Democracy and the Police [Hardcover]

Everyone is for democratic policing ; everyone is against a police state. But what do those terms mean, and what should they mean? The first half of this book traces the connections between the changing conceptions of American democracy over the past half-century and the roughly contemporaneous shifts in ideas about the policelinking, on the one hand, the downfall of democratic pluralism and the growing popularity of participatory and deliberative democracy with, on the other hand, the shift away from the post-war model of professional law enforcement and the movement toward a new orthodoxy of community policing. The second half of the book explores how a richer set of ideas about policing might change our thinking about a range of problems and controversies associated with the police, ranging from racial profiling and the proliferation of private security, to affirmative action and the internal governance of law enforcement agencies. David Sklansky is one of the nation's leading criminal justice scholars, and his new book offers a major contribution to the study of law enforcement and American self-governance. Professor Sklansky's analysis of democratic policing is lucid and stimulating, providing a new vision that could help shape the public policy agenda of the twenty-first century.Democracy and the Policeis a must-read for anyone interested in the perennial question: Who will watch the watchman? Professor Sklansky provides a carefully argued account of what democratic policing means, one that avoids overly simplistic explanations of a one-to-one relationship between a particular democratic theory and a policing strategy. Policing, asDemocracy and the Policeexplains, is not only a public service subject to instrumental analysis about crime and clearance rates; it manifests our commitment to democratic values. This is a much welcome addition to the policing literature. This book discusses the relationship between democracy and policing, andls*