Read complete books and articles on: U.S. Law Enforcement History

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: U.S. Law Enforcement History

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Role of Police in American Society: A Documentary History » Read Now
by Bryan Vila, Cynthia Morris. 318 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

From the night watchmen of the 17th century to the highly publicized Rodney King hearings, the history and development of police policy and the role of police in American society are traced through this collection of 95 primary documents. Students, teachers, and interested readers can use this...
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From the night watchmen of the 17th century to the highly publicized Rodney King hearings, the history and development of police policy and the role of police in American society are traced through this collection of 95 primary documents. Students, teachers, and interested readers can use this valuable resource to examine the development and role of the police in the United States through the words of the people who were involved in the struggle to enforce laws, uphold the Constitution, maintain safe and stable communities, and create efficient and effective police forces. An explanatory introduction precedes each document to aid the user in understanding the economic, political, social, and legislative forces that helped shape the role of the police in our society.
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2.

Police in Contradiction: The Evolution of the Police Function in Society » Read Now
by Cyril D. Robinson, Richard Scaglion, J. Michael Olivero. 204 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This book formulates a theory of the origin and evolution of the police function, using both historical and cross-cultural analysis. It explains the incremental changes in the police function associated with the transition from kinship-based to class-dominated societies, and examines the...
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This book formulates a theory of the origin and evolution of the police function, using both historical and cross-cultural analysis. It explains the incremental changes in the police function associated with the transition from kinship-based to class-dominated societies, and examines the implications of these changes for modern police-community relations. It suggests that the police institution has a double and contradictory function: at the same time, and in the same society, it seeks to be the agent of the people it polices and of the dominant class. The authors critique community policing and suggest how communities may be reconstituted in order to create a community police. A comprehensive bibliography enhances this study for students, teachers, and professionals in the fields of criminal justice and sociology.
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3.

State Police in the United States: A Socio-historical Analysis » Read Now
by H. Kenneth Bechtel. 182 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Largely neglected by historians, political scientists, and criminal justice specialists, the available literature on the state police tends to be highly partisan and largely out of date. Based on legislative analysis and historical case study, this is an original contribution to our understanding of...
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Largely neglected by historians, political scientists, and criminal justice specialists, the available literature on the state police tends to be highly partisan and largely out of date. Based on legislative analysis and historical case study, this is an original contribution to our understanding of the development of the institution of the state police in the United States. Arguing that the creation of state police agencies was the result of a political process that reflected the interplay of a number of different forces, this is a rebuttal of rival interpretations of police development. The work should be of interest to criminal justice educators and political scientists on a college and university level, and to police historians.
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4.

The Department of Justice of the United States (1927) » Read Now
by Albert Langeluttig. 318 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...adequate account of the system of law enforcement in England. The most concise explanation...more complete study of the English law officers, reference should be...
5.

In the Cross Fire: A Political History of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms » Read Now
by William J. Vizzard. 223 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms History. 2. Law enforcement United States History. 3. Law enforcement Political aspects United States History...common in many...
6.

The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence » Read Now
by Howard Gillman. 318 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...the land." Thus in history did this political...and constitutional law, capitalist forms...frontier -- and that the enforcement of common-law obligations...and elaborated...
7.

Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD » Read Now
by Lou Cannon. 752 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

In the spring of 1992 five days of rioting laid waste to South Central Los Angeles, took scores of lives, cost the city more than $900 million in property damages, and captured the attention of horrified people worldwide. Lou Cannon combines extensive research with interviews from hundreds of...
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In the spring of 1992 five days of rioting laid waste to South Central Los Angeles, took scores of lives, cost the city more than $900 million in property damages, and captured the attention of horrified people worldwide. Lou Cannon combines extensive research with interviews from hundreds of survivors, offering the only definitive story behind what happened and why.
Official Negligence takes a hard look at the circumstances leading up to the riots. Cannon reveals how the videotape of the brutal beating of Rodney King had been sensationally edited by a local TV station, how political leaders required LAPD officers to carry metal batons despite evidence linking them to the rising toll of serious injury in the community, and how poorly prepared the city was for the violence that erupted.
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8.

Police Administration and Progressive Reform: Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York » Read Now
by Jay Stuart Berman. 154 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"Jay Stuart Berman has written a clear, useful, and persuasive book. Regardless of Theodore Roosevelt's precise role in police reform, this study sheds considerable light on a crucial period in the development of American law enforcement, and Berman's analysis of the important relationship between a...
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"Jay Stuart Berman has written a clear, useful, and persuasive book. Regardless of Theodore Roosevelt's precise role in police reform, this study sheds considerable light on a crucial period in the development of American law enforcement, and Berman's analysis of the important relationship between a Progressive reform and the birth of the modern police makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of the police in America." Criminal Justice Review
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9.

Detroit and the Problem of Order, 1830-1880: A Geography of Crime, Riot, and Policing » Read Now
by John C. Schneider. 178 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...arrangements operated on the history of the citys law and order in two ways...Detroits geography and the history of its law and order was more direct...meaning to the...
10.

The United States Marshals of New Mexico & Arizona Territories, 1846-1912 » Read Now
by Larry D. Ball. 315 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...for his contribution to federal law enforcement. Like Charles Rumley, Blumner...concerned with ensuring federal law enforcement among the Hispanos, they were...before this...
11.

The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 » Read Now
by Lawrence M. Friedman, Robert V. Percival. 335 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Calif. -- History. I. Percival...Skeleton of the Law 39...Arrests for Law Enforcement Purposes...Crime and Law Enforcement in the Colony...Justice: A History of...
12.

Policing the City: Boston, 1822-1885 » Read Now
by Roger Lane. 302 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...the pale of law enforcement, at least not...convinced them that history could not be...importance of enforcement. 15 Formal...Fifteen-Gallon Law and those who...Previously...
13.

Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers » Read Now
by Robert M. Utley. 370 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with...
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From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with adventures worthy of Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. The Rangers began in the 1820s as loose groups of citizen soldiers, banding together to chase Indians and Mexicans on the raw Texas frontier. Utley shows how, under the leadership of men like Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch, these fiercely independent fighters were transformed into a well-trained, cohesive team. Armed with a revolutionary new weapon, Samuel Colt's repeating revolver, they became a deadly fighting force, whether battling Comanches on the plains or storming the city of Monterey in the Mexican-American War. As the Rangers evolved from part-time warriors to full-time lawmen by 1874, they learned to face new dangers, including homicidal feuds, labor strikes, and vigilantes turned mobs. They battled train robbers, cattle thieves and other outlaws--it was Rangers, for example, who captured John Wesley Hardin, the most feared gunman in the West. Based on exhaustive research in Texas archives, this is the most authoritative history of the Texas Rangers in over half a century. It will stand alongside other classics of Western history by Robert M. Utley--a vivid portrait of the Old West and of the legendary men who kept the law on the lawless frontier.
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14.

Community Policing, Chicago Style » Read Now
by Wesley G. Skogan, Susan M. Hartnett. 276 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Police departments across the country are busily "reinventing" themselves, adopting a new style known as "community policing". This approach to policing involves organizational decentralization, new channels of communication with the public, a commitment to responding to what the community thinks...
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Police departments across the country are busily "reinventing" themselves, adopting a new style known as "community policing". This approach to policing involves organizational decentralization, new channels of communication with the public, a commitment to responding to what the community thinks their priorities ought to be, and the adoption of a broad problem-solving approach to neighborhood issues. Police departments that succeed in adopting this new stance have an entirely different relationship to the public that they serve. Chicago made the transition, embarking on what is now the nation's largest and most impressive community policing program. This book, the first to examine such a project, looks in depth at all aspects of the program--why it was adopted, how it was adopted, and how well it has worked.
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15.

Auxiliary Police: The Citizen's Approach to Public Safety » Read Now
by Martin Alan Greenberg. 252 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Part II HISTORY OF NEW YORKS VOLUNTEER...Police and the Law 111...concerned with law enforcement, I had formed...undertaking by the Law Enforcement Assistance...
16.

Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice, 1950-1990 » Read Now
by Samuel Walker. 212 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial...
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It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial "discovery" of the phenomenon by the American Bar Foundation in the 1950s through to the most recent evaluation research on reform measures. Of enormous value to scholars, reformers, and criminal justice professionals, this book approaches the discretion problem through a detailed examination of four decision points: policing, bail setting, plea bargaining, and sentencing. In a field which largely produces short-ranged "evaluation research," this study, in taking a wider approach, distinguishes between the role of administrative bodies (the police) and evaluates the longer-term trends and the successful reforms in criminal justice history.
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