You Can Hear Them Knocking - A Study in the Policing of America

• NCJ Number: 93895
• Author(s): J L Cooper
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 126 pages
• Sale Source: National University Publications
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: National University Publications - Multi-disciplinary Studies in the Law

Annotation

This book examines the actual sociological ends being served by the police and the criminal justice system, with attention to the discretionary authority exercised by various criminal justice actors under political and social influences exerted by the dominant collective.

Abstract

In a democracy, the laws enacted are generally a reflection of the social traditions and vested interests of the dominant collective. As the institution designed to encourage conformity to the law and punish those who disobey it, the criminal justice system and particularly the police become armed agents charged with using force if necessary to see that citizens do not violate the specified norms for behavior. Laws and law enforcement authority tend to become the sources of social order in periods when the internalization of traditional values is no longer sufficient to prompt citizens and the informal social network to regulate their behavior in conformity with traditional social values. Behavioral controls thus are posited in the criminal justice system. This system, however, is not geared to accept diversity in behavior and encourage changes in the social order. Democracy and individual liberty can easily be undermined when rigid systems of law and law enforcement are imposed upon a people whose legitimate interests are not served under the existing socioeconomic system. Whole categories of Americans may fall outside of the mainstream of society in accordance with the stratification system. These persons are nonconformists and dissidents, because the network of mainstream society will not permit their interests to be heard or satisfied within the dominant socioeconomic patterns. These dissident groups inevitably fall under focused police scrutiny. Police discretion and the discretion of other criminal justice professionals tends to be exercised in a way that targets that behavior deemed most threatening to the existing social order. Chapter notes and a subject index are provided.