The Politics of Community Policing: Rearranging the Power to Punish (Law, Meaning, and Violence) [Hardcover]

William Lyons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999 | Series: Law, Meaning, and Violence

In this in-depth examination of community policing in Seattle, William T. Lyons, Jr. explores the complex issues associated with the establishment and operation of community policing, an increasingly popular method for organizing law enforcement in this country.

Stories about community policing appeal to a nostalgic vision of traditional community life. Community policing carries with it the image of a safe community in which individual citizens and businesses are protected by police they know and who know them and their needs. However, it also carries an image of community based in partnerships that exclude the least advantaged, strengthen the police, and are limited to targeting those disorders feared by more powerful parts of the community and most amenable to intervention by professional law enforcement agencies.

The author argues that the politics of community policing are found in the construction of competing and deeply contested stories about community and the police in environments characterized by power inbalances. Community policing, according to the author, colonizes community life, increasing the capacity of the police department to shield itself from criticism, while manifesting the potential for more democratic forms of social control as evidenced by police attention to individual rights and to impartial law enforcement.

This book will be of interest to sociologists and political scientists interested in the study of community power and local politics as well as criminologists interested in the study of police.

William T. Lyons, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Akron. He previously worked for the Seattle Police Department.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0472109537
• ISBN-13: 978-0472109531
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,457,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important study of policing reform yet published., October 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Politics of Community Policing: Rearranging the Power to Punish (Law, Meaning, and Violence) (Hardcover)

Lyons probes deeply into the various and overlapping political struggles behind efforts to reinvent policing in the United States. The analysis focuses on the community side of policing reform, which is a welcome antidote to the overwhelmingly police-centered literature most often found in this field.

In Lyon's study, it was community groups that first mobilized to pressure the police to do things differently. These communities wanted geographic integrity, police-community partnerships to jointly target criminal activity, and more attention to order maintenance and police accountability. These citizens, for reasons that are thoroughly documented in this marvelous study, succeeded in pressuring a reluctant police department to create partnerships and experiment with innovative patrol strategies. They persuaded the city to hire a new police chief, known nationally for his leadership in community policing. These efforts initially paid off: crime declined.

Lyons skillfully explains the interactions among the loose coalitions of citizen groups and between these groups and police officers or administrators. He then draws valuable lessons about effective policing from the kinds of reciprocal partnerships that community mobilization created. This book is a must read for anyone, citizen or officer, interested in the promise of community policing and the political forces that can undermine this promise. At the same time, the failures documented in this study are the most impressive and insightful contributions of this book. While citizens did succeed in the ways noted, their success was short lived and, Lyons argues, the atrophy of their initial partnerships and patrol innovations now stand as significant obstacles to the advancement of community policing. Instead of reciprocal partnerships that improve the effectiveness and accountability of policing these partnerships have evolved into organizations dominated by the police department that serve to make it more difficult for communities, especially those critical of police practices, to be heard. The marginalization of those communities already most victimized by crime is the most important finding in this study.