The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality. By Regina G. Lawrence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 254p. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Extract

Regina Lawrence makes a major contribution to the criminal justice policy literature in her book, The Politics ofForce: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality. She helps observers of the criminal justice system understand one of the reasons the crime control model is the dominant one in the United States. To do this she studies two major police departments, New York and Los Angeles, and the reporting of police use of force incidents in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, respectively. Generally, the viewpoint of the police is presented in the newspaper accounts of the incidents. The police explanation involves blaming the individual wrongdoer without any serious discussion of systemic problems in the operation of the police department. In other words, the police view reinforces the crime control model, with its stress on the rapid and efficient removal of wrongdoers from the streets of this country. Thus Lawrence helps the reader understand why the views of police critics do not receive the same level of coverage as does the official view presented to the press by the police bureaucracy. In her concern with the definition of public problems, she contributes to a theory of issue construction. The significance of her findings is reinforced by her data sources: two major American newspapers including the New York Times, which is read by political elites throughout the United States. The data in the book are based on a content analysis of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times from 1984 to 1995. Also, an extensive analysis of the Rodney King case is presented. The information about the King case was garnered from a variety of newspapers and magazines. In addition, Lawrence gathered information for her study by interviewing reporters and police experts in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities.