Violence and the Police (From Police and Society: Touchstone Readings, P 293-306, 1995, Victor E. Kappeler, ed. - See NCJ-151401)

• NCJ Number: 151416
• Author(s): W A Westley
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: American Journal of Sociology, 59 (July 1953): 34-41. Reprinted with permission.

Annotation

This analysis of police use of illegal violence draws on materials from a case study of a municipal police department in a medium-sized industrial city.

Abstract

The study included participation in a range of police activities, including patrolling and cruising in a squad car, as well as observing raids, interrogations, and police training. This analysis of the illegal use of violence by the police is based on an interpretative understanding of the police as an occupational group. Two kinds of police experience -- convicting a felon and controlling sexual conduct -- are used to illustrate how and why the illegal use of police violence occurs. The author concludes that the police accept and morally justify the use of illegal violence, that such acceptance and justification arise through their occupational experience, and that the use of illegal violence is functionally related to the collective occupational, as well as to the legal, ends of the police agency. 7 notes