Policing : key readings

There are great dangers in assuming that modern arrangements for maintaining order and controlling crime are timeless. In fact, what we now understand by professional police forces have been with us for only two centuries. But what do they do, how are they organized, and how should we distinguish their powers and functions from other institutions? And what lies behind the stereotypes endlessly portrayed in the cinema, television, and other media? Much scholarly attention has focused on the nature of police culture, the changing strategies utilized by uniformed officers and plain-clothes detectives to investigate and detect criminal activity and to maintain order and control. But what of policing's `underbelly'? The longstanding concerns of racism, sexism, as well as corruption and misconduct, are also staples of academic study and research. Furthermore, especially in an era of global financial tumult, social scientists are now generally agreed that significant transformations are underway in our economic, social, political, and cultural worlds. These changes have an impact on all major institutions and policing is no exception in this regard. But how should this be understood and what, crucially, does the changing nature of policing and security institutions mean for us in terms of our freedoms and our security? For over half a century now criminologists around the world have been studying policing, and as serious work continues to flourish as never before, this new title from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map and make sense of a vast body of literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by a leading scholar, Policing is a five-volume collection which brings together the very best foundational and cutting-edge contributions. Volume I (`The History and Emergence of the Police') brings together the best scholarship on the emergence of formal policing systems in North America, the UK, Australasia, and beyond. The materials gathered in Volume II (`Police: Role, Function, and Approaches') survey: the role of the police, and how this has been theorized and understood; the nature of police functions; and the strategies adopted by forces in investigation, detection, and the maintenance of order. Volume III (`Police: Culture and Conduct') covers a variety of topics: the longstanding issue of `police culture'; debates over violence, racism, and sexism; and the literature on corruption and its control. Policing is inevitably a political activity and the works assembled in Volume IV (`The Politics of Policing') examine the ways in which it is organized, received, and controlled. The final volume in the collection (Volume V: `Private Security') maps the broader territory of private security and collects the key literature to explain its emergence and growth, and also to explore how such activities can be distinguished from `public policing', how they might be governed, and what they tell us about the nature and future of policing broadly understood. Policing is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the gathered material in its historical and intellectual context. Indeed, it is an essential resource and is destined to be valued by scholars and other users as a vital one-stop research tool