Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform

Description

Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, with a focus on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors' own research and other studies to examine Americans' opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. Guided by group-position theory and using both existing studies and the authors' own quantitative and qualitative data (from a nationally representative survey of whites, blacks, and Hispanics), this book examines the roles of personal experience, knowledge of others' experiences (vicarious experience), mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood conditions (including crime and socioeconomic disadvantage) in structuring citizen views in four major areas: overall satisfaction with police in one's city and neighborhood, perceptions of several types of police misconduct, perceptions of police racial bias and discrimination, and evaluations of and support for a large number of reforms in policing.

Ronald Weitzer is professor of sociology at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1988. His primary research interests are in criminology, with specialization in policing. He has published extensively on the issue of police-minority relations in the United States, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. A secondary area of expertise is the sex industry. His books include Current Controversies in Criminology (2003), Deviance and Social Control (2002), Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry (2000), Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland (1995), and Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe (1990). Steven A. Tuch is professor of sociology at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1983. His primary research interests are in racial stratification and public opinion. He has published extensively on these topics in such journals as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Criminology, Social Psychology Quarterly, Sociological Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and Social Science Research, among others. He is the coeditor of Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change (1997). In 1997-98 he was a Fulbright Fellow in the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

"This book touches on all the hot buttons of police-minority relations in America: unwarranted stops, verbal abuse, brutality and police corruption. Racial profiling is just one part of a larger story the authors frame as racialized policing. They explain how neighborhood conditions, citizens' experiences with cops and the media have helped create two societies, one safely confident in the powers and competence of the police and another that sees police as one of the problems they must confront, and not a solution to them. They report what people of all backgrounds want done to address the deep division over policing: On many issues Hispanics and African-Americans stand arm-in-arm in their commitment to change on a broad front, while the comfortable majority is reluctant to go beyond the rhetoric and embrace meaningful reform of the police. Drawing on national data that represent the nation's largest immigrant group, this is the best book yet on public opinion about the police." - Wesley G. Skogan, Northwestern University "Race and Policing is a tremendous contribution to our understanding of race and policing. Weitzer and Tuch sort out the complexities of this extremely important subject and help explain how race and ethnicity affect attitudes toward the police. One of the most important contributions of this book is the inclusion of Hispanic Americans. We now have a far more complete picture of race and ethnicity and policing. The authors' discussion of police reforms is very valuable. They give us an extremely useful analysis of what kinds of reforms people want." - Samuel Walker, University of Nebraska at Omaha "An excellent analysis of contrasts and similarities in current white, black and Latino views of police actions." -Choice "Race and Policing in America is an excellent summary of Americans' opinions, suggesting that racially biased profiling is not only wrong but is still alive, despite that presidential directive." - Freddy A. Paniagua, PsycCritiques "Though this book is not the first to conclude that race matters in policing, this research offers a comprehensive and thorough examination of race and policing in America, which is matched by no other book currently on the bookshelves. The book is easy to read and engaging, even though it offers sophisticated empirical analysis at times, which makes it a good choice for any undergraduate and/or graduate reading list in courses on racial stratification, criminology, and criminal justice. This work will likely inspire future research on public perceptions of racial profiling as well." -Karen F. Parker, Criminal Justice Review