What is policing about and who defines it? This book examines these key issues by exploring the notion of zero tolerance and its application in different settings. Following its introduction in New York, and the seemingly dramatic reduction in crime, zero tolerance policing was taken up in a number of other countries, including the UK and the Netherlands. This book examines that process. It argues that this policy was, in fact, nothing more than a return to old-style, crime control policing. While it did foster the swift analysis of crime patterns and more assertive policing of public places, it could lean towards repression and demonising of certain groups. Examining the EEE Examining the EEEExamining the negative response of leading police officers and the policy’s debatable impact on crime, the author concludes that zero tolerance in the UK and Netherlands was more of a populist political and media creation than a coherent policy. This book is far more than an authoritative analysis of zero tolerance. It is a valuable source for entering the debate about the big picture in policing which many stakeholders now wish to see. The approachable style of this book makes it ideal for students, academics, police practitioners and the lay reader to enter that debate.
Based on unprecedented empirical research conducted with lower levels of the Afghan police, this unique study assesses how institutional legacy and external intervention, from countries including the UK and the US, have shaped the structural conditions of corruption in the police force and the state.
Taking a social constructivist approach, the book combines an in-depth analysis of internal political, cultural and economic drivers with references to several regime changes affecting policing and security, from the Soviet occupation and Mujahidin militias to Taliban religious police.
Crossing disciplinary boundaries, Singh offers an invaluable contribution to the literature and to anti-corruption policy in developing and conflict-affected societies.
In western liberal democracies the police are viewed as guardians of public safety and enforcers of the law. How accurate is this? Given police violence and the failure of many attempts at reform, attention has turned to other models of managing criminality, including defunding the police and instead funding alternatives to criminalization and incarceration.
This book is the first comprehensive overview of police divestment, using international examples and case studies to reimagine community safety beyond policing and imprisonment.
Showcasing a range of practical examples, this topical book will be relevant for academics, policy makers, activists and all those interested in the Black Lives Matter movement, protest movements and the renewed interest in policing and abolitionism more generally.
Policing is at a turbulent turning point: the pace of change is accelerating with renewed emphasis on crime reduction yet with austerity. This topical book examines what matters in policing, rather than just what works. It compares the implications of restructuring in the UK and The Netherlands, also in the USA, regarding police systems, policing paradigms and research knowledge. The authors, who cover both academia and practice, focus particularly on dilemmas for police leadership relating to strategy, values and operational command. With a foreword by Peter Neyround, University of Cambridge, it argues for developing confident and competent leadership and also provide a comprehensive paradigm to chart policing in the future while retaining trust. It is accessibly written for academics, practitioners, policy makers and students in diverse societies.
media and films like Serpico starring Al Pacino playing Peter Maas’ biographic Frank Serpico who went undercover to expose corruption in the NYPD and testified to the Commission. Large corrupt networks and links with criminal activity had infiltrated the NYPD leading to bribes extorted from businesses for protection and officers striving for assignments in vice areas – prostitution and gambling – to collect bribes to pay off superiors ‘up the chain of command’ (Rosoff et al, 2007: 454). The Knapp and subsequent New York City commission, the Mollen Commission
. • Direct criminal activities include a police officer committing a crime against either a property or an individual to attain personal gain that clearly abuses the criminal and police code of conduct or norms. In this instance there is ‘no corruptor’ because the actions that lead to a gain from an individual or property, namely robbery and burglary, do not receive peer support (Roebuck and Barker, 1974: 433–4). The Mollen Commission, for example, identified that the NYPD cooperated with criminals by engaging in drug dealing, burglary rings and also robbed drug
Boston where he had become Police Commissioner, to head the NYPD in 1994. The NYPD is the largest police department in the US, with around 28,000 officers in 1994 (currently, it has almost 40,000 officers). It also has a history of periodic corruption, the latest scandal being in 1994 (Mollen Commission, 1994). In fact Bowling (1999, p 538) maintains that in the late 1980s ‘police morale, motivation and activity were at an all-time low’ and that the NYPD was ‘characterised as passive and cautious to the point that all that mattered was “cover your back”’. It was
preserve solidarity. Updated research by Johnson (2010: 58) indicates that a code of silence for secretive police behaviour is not to be exposed under any circumstances. When police officers provide training in integrity and ethics within a department that is rampant with corruption, corruption is tolerated and recruits undergo a socialisation process into a corrupt police subculture that undermines integrity and efforts to curb police corruption (Knapp Commission, 1972: 241; Mollen Commission, 1994: 120). In more recent literature, Alpert et al (2015: 105
after 1993. Meanwhile, the Mollen Commission of Inquiry into corruption in the NYPD in 1994 found police officers were involved in drug dealing, robberies, assaults, perjury, and falsification of records. It also found a failure by the NYPD to discipline officers accused of violence. A 1996 investigation into the NYPD by Amnesty International revealed that more than two thirds of the cases of police brutality involved Black or Latinx complainants. Most of the police officers involved were White. In the cases of deaths in custody reviewed by Amnesty, nearly all of the
’ at night: they slept in warm spots out of the cold with folding beds and alarm clocks to wake them so they could phone the duty sergeant at the allotted time as if they were really on duty (Maas, 1974, pp 54-5). 93 7 In the US, there has, for instance, been implacable opposition from police representatives against external oversight; the Police Patrolmens’ Benevolent Association has not only virulently objected to civilian oversight, but has also mounted legal actions against special commissions to investigate police corruption, such as the Knapp and Mollen
