Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:03:29.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Interrogating Richard Leo's Claims about Police Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In a recent issue of Law & Society Review, Richard Leo (1996) takes full advantage of the intellectual freedom given to review essayists in “Police Scholarship for the Future: Resisting the Pull of the Policy Audience.” He claims that most of police scholarship of the 1990s is “impoverished theoretically” and “often not worth reading” (p. 865) and blames the current generation of police scholars for falling into the grip (and deep pockets) of the policy audience. He contrasts current scholarship with a golden age of police inquiry, the 1960s, in which theoretical breakthroughs were common, and scholars were driven by their critical instincts rather than by material interests. His review of current works is narrower than most published in the Review, covering only two monographs published in the 1990s, and holding out but one (Bayley 1994) as evidence of all that is wrong with contemporary, sociolegal inquiry of policing.

Type
Review Essay Note
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association.

References

Bayley, David (1994) Police for the Future. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bittner, Egon (1970) The Functions of Police in Modern Society: A Review of Background Factors, Current Practices and Possible Role Models. Chevy Chase, MD: Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency, National Institute of Mental Health.Google Scholar
Black, Donald (1980) The Manners and Customs of the Police. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Crank, John P. (1994) “Watchman and Community: Myth and Institutionalization in Policing,” 28 Law & Society Rev. 325–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durkheim, Emile (1986) Durkheim on Politics and the State. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1988) “The Political Technology of Individuals,” in Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., & Hutton, P. H., eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John, & Roberts, Brian (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbert, Steve (1996) “Morality in Law Enforcement: Chasing ‘Bad Guys’ with the Los Angeles Police Department,” 30 Law & Society Rev. 799818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keith, Michael (1993) Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and Disorder in a Multi-Racist Society. London: Univ. College London Press.Google Scholar
Leo, Richard A. (1996) “Police Scholarship for the Future: Resisting the Pull of the Policy Audience,” 30 Law & Society Rev. 865–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Bill (forthcoming) “Reflections on Power Relations in Community Policing,” 16 Studies in Law, Politics & Society.Google Scholar
Manning, Peter (1977) Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Muir, William K. (1977) Police: Streetcorner Politicians. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mulcahy, Aogan (1995) “‘Headhunter’ or ‘Real Cop‘? Identity in the World of Internal Affairs Officers,” 25 J. of Contemporary Ethnography 99130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skolnick, Jerome (1966) Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Stalans, Loretta J., & Finn, Mary A. (1995) “How Novice and Experienced Officers Interpret Wife Assaults: Normative and Efficiency Frames,” 29 Law & Society Rev. 287321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Maanen, John (1978) “The Asshole,” in Maanen, J. Van & Manning, P., eds., Policing: A View from the Street. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear Publishing.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1954) Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Westley, William (1970) Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom and Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar