Marie Muschalek
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501742859
- eISBN:
- 9781501742866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501742859.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter investigates the nature of police work. It reconstructs the minutiae of policing in German Southwest Africa. Most of the policeman's day was filled with a series of established, ...
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This chapter investigates the nature of police work. It reconstructs the minutiae of policing in German Southwest Africa. Most of the policeman's day was filled with a series of established, unspectacular routines. Often, policemen appropriated the tasks at hand in a way that neither contradicted nor ignored given orders, but that executed them in a manner that would add distraction or excitement, or at least a sense of self-willed action to the task. In the field, policemen proceeded according to what can best be described as a tactic of making do. Policemen frequently improvised; they mixed duty and sociability, and they deployed both formal and informal techniques. Trickery paired with bureaucratic rationalization featured prominently. As a result, an organizational culture emerged in which policemen insisted on the primacy of their own experience and established a “commonsensical” course of action. More often than not, making “short shrift,” that is, resorting to the quick solution of violence, was the outcome. Integrated into daily routines, such violent behavior acquired ritualized features.Less
This chapter investigates the nature of police work. It reconstructs the minutiae of policing in German Southwest Africa. Most of the policeman's day was filled with a series of established, unspectacular routines. Often, policemen appropriated the tasks at hand in a way that neither contradicted nor ignored given orders, but that executed them in a manner that would add distraction or excitement, or at least a sense of self-willed action to the task. In the field, policemen proceeded according to what can best be described as a tactic of making do. Policemen frequently improvised; they mixed duty and sociability, and they deployed both formal and informal techniques. Trickery paired with bureaucratic rationalization featured prominently. As a result, an organizational culture emerged in which policemen insisted on the primacy of their own experience and established a “commonsensical” course of action. More often than not, making “short shrift,” that is, resorting to the quick solution of violence, was the outcome. Integrated into daily routines, such violent behavior acquired ritualized features.
Martha K. Hugginsv, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234468
- eISBN:
- 9780520928916
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234468.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
This chapter describes the lives of four emblematic police torturers and murderers in Brazil during crucial periods in the thirty years from 1957 to 1987, explaining that each violent life represents ...
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This chapter describes the lives of four emblematic police torturers and murderers in Brazil during crucial periods in the thirty years from 1957 to 1987, explaining that each violent life represents a different generation of police work, with two among the four from the military government generation. It provides a documentary picture of some of the men who carried out atrocities in Brazil over a thirty-five-year period and explains how these violence workers manage the secrecy of their atrocities.Less
This chapter describes the lives of four emblematic police torturers and murderers in Brazil during crucial periods in the thirty years from 1957 to 1987, explaining that each violent life represents a different generation of police work, with two among the four from the military government generation. It provides a documentary picture of some of the men who carried out atrocities in Brazil over a thirty-five-year period and explains how these violence workers manage the secrecy of their atrocities.
Santana Khanikar
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199485550
- eISBN:
- 9780199092031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199485550.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Indian Politics
How does a police force in the capital city of a democracy operate at an everyday level? Ethnographic fieldwork of policing practices inside police stations and outside in the policed territories and ...
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How does a police force in the capital city of a democracy operate at an everyday level? Ethnographic fieldwork of policing practices inside police stations and outside in the policed territories and interpreting them in the light of police manuals and laws, help develop in this chapter a background to understand the place of the police as an institution and the police personnel as performers of the state, in the self-imaginations of police personnel as well as in the imaginations of those in the margins. Looking at methods of crime investigation and categories such as ‘Bad Character’, the chapter further comments on constructions of crime and criminality. The chapter also briefly engages with the question of the positionality of the researcher and how the identity of an intersectional ‘outsider’ in the space of a police station evokes complex responses.Less
How does a police force in the capital city of a democracy operate at an everyday level? Ethnographic fieldwork of policing practices inside police stations and outside in the policed territories and interpreting them in the light of police manuals and laws, help develop in this chapter a background to understand the place of the police as an institution and the police personnel as performers of the state, in the self-imaginations of police personnel as well as in the imaginations of those in the margins. Looking at methods of crime investigation and categories such as ‘Bad Character’, the chapter further comments on constructions of crime and criminality. The chapter also briefly engages with the question of the positionality of the researcher and how the identity of an intersectional ‘outsider’ in the space of a police station evokes complex responses.
Keith Hawkins
- Published in print:
- 1984
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198275145
- eISBN:
- 9780191684111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198275145.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Environmental and Energy Law
Most studies of law enforcement deal with police work, and many are concerned with under-enforcement of selective enforcement as problems. This book shifts the focus to social and economic regulation ...
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Most studies of law enforcement deal with police work, and many are concerned with under-enforcement of selective enforcement as problems. This book shifts the focus to social and economic regulation and the issue of compliance.Less
Most studies of law enforcement deal with police work, and many are concerned with under-enforcement of selective enforcement as problems. This book shifts the focus to social and economic regulation and the issue of compliance.
Jan Beek, Mirco Göpfert, Olly Owen, and Jonny Steinberg
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190676636
- eISBN:
- 9780190872625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190676636.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Organizations
This chapter argues that Police in Africa bears testimony to a renaissance in empirically grounded, ethnographic long-term research on the everyday dimensions of police work, combined with a ...
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This chapter argues that Police in Africa bears testimony to a renaissance in empirically grounded, ethnographic long-term research on the everyday dimensions of police work, combined with a re-focussing on the state as a central figure in policing and the production of in/security, and a seriousness vis-à-vis the everydayness and banality of bureaucratic work in Africa. It reflects current debates about the state and bureaucracy in Africa as well as the ethnography and sociology of police and policing, all the while refuting African exceptionalism. It also gives an overview of the contributions to the volume.Less
This chapter argues that Police in Africa bears testimony to a renaissance in empirically grounded, ethnographic long-term research on the everyday dimensions of police work, combined with a re-focussing on the state as a central figure in policing and the production of in/security, and a seriousness vis-à-vis the everydayness and banality of bureaucratic work in Africa. It reflects current debates about the state and bureaucracy in Africa as well as the ethnography and sociology of police and policing, all the while refuting African exceptionalism. It also gives an overview of the contributions to the volume.
Lauren A. McCarthy
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453892
- eISBN:
- 9781501701375
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453892.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This chapter focuses on finding and identifying cases of human trafficking. Most trafficking cases are discovered by law enforcement through a report from the victims themselves or their friends and ...
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This chapter focuses on finding and identifying cases of human trafficking. Most trafficking cases are discovered by law enforcement through a report from the victims themselves or their friends and family. Agents also find out about a case through proactive police work, usually while looking at another case. Moreover, reports can come from victim assistance organizations that have had contact with victims through their hotlines or assistance programs, but this has been difficult due to the contentious nature of the relationship between law enforcement and NGOs. In identifying a case as trafficking, agents must first apply the formal criteria of the law. However, due to the newness and vagueness of the trafficking law, these criteria would require several subjective judgments.Less
This chapter focuses on finding and identifying cases of human trafficking. Most trafficking cases are discovered by law enforcement through a report from the victims themselves or their friends and family. Agents also find out about a case through proactive police work, usually while looking at another case. Moreover, reports can come from victim assistance organizations that have had contact with victims through their hotlines or assistance programs, but this has been difficult due to the contentious nature of the relationship between law enforcement and NGOs. In identifying a case as trafficking, agents must first apply the formal criteria of the law. However, due to the newness and vagueness of the trafficking law, these criteria would require several subjective judgments.
Nigel G. Fielding
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198817475
- eISBN:
- 9780191859434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198817475.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
The chapter positions professionalism in policing and police training in the context of the contemporary police mission. It seeks to define and measure police work and the police mission by examining ...
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The chapter positions professionalism in policing and police training in the context of the contemporary police mission. It seeks to define and measure police work and the police mission by examining and assessing current policing strategies, the operation of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to suspect populations, and the role that the police play in responding to racism, hate crime, and terrorism. Adopting the idea of ruptured communities marked by division and polarization as a key challenge facing the police, it assesses how police respond to riots, organized crime and gang crime, and evaluates the practice of stop-and-search. It closes with the twin mythologies of new police governance—that new powers gained by the police lead to fewer constraints on their activities.Less
The chapter positions professionalism in policing and police training in the context of the contemporary police mission. It seeks to define and measure police work and the police mission by examining and assessing current policing strategies, the operation of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to suspect populations, and the role that the police play in responding to racism, hate crime, and terrorism. Adopting the idea of ruptured communities marked by division and polarization as a key challenge facing the police, it assesses how police respond to riots, organized crime and gang crime, and evaluates the practice of stop-and-search. It closes with the twin mythologies of new police governance—that new powers gained by the police lead to fewer constraints on their activities.
Michael D. Stein and Sandro Galea
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197510384
- eISBN:
- 9780197510414
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197510384.003.0068
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Epidemiology, Public Health
This chapter describes how police work shapes the health context of cities and neighborhoods, and affects the lives and behaviors of countless citizens. While there has been much concern in recent ...
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This chapter describes how police work shapes the health context of cities and neighborhoods, and affects the lives and behaviors of countless citizens. While there has been much concern in recent years about how some police activity has harmed health, particularly among minority communities, police have the potential to improve the health of the communities they serve. Police beat work is filled with low-intensity interactions in which officers serve as problem-solvers; these problems often involve public health. Police are first responders to opioid overdoses; they also intercede in intimate partner violence, and they engage with the homeless. As such, leveraging police involvement into better health outcomes could go a long way toward helping people solve these crises. Increasingly, large cities are developing crisis intervention teams (CITs) to improve safety and divert individuals from criminal justice involvement.Less
This chapter describes how police work shapes the health context of cities and neighborhoods, and affects the lives and behaviors of countless citizens. While there has been much concern in recent years about how some police activity has harmed health, particularly among minority communities, police have the potential to improve the health of the communities they serve. Police beat work is filled with low-intensity interactions in which officers serve as problem-solvers; these problems often involve public health. Police are first responders to opioid overdoses; they also intercede in intimate partner violence, and they engage with the homeless. As such, leveraging police involvement into better health outcomes could go a long way toward helping people solve these crises. Increasingly, large cities are developing crisis intervention teams (CITs) to improve safety and divert individuals from criminal justice involvement.
Gray Cavender
Nancy C. Jurik (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037191
- eISBN:
- 9780252094316
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037191.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This book focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. The book ...
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This book focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. The book examines the media constructions of justice, gender, and police work in the show, exploring its progressive treatment of contemporary social problems in which women are central protagonists. The book argues that the show acts as a vehicle for progressive moral fiction—fiction that gives voice to victim experiences, locates those experiences within a larger social context, transcends traditional legal definitions of justice for victims, and offers insights into ways that individuals might challenge oppressive social and organizational arrangements. Shrewdly interpreting the show as an illustration of the tensions and contradictions of women's experiences and their various relations to power, the book provides a framework for interrogating the meanings and implications of justice, gender, and social transformation both on and off the screen.Less
This book focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. The book examines the media constructions of justice, gender, and police work in the show, exploring its progressive treatment of contemporary social problems in which women are central protagonists. The book argues that the show acts as a vehicle for progressive moral fiction—fiction that gives voice to victim experiences, locates those experiences within a larger social context, transcends traditional legal definitions of justice for victims, and offers insights into ways that individuals might challenge oppressive social and organizational arrangements. Shrewdly interpreting the show as an illustration of the tensions and contradictions of women's experiences and their various relations to power, the book provides a framework for interrogating the meanings and implications of justice, gender, and social transformation both on and off the screen.
Sarah Brayne
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190684099
- eISBN:
- 9780190684129
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190684099.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance, Science, Technology and Environment
This chapter assesses how existing legal frameworks are anachronistic and inadequate for governing police work in the age of big data. There is now a burgeoning body of legal scholarship analyzing ...
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This chapter assesses how existing legal frameworks are anachronistic and inadequate for governing police work in the age of big data. There is now a burgeoning body of legal scholarship analyzing the legal implications of big data policing, yet it is largely theoretical. By grounding legal debates about police use of data in empirical detail, the chapter makes the case that basic legal principles are inadequate not simply because they are anachronistic, but also because the legal debates are too narrow. There are a number of ways legal frameworks are overlooking the social side of big data. First, the way the conceptual categories that underpin legal doctrine—like individualized suspicion—are deployed and organized to make normative assessments do not reflect how decision-making plays out on the ground. Second, police are not simply scaling up data collection in the digital age; rather, different kinds of data are being produced. Despite the fact that there is a difference in kind—rather than just degree—old legal doctrine is still being laid on top of these data. Third, relying on extant legal mechanisms like the exclusionary rule involves using what is meant to be a check on state power at one point in time and space, whereas data is fundamentally social and, as such, has a life course. Fourth, unfettered big data policing creates new opportunities for information asymmetries and can threaten due process through a practice called “parallel construction.”Less
This chapter assesses how existing legal frameworks are anachronistic and inadequate for governing police work in the age of big data. There is now a burgeoning body of legal scholarship analyzing the legal implications of big data policing, yet it is largely theoretical. By grounding legal debates about police use of data in empirical detail, the chapter makes the case that basic legal principles are inadequate not simply because they are anachronistic, but also because the legal debates are too narrow. There are a number of ways legal frameworks are overlooking the social side of big data. First, the way the conceptual categories that underpin legal doctrine—like individualized suspicion—are deployed and organized to make normative assessments do not reflect how decision-making plays out on the ground. Second, police are not simply scaling up data collection in the digital age; rather, different kinds of data are being produced. Despite the fact that there is a difference in kind—rather than just degree—old legal doctrine is still being laid on top of these data. Third, relying on extant legal mechanisms like the exclusionary rule involves using what is meant to be a check on state power at one point in time and space, whereas data is fundamentally social and, as such, has a life course. Fourth, unfettered big data policing creates new opportunities for information asymmetries and can threaten due process through a practice called “parallel construction.”
Mirco Göpfert
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501747212
- eISBN:
- 9781501747236
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501747212.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This book explores what it means to be a gendarme investigating cases, writing reports, and settling disputes in rural Niger. At the same time, the book looks at the larger bureaucracy and the ...
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This book explores what it means to be a gendarme investigating cases, writing reports, and settling disputes in rural Niger. At the same time, the book looks at the larger bureaucracy and the irresolvable tension between bureaucratic structures and procedures and peoples' lives. The world of facts and files exists on one side, and the chaotic and messy human world exists on the other. The book contends that bureaucracy and police work emerge in a sphere of constant and ambivalent connection and separation. The book's frontier in Niger (and beyond) is seen through ideas of space, condition, and project, packed with constraints and possibilities, riddled with ambiguities, and brutally destructive yet profoundly empowering. As the book demonstrates, the tragedy of the frontier becomes as palpable as the true impossibility of police work and bureaucracy.Less
This book explores what it means to be a gendarme investigating cases, writing reports, and settling disputes in rural Niger. At the same time, the book looks at the larger bureaucracy and the irresolvable tension between bureaucratic structures and procedures and peoples' lives. The world of facts and files exists on one side, and the chaotic and messy human world exists on the other. The book contends that bureaucracy and police work emerge in a sphere of constant and ambivalent connection and separation. The book's frontier in Niger (and beyond) is seen through ideas of space, condition, and project, packed with constraints and possibilities, riddled with ambiguities, and brutally destructive yet profoundly empowering. As the book demonstrates, the tragedy of the frontier becomes as palpable as the true impossibility of police work and bureaucracy.
Mirco Göpfert
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501747212
- eISBN:
- 9781501747236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501747212.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter details how the gendarmes in Godiya dealt with a criminal case that they had never seen before. The case was about an investigation into the murder of two little girls in Tsaga. On their ...
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This chapter details how the gendarmes in Godiya dealt with a criminal case that they had never seen before. The case was about an investigation into the murder of two little girls in Tsaga. On their first visit to Tsaga, the gendarmes had “nothing to report”; there were no traces, no witnesses, just the two dead girls' bodies. Eventually, they caught the perpetrator and they interrogated him. Contrary to interim brigade commander Chef Tahirou's initial assumption, the perpetrator was not a Nigerian organ trafficker and the murder weapon was not a machete but an axe. Ultimately, the exceptional quality of this case pushes aspects of the gendarmes' work to the fore that were central to everything they did but would certainly get lost in the description of the trivial everydayness of their usual workdays.Less
This chapter details how the gendarmes in Godiya dealt with a criminal case that they had never seen before. The case was about an investigation into the murder of two little girls in Tsaga. On their first visit to Tsaga, the gendarmes had “nothing to report”; there were no traces, no witnesses, just the two dead girls' bodies. Eventually, they caught the perpetrator and they interrogated him. Contrary to interim brigade commander Chef Tahirou's initial assumption, the perpetrator was not a Nigerian organ trafficker and the murder weapon was not a machete but an axe. Ultimately, the exceptional quality of this case pushes aspects of the gendarmes' work to the fore that were central to everything they did but would certainly get lost in the description of the trivial everydayness of their usual workdays.
