Customer Reviews

The Role of Police in American Society: A Documentary History (Primary Documents in American History and Contemporary Issues)

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The Role of Police in American Society is a well written chronological history of the American Police Force. The text presents the high points and the low points of law enforcement in the United States and the reasons and the people that affected it.

The text begins with the first night watch and ends with an article about women in police work written in 1997. The authors have presented the actual articles, speeches, and court cases so that you may read them and view them as they were written and allowing you to interpret them as though you were there at that time. It also presents personal view points of the people involved in law enforcement and the issues that they faced and helped to change.

If you have a dual interest in history and law enforcement, this is the book for you. This volume chronicles the history of USA policing from colonial times to present, via 95 original documents. Each document includes an introduction placing it in a historical, social, and political context, often including very interesting biographical informaton. Unlike most books on the history of the police, this book tells the story in the words of the people who were involved in the struggle to enforce the laws, uphold the ever-changing Constitution, maintain safe and stable communtiies, and create truly efficient and effective police. Because the views are from a variety of perspectives, the reader is encouraged to decide for himself or herself what the role of the police should be, or what it will become. Special features include a timeline of important events in the history of policing in the United States, a glossary of legal and other terms in the book, a listing of police and police-related groups and organizations, US Supreme Court cases relevant to the role of the police, as well as a select bibliography of books, articles, and other particularly useful documents. In general, I found that the book did an excellent job in discussing the changing role of police in our history, and that we come to understand that the police are a reflection of the society in its position on the timeline, i.e., in a poetic sense, "a direct reflection of society's heart". The book is an important source of facts, figures, and quotes on American policing for researchers, police scholars and students, police chiefs and police officers, teachers, journalists, government officials, and especially for those who enjoy history, as well as being passionate about law enforcement issues. I liked the book and would recommend it to fellow law enforcement officers.

As a retired "chief of police" and also a criminal justice instructor at a small college specializing in "police history", I have searched quite extensively for a book which would serve as a suitable text. This work by Dr. Vila and his co-author Cynthia Morris is exactly what I have been searching for. This work provides a clear and concise view of the evolution of policing throughout the centuries. It provides relevant information and substance related to social, political, economic, demographic, and cultural issues which contributed to the development of policing. It establishes sound background information about the causal factors for these changes using formal and verifiable documentation. I believe that this book will serve as an excellent text for students of police history within a college level criminal justice program. I fully intend to make it required reading for my students and recommend that any serious educator in the criminal justice field seriously consider adopting it as required reading within their program of instruction.