A Descriptive Survey of American Policing

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2022

The relationship between policing and crime in American history has been tenuous at best. In fact, policing and crime are imperfectly correlated. Crime is understood as a socially constructed category that varies over time and space. Crime in the American city was produced by the actions of police officers on the street and the laws passed by policymakers that made particular behaviors, often ones associated with minoritized people, into something called "crime." Police create a statistical narrative about crime through the behaviors and activities they choose to target as "crime." As a result, policing the American city has functionally reinforced the nation's dominant racial and gender hierarchies as much as (or more so) than it has served to ensure public safety or reduce crime. Policing and the production of crime in the American city has been broadly shaped by three interrelated historical processes: racism, xenophobia, and capitalism. As part of these processes, policing took many forms across space and time. From origins in the slave patrols in the South, settler colonial campaigns of elimination in the West, and efforts to put down striking workers in the urban North, the police evolved into the modern, professional forces familiar to many Americans in the early 21st century. The police, quite simply, operated to uphold a status quo based on unequal and hierarchical racial, ethnic, and economic orders. Tracing the history of policing and crime from the colonial era to the present demonstrates the ways that policing has evolved through a dialectic of crisis and reform. Moments of protest and unrest routinely exposed the ways policing was corrupt, violent, and brutal, and did little to reduce crime in American cities. In turn, calls for reform produced "new" forms of policing (what was often referred to as professionalization in the early and mid-20th century and community policing in the 21st). But these reforms did not address the fundamental role or power of police in society. Rather, these reforms often expanded it, producing new crises, new protests, and still more "reforms," in a seemingly endless feedback loop. From the vantage point of the 21st century, this evolution demonstrates the inability of reform or professionalization to address the fundamental role of police in American society. In short, it is a history that demands a rethinking of the relationship between policing and crime, the social function of the police, and how to achieve public safety in American cities.

Beyond all doubt, the U.S. American society of the 21 st century is facing massive problems. Many of these problems are not new, they are rather old and tedious companions, accompanying the history of the land of the free for far too long. These are problems which are not just present in North-American metropolises, but also in counties, small-towns and villages. They are present in districts, schools, stores, streets and as previously shown at universities. Those are problems which no other western country had faced in a way the United States has and they are of such a constant nature that, without profound structural and ideological change, these difficulties are going to remain in every realm of public life. The sad tragedies overshadowing the media for more than a year now are reflecting the issues of discrimination and racial biases in an alarming manner. They have revitalized the public debate about equality and racism for one thing, but it is now also necessary to develop a logical and reasonable discourse about how politicians, scholars, police officials and of course civilians can come up with actual solutions concerning the problem of policing in the United States. The immanent process of change therefore initiated, is not going to be simple. Neither it is going to be inexpensive or easy to effectuate. But it is, for the sake of the wellbeing of American society, inevitable required. To give some thought-provoking impulses, one has to analyze and interpret the tensions created by pride and prejudice closely. Taking ones side will not be sufficient, one has to advocate an objective and neutral viewpoint addressing both, the civilian and the police party. In order to comprehend the difficulties of the criminal justice system, the indicators leading to the above described tensions, have to be discussed by referring to incidents which took place in Ferguson, Staten Island, North Charleston and Baltimore.

What is to Be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a 'Public Criminology', 2016

What is to be done about the police? This deceptively succinct question begs a series of theoretical and normative questions concerned with what policing is, who should do it, how it should be done, how its fairness and effectiveness should be evaluated and how it should be made accountable.

Police Practice and Research, 2016

What I have been asked to do today is to reflect, with you, upon the nature of policing and its development. I will do so by relating two stories. The first is a story about the processes by and through which safety is actually produced. The second is an aspirational story about how safety should be produced. As with many aspirational stories, this second story has captured imaginations, and, in doing so, has shaped the way policing has been understood .

Policing, 2014

New Perspectives in Policing, Harvard Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety, 2015

In a report released by Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety, the case is made for addressing both the internal and external culture of police agencies in order to create a culture that supports a guardian mindset. “The old adage ‘So the station…so the street’ describes how the values demonstrated inside the organization have a powerful influence on police behavior in the community,” the authors argue. “The way leaders exercise their power inside the organization signals to officers how they are expected to use their power on the street. Strict military structure and protocols in many police agencies and training academies are at odds with the concept of internal procedural justice.” The report, titled “From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals,” is authored by Sue Rahr and Stephen K. Rice, and was funded by the OJP National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Rahr and Rice offer concrete ideas and outline a specific example of transforming the organizational culture of a police academy from a military ‘boot camp’ model designed to ensure strict compliance with rules and orders, to a culture based on developing critical-thinking leaders and institutionalizing procedurally just values – toward the mindset of a leader as a guardian. “The authors’ call for a shift in the police mindset from warriors to guardians of democracy is important and timely,” writes Tracey Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School. “Public trust is the cornerstone of public safety, and this brief provides a needed roadmap for agencies seeking to change.” Charles Beck, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department comments that, “America's focus is on the legitimacy and efficacy of its police departments. This paper provides clarity to that focus as well as a path forward. I strongly recommend it as required reading for the police professional.”

2015

What I have been asked to do today is to reflect, with you, upon the nature of policing and its development. I will do so by relating two stories. The first is a story about the processes by and through which safety is actually produced. The second is an aspirational story about how safety should be produced. As with many aspirational stories, this second story has captured imaginations, and, in doing so, has shaped the way policing has been understood.

2007

This article explores new forms of policing in New York, Chicago, and Boston. These cities developed new policing strategies that each involves a different combination of problem solving and new forms of "community policing". The article explores whether these developments resulted in crime reduction and changes in belief in the efficacy of policing. The article concludes by considering the costs of the resulting increased security-reduction in democratic control of policing and increased risk to civil liberties.