudes and opinions of rural law enforcement, challenging the notion that the findings of studies concerning urban police can be generalized to rural departments. We argue that opposed to individualistic "rotten apples" theories, rural police behavior is best understood as patterned by the habitus of officers. This study explicates how the field experienced by rural law enforcement interacts with and modifies their response to the hypermasculine training and increasing militarization of American policing to produce an officer habitus distinct from that of their urban counterparts.
From Chi-Raq to Iraq: The retreat of the state and the rise of organized violent nonstate actors
International Sociology, 2018
Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe th... more Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe the violence and chaos of Chicago’s South Side, home of some of the most violent neighborhoods in America. City leaders condemned the title as inflammatory and hyperbolic, but this article argues the comparison is not as far afield as they suggest. Drawing from the literatures on state legitimacy, American gang formation, and the emerging scholarship surrounding the Islamic State, it is argued the two locations and their organized violent nonstate actors exhibit a host of important similarities. In both situations, the absence of services and protection delivered through the legitimate government has left a vacuum of both material goods and legitimacy, which fuels the genesis, growth, and stability of these extralegal organizations.
The evolving self-presentation of the Islamic State, from Dabiq to Rumiyah
The Social Science Journal, 2020
ABSTRACTIn 2016 the Islamic State (IS) dramatically altered the centerpiece of its Western outrea... more ABSTRACTIn 2016 the Islamic State (IS) dramatically altered the centerpiece of its Western outreach, shuttering Dabiq magazine and replacing it with Rumiyah. While Dabiq was marked by twin appeals ...
Scholars have established effective and impartial policing regimes that are central to the develo... more Scholars have established effective and impartial policing regimes that are central to the development and maintenance of democratic states, especially in post-conflict scenarios as the international community attempts to rebuild nations in the wake of dictatorial rule. Yet despite how common such efforts are, there remain serious gaps in the academic literature regarding this central aspect of state reconstruction. Recognizing that the model which is most commonly employed in practiced is woefully insufficient, scholars have begun to coalesce around a newer, more reflexive approach toward police reconstruction which more seriously grapples with the many political, economic, and social questions inherent to such efforts. However, despite this growth of the field, there remain significant gaps in the literature, especially around personnel recruitment and resource allocation. This article offers an explanation of these two models of post-conflict police reconstruction, while explicating the remaining gaps in our collective knowledge. Effective post-conflict state reconstruction is by necessity a complicated affair. One oft-overlooked central aspect of state reconstruction programs is the successful and timely introduction of new policing regimes. In the past two decades, international coalitions have attempted to reconstruct police forces in well over a dozen nations . Although the results of these efforts have been mixed, they have left us with a wealth of scholarly materials concerning the practical and theoretical aspects of police reconstruction (
Iraq’s Neoliberal Reconstruction and the Continued Relevance of the State
Sociological Focus, 2019
ABSTRACT In the past several decades, social scientists and theorists have steadily moved away fr... more ABSTRACT In the past several decades, social scientists and theorists have steadily moved away from understandings of power emphasizing the role of the nation-state, instead favoring explanations centering a multiplicity of actors and institutions as embedded in networks and relationships which traverse nations. The invasion of Iraq serves as a prime test case for theories of the operation of power in the twenty-first century, as the architects of the invasion relied upon a neoliberal vision of near-stateless governance, instead deferring to the free market and other non-state power arrangements. However, the rise of actors such as IS, who have consolidated power in large part through providing state-like services and who seek to build their own alternate state, challenges the move away from state-centric theories. As such, the invasion and its resulting aftermath has the potential to inform a number of arguments relating to the role of the modern state in developing, maintaining, and reproducing power relations. This article employs a Gramscian analysis of the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq to argue for the continued importance of the nation-state in our understanding of how power operates in contemporary globalization and neoliberalism.
From the point of a gun to the point of starvation: economic conscription in post-conflict policing
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 2019
ABSTRACT A central aspect of post-conflict policing literature holds that the new force must diff... more ABSTRACT A central aspect of post-conflict policing literature holds that the new force must differentiate itself from its predecessor. In the efforts to democratize Iraqi police, trainers and recruits alike espouse lofty ideals regarding who should join and how police should behave. However, these ideals are directly contradicted by low qualification levels and the public behavior of police. Drawing from an intensive ethnographic study of police training in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), I argue that while having broken from the forced conscription of the Hussein era, the new force is staffed by economic conscription, comprised of reluctant volunteers who joined to escape poverty and receive little training on the new responsibilities of democratic police. While the methods of conscription have changed, the results remain the same – a force comprised largely of people who do not want to be police and who do not respect the rights of citizens.
Existing scientific literature on post-conflict police reconstruction is largely divided between ... more Existing scientific literature on post-conflict police reconstruction is largely divided between two camps. The first, and most widely employed in practice, can be termed a neo-liberal model, which argues progress comes through technological and organizational sophistication delivered by Western officials. This neo-liberal model has been the guiding principle of the reconstruction of the Iraqi state and police force. However, many scholars have argued this model is woefully inadequate for post-conflict reconstruction and have instead developed an alternative approach which can be termed a reflexive model. Similar to what is known as fourth generation peacebuilding in the International Relations literature, the reflexive model stresses building relationships with local stakeholders and relying on indigenous knowledge to guide post-conflict reconstruction. Drawing from 48 intensive interviews, 87 qualitative surveys, and six months of ethnographic examination of an Iraqi police traini...
U.S. Census Director Bob Groves sheds light on the scope, mechanics, and mission of his bureau an... more U.S. Census Director Bob Groves sheds light on the scope, mechanics, and mission of his bureau and its most famous project.
Criminal justice policy inside-out: An initial case study in education among police and incarcerated men
The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles, 2019
This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduat... more This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduate course, offered to police officers and incarcerated men, that would eventually become part of the city’s recruit training academy. The initial class consisted of six veteran officers and six men serving life sentences. The programme has the potential to integrate the fundamentals of restorative justice within the occupational culture of policing in order to produce direct benefits for public safety and may also be effective for building more authentic relationships between police and communities of colour. The article explains what went into creating this class, how it progressed and what resulted.
This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduat... more This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduate course, offered to police officers and incarcerated men, that would eventually become part of the city's recruit training academy. The initial class consisted of six veteran officers and six men serving life sentences. The programme has the potential to integrate the fundamentals of restorative justice within the occupational culture of policing in order to produce direct benefits for public safety and may also be effective for building more authentic relationships between police and communities of colour. The article explains what went into creating this class, how it progressed and what resulted.
Police recruit narratives and publicly oriented vocabularies of motive
International Journal of Police Science & Management
Although who chooses to become a police officer and why they do so is pivotal for understanding p... more Although who chooses to become a police officer and why they do so is pivotal for understanding policing, few studies explore recruit motivations. We help to fill this research void through analysis of open-ended narratives penned by police recruits during the academy in a large rust belt city explaining why they want to become police officers, supplemented with qualitative follow-up interviews conducted with randomly selected participants. Of the existing studies on police recruit motivation, nearly all use fixed-response surveys of researcher-selected answers. Despite our respondents being completely free to use their own words, their motivations demonstrate a striking similarity to the findings of previous literature. These stated motivations of altruism and community concern also stand in stark contrast to the public behaviors of police. We suggest this consistency in stated motivations and disconnect with public behavior evinces a publicly oriented vocabulary of motive in which...
“The Blackness That Incriminated Me”: Stigma and Normalization in Brothers and Keepers
Kalfou, 2021
This research situates Brothers and Keepers, the memoir of John Edgar Wideman (one of the greates... more This research situates Brothers and Keepers, the memoir of John Edgar Wideman (one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years), within the tradition of Black sociology, arguing that it politicizes the theories in Stigma, the foundational study by Erving Goffman (one of the greatest sociologists of the past hundred years), by grounding them in the lived experience of an African American man. In turn, Goffman’s writing facilitates a reading of Wideman’s work as an attempt to surrender the mask of the “exceptional” Black man among elite whites and reconcile his stellar accomplishments with his stigmatized beginnings as well as his brother’s incarceration. With this effort, Wideman begins to shift from tacit complicity with racial stigmatization to active resistance against it. Our goal in this project is to use Goffman’s concepts of “stigma” and “moral career” to explain Wideman’s growth, and in turn, add a degree of depth and breadth to Goffman’s notions of the “own” and the “w...
The field of policing has increasingly come under public scrutiny due to the events surrounding t... more The field of policing has increasingly come under public scrutiny due to the events surrounding the deaths of citizens at the hands of officers. While this has spurred a call for changes to police training and practices, conspicuously absent from the conversation are the voices of officers themselves. This study addresses this lacuna by examining the attitudes and opinions of rural law enforcement, challenging the notion that the findings of studies concerning urban police can be generalized to rural departments. We argue that opposed to individualistic "rotten apples" theories, rural police behavior is best understood as patterned by the habitus of officers. This study explicates how the field experienced by rural law enforcement interacts with and modifies their response to the hypermasculine training and increasing militarization of American policing to produce an officer habitus distinct from that of their urban counterparts.
From Chi-Raq to Iraq: The retreat of the state and the rise of organized violent nonstate actors
International Sociology, 2018
Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe th... more Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe the violence and chaos of Chicago’s South Side, home of some of the most violent neighborhoods in America. City leaders condemned the title as inflammatory and hyperbolic, but this article argues the comparison is not as far afield as they suggest. Drawing from the literatures on state legitimacy, American gang formation, and the emerging scholarship surrounding the Islamic State, it is argued the two locations and their organized violent nonstate actors exhibit a host of important similarities. In both situations, the absence of services and protection delivered through the legitimate government has left a vacuum of both material goods and legitimacy, which fuels the genesis, growth, and stability of these extralegal organizations.
The evolving self-presentation of the Islamic State, from Dabiq to Rumiyah
The Social Science Journal, 2020
ABSTRACTIn 2016 the Islamic State (IS) dramatically altered the centerpiece of its Western outrea... more ABSTRACTIn 2016 the Islamic State (IS) dramatically altered the centerpiece of its Western outreach, shuttering Dabiq magazine and replacing it with Rumiyah. While Dabiq was marked by twin appeals ...
Scholars have established effective and impartial policing regimes that are central to the develo... more Scholars have established effective and impartial policing regimes that are central to the development and maintenance of democratic states, especially in post-conflict scenarios as the international community attempts to rebuild nations in the wake of dictatorial rule. Yet despite how common such efforts are, there remain serious gaps in the academic literature regarding this central aspect of state reconstruction. Recognizing that the model which is most commonly employed in practiced is woefully insufficient, scholars have begun to coalesce around a newer, more reflexive approach toward police reconstruction which more seriously grapples with the many political, economic, and social questions inherent to such efforts. However, despite this growth of the field, there remain significant gaps in the literature, especially around personnel recruitment and resource allocation. This article offers an explanation of these two models of post-conflict police reconstruction, while explicating the remaining gaps in our collective knowledge. Effective post-conflict state reconstruction is by necessity a complicated affair. One oft-overlooked central aspect of state reconstruction programs is the successful and timely introduction of new policing regimes. In the past two decades, international coalitions have attempted to reconstruct police forces in well over a dozen nations . Although the results of these efforts have been mixed, they have left us with a wealth of scholarly materials concerning the practical and theoretical aspects of police reconstruction (
Iraq’s Neoliberal Reconstruction and the Continued Relevance of the State
Sociological Focus, 2019
ABSTRACT In the past several decades, social scientists and theorists have steadily moved away fr... more ABSTRACT In the past several decades, social scientists and theorists have steadily moved away from understandings of power emphasizing the role of the nation-state, instead favoring explanations centering a multiplicity of actors and institutions as embedded in networks and relationships which traverse nations. The invasion of Iraq serves as a prime test case for theories of the operation of power in the twenty-first century, as the architects of the invasion relied upon a neoliberal vision of near-stateless governance, instead deferring to the free market and other non-state power arrangements. However, the rise of actors such as IS, who have consolidated power in large part through providing state-like services and who seek to build their own alternate state, challenges the move away from state-centric theories. As such, the invasion and its resulting aftermath has the potential to inform a number of arguments relating to the role of the modern state in developing, maintaining, and reproducing power relations. This article employs a Gramscian analysis of the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq to argue for the continued importance of the nation-state in our understanding of how power operates in contemporary globalization and neoliberalism.
From the point of a gun to the point of starvation: economic conscription in post-conflict policing
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 2019
ABSTRACT A central aspect of post-conflict policing literature holds that the new force must diff... more ABSTRACT A central aspect of post-conflict policing literature holds that the new force must differentiate itself from its predecessor. In the efforts to democratize Iraqi police, trainers and recruits alike espouse lofty ideals regarding who should join and how police should behave. However, these ideals are directly contradicted by low qualification levels and the public behavior of police. Drawing from an intensive ethnographic study of police training in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), I argue that while having broken from the forced conscription of the Hussein era, the new force is staffed by economic conscription, comprised of reluctant volunteers who joined to escape poverty and receive little training on the new responsibilities of democratic police. While the methods of conscription have changed, the results remain the same – a force comprised largely of people who do not want to be police and who do not respect the rights of citizens.
Existing scientific literature on post-conflict police reconstruction is largely divided between ... more Existing scientific literature on post-conflict police reconstruction is largely divided between two camps. The first, and most widely employed in practice, can be termed a neo-liberal model, which argues progress comes through technological and organizational sophistication delivered by Western officials. This neo-liberal model has been the guiding principle of the reconstruction of the Iraqi state and police force. However, many scholars have argued this model is woefully inadequate for post-conflict reconstruction and have instead developed an alternative approach which can be termed a reflexive model. Similar to what is known as fourth generation peacebuilding in the International Relations literature, the reflexive model stresses building relationships with local stakeholders and relying on indigenous knowledge to guide post-conflict reconstruction. Drawing from 48 intensive interviews, 87 qualitative surveys, and six months of ethnographic examination of an Iraqi police traini...
U.S. Census Director Bob Groves sheds light on the scope, mechanics, and mission of his bureau an... more U.S. Census Director Bob Groves sheds light on the scope, mechanics, and mission of his bureau and its most famous project.
Criminal justice policy inside-out: An initial case study in education among police and incarcerated men
The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles, 2019
This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduat... more This project discusses the development and implementation of a three-credit graduate/undergraduate course, offered to police officers and incarcerated men, that would eventually become part of the city’s recruit training academy. The initial class consisted of six veteran officers and six men serving life sentences. The programme has the potential to integrate the fundamentals of restorative justice within the occupational culture of policing in order to produce direct benefits for public safety and may also be effective for building more authentic relationships between police and communities of colour. The article explains what went into creating this class, how it progressed and what resulted.
Police, Race and Culture in the ‘new Ireland' an ethnography, 2016
A relatively large body of research exists that seeks to understand the complex relationship betw... more A relatively large body of research exists that seeks to understand the complex relationship between individual police officers’ attitudes, their experiences, and behaviors; the ‘culture’ of sub-groups of police units; their institutional and organizational settings; and the wider world in which they police. Of major concern within this literature is the problem of how best to provide an empirically based theoretical framework for understanding police officers’ agency. These works attempt to explain a variety of phenomena such as police discretion and decision-making, (ab)use of force (Holmes and Smith 2008), the role played by stereotyping, racial profiling, prejudice and bias, sexism, racism, and the disproportionality of minorities stopped and searched, arrested, and incarcerated (see King and Waddington 2004; Weitzer and Tuch 2006). A subset of this research aims to understand the specific yet all-pervasive role of meaning-making; in other words, the construction of cognitive schemas by police officers, and the discourses or narratives they deploy surrounding the above-mentioned phenomena. Meaning-making is a core process involved in police habitus — the experience of being a police officer and how these relate to the broader field of policing and social control. Thinking about ‘police culture’ has taken priority for many researchers who are trying to understand and explain the many issues which relate to police habitus. Police officers’ actions occur within a continual cognitive struggle that involves constant semiotic negotiation. Together, officers’ actions and the internal logic which makes those actions mean something reciprocally (re)produce agents’ phenomenological ‘being-in-the-world’ (Heidegger 1962). In light of this negotiated process, addressing the concept of culture is a deeply embedded theme within the literature on policing, race, and diversity. The research for this book therefore fits snugly within this tradition. Police subculture and habitus are understood as the primary location for gathering and analyzing data that will help to understand and explain questions surrounding the impact of ethnic diversity on Irish policing.
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Papers by Jesse Wozniak