Search Records(25 total)

  • Subject contains "Police"
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Emily Widra discusses her article, "Despite fewer people experiencing police contact, racial disparities in arrests, police misconduct, and police use of force continue." By looking at the newly released Bureau of Justice Statistics report that collects data of police contact in 2022, she finds that even while fewer people interacted with police than in prior years troubling police behavior remains consistent. Emily Widra is a Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy…

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Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School and Columbia University’s MFA program. Jessica Pishko, journalist and lawyer, discusses her book, "The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy," in which she walks through the long history of the American Sheriff. Since the 1960s, sheriffs have consistently moved to the right, claiming to be the final and only authority to enforce and defend the Constitution. Since…

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Tracey L. Meares discusses her article, “The Good Cop: Knowing the Difference Between Lawful or Effective Policing and Rightful Policing — And Why it Matters.” Prof. Meares describes the two traditional roles of policing as they function under the law and in fighting crime. These two roles place the responsibility of policing on the behavior of citizens. But Prof. Meares suggests a third role, rightful policing, that places the emphasis on procedure, fairness, and transparency of conduct of the…

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Ekow Yankah discusses his forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, "Deputization and Privileged White Violence." Prof. Yankah unpacks how the development of social and physical control of slaves necessitated laws and norms that allowed any white person the ability to police a person of color. This white privilege continues today in the self-deputization and citizen 's arrest interactions. Thinking themselves as enforcers of the law, white citizens elevate themselves to, sometimes,…

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Lerone Martin discusses his new book, "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism." Prof. Martin argues that J. Edgar Hoover molded the FBI after his own personal and deeply held religious beliefs and crafted a culture where FBI Agents were defenders of a certain type of religious faith. Hoover solidified a vision of America that was founded on white Christian values, so that any deviation of politics or thought threatened the…

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Gian Maria Campedelli, research scientist at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy, discusses his research article, “Homicides Involving Black Victims are less likely to be Cleared in the United States.” Drawing upon three databases the FBI’s national incident-based reporting system (NIBRS) and the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), Campedelli found that homicides with Black victims were between 3.4% and 4.8% less likely to be solved by police. Gian Maria Campedelli, a research scientist in…

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Jaquelyn Jahn, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Drexel University, discusses her articles "Neighborhood Proactive Policing and Racial Inequities in Preterm Birth in New Orleans, 2018‒2019" and "Gestational Exposure to Fatal Police Violence and Pregnancy Loss in U.S. Core Based Statistical Areas, 2013-2015." Professor Jahn discusses how police violence and over-policing disproportionately affects Black, Native American, and Hispanic people, and increases the risk of…

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Vida Johnson, professor at law at Georgetown law, discusses her article “White Supremacy and the Bench.” In which she describes how judges maintain and enforce structural racism. Judges benefit from a cultural cache of authority, prestige and as unbiased arbiters of fairness, but they often sustain and amplify racism through jokes, decisions, and rulings that unfairly targets people of color.

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Professor Jocelyn Simonson talks about her book, Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Beginning with a close look at the ideological meaning behind calling the prosecution, “The People,” Prof. Simonson points out how the criminal justice systems defines “community.” By looking at several ways activists and volunteers engage in organized efforts centered around bail, court watching, and participatory defense, Prof. Simonson shows how justice is changing…

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Christy Lopez draws on her work as a Deputy Chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice to talk about Pattern or Practice Investigations with in police departments. How these investigations begin, how they work, and what their outcomes may be, are all unpacked by Professor Lopez. Additionally, Prof. Lopez describes her formulation of “carceral logic” and how it informs police reform efforts.

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Frank Rudy Cooper is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law and Director, Program on Race, Gender & Policing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Professor Frank Rudy Cooper discusses his article, "Cop Fragility and Blue Lives Matter." Professor Cooper discusses how after the rise of Black Lives Matter protests and reform efforts, police responded with a varied and detailed list of their own grievances. Blue Lives Matter emerged as a way to reframe police reform efforts by…

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Christina Aushana discusses her article “Inescapable Scripts: Role-Playing Feminist (re)visions and Rehearsing Racialize State Violence in Police Training Scenarios.” Professor Aushana talks about participating in Police Academy Scenario Training as an actor. By participating in the police role-play training, she was able to witness and document a genre of performance wherein training officers, patrol officers, and recruits' stage, rehearse, and revise racial (re)visions together, infusing…

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Carissa Byrne Hessick, Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law. Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick discusses her book, "Punishment Without Trial," and how plea bargaining has overtaken the criminal justice system. While our rights to a jury trial, evidence, and confronting our accusers are all written into the Constitution by the Framers, American criminal prosecution relies upon the…

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Aaron Thomas Bekemeyer, Lecturer on History, Harvard University. Professor Aaron Bekemeyer discusses the complicated history of police unionization. How police balanced their role as union busters and political enforcers with their desire for higher wages and retirement/pensions led to contradictions in messaging. After both World Wars, American society changed in various ways and policing took on new meanings, in response to reformist challenges to political machine corruption and later the…

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Ayesha Bell Hardaway is an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Director of the Criminal Clinic in the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic. Professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway talks about her 2022 article, "The Rise of Police Unions on the Back of the Black Freedom Movement." Professor Bell Hardaway discusses how police unions developed slowly over time to their rapid growth in the 1960s. How police unions transitioned from advocating for labor and wages to…

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Joanna Schwartz is a professor of law at UCLA. Professor Joanna Schwartz discusses her new book, Shielded: How The Police Became Untouchable. Prof. Schwartz draws on her experience as a civil rights attorney and law professor to explain how Section 1 of the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871, known as Section 1983, set the groundwork for protections for state employees, most notably police officers, when they violate a citizen's civil rights. As civil cases against police violence reached the…

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Jessica Katzenstein completed her PhD in Anthropology at Brown University in 2022. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Inequality in America Initiative though 2024. Dr. Jessica Katzenstein discusses her research on how U.S. police officers absorb and resist reforms during a mounting legitimacy crisis. She explores why reforms fail to realize their promises to curb racialized violence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with officers and reformers in Maryland, she…

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Dexter R. Voisin is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Dean in Applied Social Sciences at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University. Dean Dexter Voisin discusses his book "America the Beautiful and Violent: Black Youth and Neighborhood Trauma in Chicago." History and context play a huge role in how violence is processed by the residents of America's poorest, minority communities. Generations struggle to understand and…

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Professor Vida Johnson discusses her 2022 Brooklyn Law Review article, White Supremacy’s Police Siege on the United States Capitol. Professor Johnson details the failures of the Capitol Police, the unsettling involvement of active law enforcement officers in the January 6th Insurrection, and how White Supremacists continue to infiltrate and plague police departments. The difference in police preparation, presence, and intervention between the Jan. 6 and Black Lives Matter protests is instructive…

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Sally Hadden: Slave Patrols

Dr. Sally Hadden is a professor and the director of graduate studies in the Department of History at Western Michigan University. Professor Sally Hadden discusses her book, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virgina and the Carolinas. Prof. Hadden explains the origin and purpose of the slave patrol, how the patrols differed from the militia, who made them up and what the patrols were charged with accomplishing. We discuss how slave patrols operated before and were stressed during the Civil War.…

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Dr. Ronnie A. Dunn recently assumed the role as the inaugural executive director of The Diversity Institute at Cleveland State University, where he has been an associate professor of Urban Studies since 2004. Dr. Dunn discusses his work on traffic patterns, driving populations, and police ticketing in Cleveland. His work was pivotal in exposing Cleveland Police's racial bias' in traffic ticketing and in the use of traffic cameras.

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Vida B. Johnson is an Associate Professor of law at Georgetown Law where she teaches in the criminal defense clinics. She writes about policing and criminal procedure. She received her law degree from NYU and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Johnson discusses her two articles on police bias. First, we talk about her article, "Bias in Blue: Instructing Jurors to Consider the Testimony of Police Officer Witnesses with Caution" where…

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During his more than 45 years in academia, Professor Reichel has received awards for teaching, advising, service, and scholarship. He is the author of several textbooks and has authored or co-authored more than forty articles and book chapters. His areas of expertise include comparative justice systems, transnational crime generally, and human trafficking more specifically. Professor Reichel discusses his articles "Southern slave patrols as a transitional police type" and "The…

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Adam Malka is an Associate Professor of U.S. History at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Malka discusses his book "The Men of Mobtown" exploring how the free black population of the antebellum South came to be controlled and policed. We explore the roles and expectations of white citizens and how black freedom came to define criminal behavior.

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Police reform advocates often push police departments to move from fear-laden “warrior” survival trainings and toward reality-based or scenario trainings, which involve immersive role-playing scenarios such as making an arrest. Scenario trainings promise to teach officers to suppress fear, counter racial bias, and calibrate “reasonable” uses of force. But these trainings often fall short of their promise and end up reinforcing the threats and survival mindset. Drawing on 16 months of…