The massive uprising following the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020--by some estimates the largest protests in US history--thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. It also made The End of Policing a bestseller and Alex Vitale, its author, a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over police and racial justice. As the writer Rachel Kushner put it in an article called "Things I Can't Live Without", this book explains that "unfortunately, no increased diversity on police forces, nor body cameras, nor better training, has made any seeming difference" in reducing police killings and abuse. "We need to restructure our society and put resources into communities themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very persuasively." The problem, Vitale demonstrates, is policing itself-the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, The End of Policing describes how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice. This edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.

"This book explores the relationships between racial segregation, urban governance, and policing in a postindustrial city. Drawing on rich ethnographic data and in-depth interviews, Gordon shows how the police augmented racial inequalities in service provision and social control by aligning their priorities with those of the city's urban growth coalition"--

An in-depth critical analysis of how ruling elites use the police institution in order to control communities.

Provides an overview of the field of policing, and includes a collection of carefully selected classic and contemporary articles that have previously appeared in leading journals, along with original material in a mini-chapter format that contextualizes the concepts.

In Policing China, Suzanne E. Scoggins delves into the paradox of China's self-projection of a strong security state while having a weak police bureaucracy. Assessing the problems of resources, enforcement, and oversight that beset the police, outside of cracking down on political protests, Scoggins finds that the central government and the Ministry of Public Security have prioritized "stability maintenance" (weiwen) to the detriment of nearly every aspect of policing. The result, she argues, is a hollowed out and ineffective police force that struggles to deal with everyday crime. Using interviews with police officers up and down the hierarchy, as well as station data, news reports, and social media postings, Scoggins probes the challenges faced by ground-level officers and their superiors at the Ministry of Public Security as they attempt to do their jobs in the face of funding limitations, reform challenges, and structural issues. Policing China concludes that despite the social control exerted by China's powerful bureaucracies, security failures at the street level have undermined Chinese citizens' trust in the legitimacy of the police and the capabilities of the state.

In its steady march across the United States, methamphetamine has become, to quote former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, “the most dangerous drug in America.” As a result, there has been a concerted effort at the local level to root out the methamphetamine problem by identifying the people at its source—those known or suspected to be involved with methamphetamine. Government-sponsored anti-methamphetamine legislation has enhanced these local efforts, formally and informally encouraging rural residents to identify meth offenders in their communities. Policing Methamphetamine shows what happens in everyday life—and to everyday life—when methamphetamine becomes an object of collective concern. Drawing on interviews with users, police officers, judges, and parents and friends of addicts in one West Virginia town, William Garriott finds that this overriding effort to confront the problem changed the character of the community as well as the role of law in creating and maintaining social order. Ultimately, this work addresses the impact of methamphetamine and, more generally, the war on drugs, on everyday life in the United States.

Policing and police practices have changed dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and those changes have accelerated since the summer of 2014 and the death of Michael Brown at the hands of then-police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Since the November 2016 election of Donald Trump as president, many law enforcement practitioners, policy makers, and those concerned with issues of social justice have had concerns that there would be seismic shifts in policing priorities and practices at the federal, state, county, and local and tribal levels that will have significant implications for constitutional rights and civil liberties protections, particularly for people of color. Perilous Policing: Criminal Justice in Marginalized Communities provides a much-needed interrogatory to law enforcement practices and policies as they continue to evolve during this era of uncertainty and anxiety. Key topics include the police and marginalized populations, the use of technology to surveil individuals and groups, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the erosion of the police narrative, the use of force (particularly deadly force) against people of color, the role of the police in immigration enforcement, the "war on cops," and police militarization. Thomas Nolan’s critique of current practice and his preliminary conclusions as to how to navigate contemporary policing away from the pitfalls of discredited and counterproductive practices will be of interest to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in Policing, Criminology, Justice Studies, and Criminal Justice programs, as well as to researchers, law enforcement professionals, and police policy makers.