NCJ Number
139278
Editor(s)
E Cashmore,
E McLaughlin
Date Published
1991
Length
251 pages
Annotation
The essays in this volume center around the theme that policing in Britain is a politically privileged activity and that the police have exploited public apprehension about black people to attain their own political ends. Because blacks, for the most part, have not complied with police efforts to gain social pre-eminence, the police have used them and the threat that many people perceive to justify their claims for greater power and privileges.
Abstract
A chapter which discusses the disturbances which occurred in British inner cities in the 1980's analyzes the political debates concerning the origins of the riots and considers the impact of the unrest on the policy agenda. Another chapter compares the policing of black neighborhoods in Britain and in the U.S. In the U.S., recruitment of black police officers and police chiefs has legitimized the system and also contributed to the degree of control control wielded by police over the black underclass. A subsequent chapter addresses the issue of police accountability in Britain, describing the experiences and demands of Britain's black communities. The civil liberties of black women are addressed in another essay, which contends that black women come into contact with the police more frequently than white women for a number of reasons. The two following chapters discuss the presence of police in schools that began in the 1980's and the structural features of the relationship between police and black people. The final chapter focuses on how public perceptions of the nature of collective disorder were transformed into euphemisms that have justified the selective oppression of one segment of British society. Chapter references