36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent, But Not Very Engaging, June 27, 2008
Despite the terrible cover (even by academic press standards), this looked right up my alley for a number of reasons: (1) a good friend just moved to Baltimore and I've been trying to read more about the city, (2) I know mainstream Baltimore pretty well and was interested in learning about a part of the city I've never ventured into, (3) I've been a big fan of The Wire since
season one, and wanted to see how closely reality coincided with that drama, and (4) I've been on a bit of a "academic as participant/observer" reading binge lately, including books like
Brothel,
Rolling Nowhere, and
Gang Leader for a Day, and wanted to compliment those with a inside look at policework.
Like those three books, this one was born from academic roots, as Moskos was scouting around for a project for his PhD dissertation. After approaching and being rejected by several city police forces, the Baltimore PD accepted his proposal to work as a cop for a year with the knowledge he would write about his experience. So, the good news is that his account of policing starts from day one at the academy and proceeds unbroken for twenty months, which is a marked contrast to some of the books mentioned above, in which the authors dip in and out of the culture/life they are exploring. The bad news is that everyone Moskos served with knew he was writing a book. The problem of observation influencing behavior is well-established in documentary film and ethnography, and Moskos seems to underplay it's effects a bit too much.
Some more good news is that Moskos is meticulous is outlining both the psychology and procedure of being a patrol officer. As a city employee myself, it didn't surprise me (though it did depress me), the extent to which urban policework is hindered by bureaucracy and administrative fiat. The overreliance on patrolling from cars, the strict adherence to the policy of immediate response to any call for service (311 or 911 call), the avalanche of paperwork generated by any officer activity, all of these contribute to a environment that lends itself to officers "gaming the system" for their own comfort and/or financial benefit. While I love this kind of insider procedural detail and the explanations of the mentality it engenders, the book suffers from being a good deal too dry.
To a certain extent, this reflects the reality of most policework, which is boring and laden with paperwork. However, the books I mentioned are all engaging precisely because their authors do a great job of making characters out of themselves an the subjects of their study, and that just doesn't happen here. Moskos never lets us get to know his fellow officers or much of himself, and without that personal connection, it ends up reading like a long social policy paper (or a revised dissertation, which it i). The ultimate policy conclusion of the book is not a shocking one, but for those interested in the "war on drugs" it's certainly worth reading, as it is capably outlined and grounded in Moskos' personal fieldwork. Basically, Moskos argues that the war on drugs is a total disaster from a policing perspective, creating a huge drain on resources that could be more effectively directed at other social problems. He believes that the country has yet to learn the lesson easily drawn from the history of alcohol prohibition (which he goes into in rather digressive length and detail), which is that making things illicit merely removes it from government control (and taxation), without reducing demand.
While I'm personally more or less on board with this conclusion and am heartened to see it supported up by Moskos' day-to-day patrolman experiences, it's not really what I came to read about. The book will tell you very little at all about Baltimore (perhaps because Moskos is not from there), and beyond spelling out some of street-level mechanics of the drug trade, there's not much here about East Baltimore you couldn't have gleaned from The Wire and/or
The Corner. To a certain extent, one has to feel a little bad for Moskos, since that show kind of steals his thunder. Which bring up another point, his service was about seven years ago, and one has to wonder to what extent things have changed since then, if 9/11 has had an impact on policing, or the increased use of computers, for example.
In any event, while it's certainly readable (aside from numerous typos), it never really engages, and that's why I ultimately found it somewhat disappointing. I would highly highly recommend it to anyone thinking about becoming a city cop, and it' also probably worth reading if you're into criminology, ethnography, and drug policy -- otherwise it's probably of limited interest.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Effort, But Missing a Few Beats, June 19, 2008
Moskos' book recounts his 14 months on the beat and his training as a Baltimore city police officer. The book is an abridged version of his doctoral dissertation. Turning a dissertation into popular reading is difficult and the book falls down in a number of places. A long history of Prohibition suddenly turns up at the end and is only partially well woven into the text. There are other drifts into facts and figures, as well, and the effect tends to be more didactic than illuminating. For example, there is a needless listing of arrest statistics for Moskos and his colleagues, where a sentence or two about the range of arrest records would have sufficed. Like many ethnographies, some of the most interesting details are in the footnotes (actually, endnotes here), often told more concisely and succinctly written than much of the main text. There also are longitudinal survey data that don't get discussed at all until the endnotes and would seem to have materially affected Moskos' relationship with other officers. He tends to minimize the impact of writing a book on his relationships and observations, beyond his introduction to the force and one wonders how well he actually monitored all of that. In addition, very routine, often difficult aspects of policing such as domestic violence (mentioned in passing) and dealing with the mentally ill (no mention at all) get little coverage here.
Despite the detail, the book really fails to get at a certain level of depth in terms of the relationships among cops and the motivations to join and remain on the force. Indeed, some interesting information on racial and gender differences in motivation to join the force turn up in the endnotes and apparently will be part of another publication. Moskos pulls punches a bit with regard to the conduct of his fellow officers. His father (noted military sociologist Charles Moskos) has been criticized for taking many aspects of the military's "color blindness" and meritocracy at face value. Moskos seems to do the same early on in his book with respect to the presence of corruption and other misconduct, yet the endnotes indicate that 10% of his class left the police because of their conduct, a remarkable percentage in a field where it is difficult to fire people with a certain level of tenure. Later on in the book, Moskos does talk about people who seem to have limited motivation or other problems in the job and intimates at excessive uses of force. Because this kind of material is not well developed, it becomes difficult to see the context where misconduct or poor performance occur and the motivations of the people involved. The web of relationships among the officers and the sense of Moskos' colleagues as people could have been better developed with more attention to case studies. He may have wished to protect identities, and avoided this, although other information, like arrest records would seem to offer thin protection of confidentiality. Compared with classic, intimate ethnographic portraits like "Street Corner Society" or "The Urban Villagers", the book falls short, particularly in relation to Whyte's appreciation of everyday language or Gans' ability to go back and forth between jargon and everyday life.
Moskos lays out a number of policy proposals, but they seem a bit naive, particularly in terms of how they would be introduced, implemented and monitored. The orientation of law enforcement and the culture that reinforces it are well developed in the book, but their impediments to change are not well considered. Similarly, comparisons with the Netherlands fail to take into account differences in culture, social structure, etc. that would affect adaptation to the US.
If readers are concerned that I'm a little harsher than earlier reviewers, a few considerations are in order: I'm not his brother; I've done qualitative research; I have known police officers, personally, at a number of points in my life; and previously had some involvement in the evaluation of prospective police cadets. Like Moskos, I also took time off from my studies and worked in a sometimes dangerous field where I occasionally had contact with police---in my case working in psychiatric hospitals, which gave me an irreplaceable education. The psychiatric field has no end of ethnographic and journalistic accounts of varying quality, as well as fiction based on fact like "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest". I ca appreciate academic aspects of the book, as well as its popular appeal and the bridges between the two. Moskos' book will inform those who haven't had much to do with police, but are curious. Unfortunately, this will require some plowing through tedious detail, and some people may not make it all the way through. On the other hand, a reading of a good journalistic account of police work such as David Simon's "Homicide" (also taking place in Baltimore), might be more enjoyable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
