NCJ Number
128700
Date Published
1991
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This essay identifies significant issues in scholarly thinking on policing and the texts that address them in useful and interesting ways.
Abstract
Most research has examined regular policing and has been organized in terms of basic questions regarding police decisionmaking. The focus has been on police officer discretion, defined as autonomy in decisionmaking. The relative influences of police officer culture, police management, courts, the law, and various publics have been researched, providing evidence relevant to debates about police accountability. This research has been especially fruitful in discussing the limits to regular policing, notably the institution of privacy as manifested primarily in the concept of private property. These restrictions on regular policing have led to experiments with various forms of public police organization, including programs under the rubric of community policing. Research on private policing has revealed its distinctive purposes, organizational forms, and goals. Private policing is perceived by the essay authors as being based in the private morality of particular private interests usually inconsistent with the public interest. The essay views the policing of the future as a continuation of joint efforts by public and private police and expanded involvement by the public to ensure police accountability. 52-item annotated reading list