by Graeme Newman (Author)

How did Europe police its cities before the First World War, and what can those systems teach us today?

In Policing Europe: A Retelling of Fosdick's Classic, criminologist and policing scholar Graeme R. Newman presents a concise, modernized edition of Raymond B. Fosdick's landmark 1915 study of European policing. Based on nearly two years of firsthand research across England, Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Holland, and Belgium, Fosdick's original work remains one of the most comprehensive comparative examinations of police systems ever written. [Policing_Europe Word]

Traveling through the great capitals and industrial cities of Europe on the eve of World War I, Fosdick interviewed commissioners, detectives, patrol officers, judges, and government officials to answer questions that remain deeply relevant today:

• Should policing be controlled locally or by the national government?

• How much authority should police possess?

• What creates public trust in law enforcement?

• How should police leaders be selected and trained?

• What prevents corruption and abuse of power?

• Which organizational structures produce effective and accountable policing?

This edition preserves Fosdick's remarkable firsthand observations while updating the language for contemporary readers. It explores the contrasting traditions of British "policing by consent" and Continental state-centered policing, compares police organizations in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Rome, and examines detective methods, recruitment, training, leadership, forensic science, and police integrity. [Policing_Europe Word]

More than a historical document, Policing Europe offers a fascinating window into the origins of many modern debates about public safety, civil liberties, professionalization, surveillance, police accountability, and the relationship between citizens and the state. Written just before a world war transformed Europe forever, it captures a vanished world while illuminating issues that continue to shape policing in the twenty-first century. [Policing_Europe Word]

Ideal for:

• Students of criminology and criminal justice

• Police professionals and policymakers

• Historians of law, government, and public administration

• Readers interested in comparative policing and European history

• Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how modern police systems evolved

A century after its original publication, Fosdick's pioneering study remains essential reading for anyone interested in the enduring challenge of balancing order, authority, liberty, and public trust. [Policing_Europe Word]

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p172.

by Graeme Newman (Author)

In 1920, an investigator toured seventy-two American cities and concluded that the police in every one of them were failing — not from a lack of good men, but from a century of political interference, organizational chaos, and a refusal to let any competent leader keep the job long enough to matter. A hundred years later, the argument still lands.

Raymond B. Fosdick's American Police Systems was one of the most ambitious studies of policing ever produced in the Progressive Era — a firsthand, city-by-city comparison of American departments against the professional, politically insulated forces of London, Paris, and Berlin. Fosdick found American policing outmatched at nearly every turn: murder rates that dwarfed Europe's, police chiefs who rotated out with every election, civil-service rules that protected the incompetent as readily as the honest, and city after city that tore up its own police governance and started over, never once letting a good structure — or a good leader — mature.

This edition brings that argument back, rewritten for a modern reader.

This is not a facsimile reprint. Every chapter has been surveyed against Fosdick's original text — including its extensive footnotes — and rewritten fresh, in modernized prose, at roughly a fifth of the original length. The topic structure, the argument, and the great majority of Fosdick's specific facts, cases, and comparisons survive intact; the discursive, footnote-heavy academic style of 1920 does not. Readers get the substance of a landmark study without the apparatus of a century-old monograph.
A substantial new introduction places Fosdick's argument in conversation with policing today: the persistence of American police fragmentation across eighteen thousand separate agencies, the technology Fosdick could only gesture toward (national fingerprint databases, predictive policing, body-worn cameras), the surprising afterlife of "heterogeneity" as European cities have grown as demographically diverse as the American ones Fosdick once contrasted them against, the diversity of police workforces themselves in the U.S. and U.K. today, and where Fosdick's own instincts do — and don't — anticipate contemporary arguments over the scope and funding of policing.
What's inside:
- All eleven chapters of Fosdick's original argument, modernized and condensed
- A new, extensive introduction connecting the book to policing in 2026
- The original seven city police-organization charts, reproduced as images
- Modern 5x8 trade formatting with a full table of contents
Policing America, 1920-2026 is for readers of policing history, criminal justice students, and anyone following today's debates over police reform who wants to see how far back — and how little changed — those debates actually go.
A Read-Me.Org Modern Adaptation. Modernized and edited, with an introduction, by Graeme R. Newman. Based on the 1920 original by Raymond B. Fosdick.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p111.

By The Louisville Office of Violence Prevention

The Louisville Metro Gun Violence Dashboard is updated daily, providing users with real-time information regarding criminal homicides and shootings [4]. Offering a broad view of gun violence, the dashboard includes information on year-to-date trends, victim demographics, and mapping visuals that use neighborhood, council districts, ZIP codes, and police districts. Since its launch, the dashboard has received approximately 100,000 views through June 30, 2025.

Richard J. Condon Commissioner Division Of Criminal Justice Services

Police Use of Deadly Force in New York State: A Report to Governor Mario M. Cuomo (1985) offers one of the earliest systematic examinations of how and why lethal force was deployed by law enforcement across the state during a period of intense public scrutiny. Commissioned at a time when debates over police accountability, training standards, and civil rights were gaining national prominence, the report evaluates legal frameworks, departmental policies, and patterns of police–citizen encounters to assess the necessity and proportionality of deadly force incidents. Drawing on case reviews, agency surveys, and statistical analyses, it seeks to identify structural weaknesses and propose reforms aimed at reducing unnecessary violence and strengthening public trust.

Viewed from today’s perspective, the report stands as an important precursor to contemporary discussions about policing and the appropriate limits of state power. In the decades since its publication, nationwide movements such as Black Lives Matter, advances in data transparency, increased availability of video evidence, and evolving constitutional standards have intensified scrutiny of deadly force practices. Modern debates continue to revolve around issues the 1985 report identified early on: the need for clear and consistent use‑of‑force policies, robust training in de‑escalation, improved data collection, and stronger mechanisms of accountability. As current policymakers and communities grapple with how to balance public safety, civil liberties, and equitable treatment, this historical report offers valuable insight into the longstanding nature of these challenges and the enduring need for thoughtful, evidence‑based reform.

If you'd like, I can also turn this into a full foreword, integrate it into a larger document, or tailor the tone for academic, policy, or public audiences.

NY. Division Of Criminal Justice Services. 1985. p.273.

By Emily Grisé; Alexander Cooke; David Cooper; Zane Oueja; Willem Klumpenhouwer; Amy HobbsOn transit systems across the United States, rising rates of drug use along with deteriorating safety conditions for customers and staff have become increasingly pressing and complex issues for transit agencies to solve. Many challenges surround agencies’ responses to drug use on transit, such as inconsistent data collection and the low uptake of support services.

TCRP Synthesis 179: The Impacts of and Response to Drug Use on Transit, from TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program, documents and synthesizes the current practices of transit agencies in addressing the consumption and distribution of illegal drugs on their systems, as well as the resulting effects on customer and staff safety and security.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Transportation Research Board; Transit Cooperative Research Program. 2025. p91.

By Richard J. Bonnie and Rebekah Hutton, Editors

Active shooter drills have become a standard practice in nearly all U.S. schools, yet their potential impact on students and educators has received limited attention. School Active Shooter Drills: Mitigating Risks to Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health explores how these drills are conducted and how to reduce potential harm while supporting school safety. Developed by a committee of experts in education, school safety, public health, pediatrics, child and adolescent development, psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, public policy, and criminology, this report provides an in-depth review of current practices and offers guidance. The report provides suggestions for implementing practices that promote prevention and preparedness while supporting well-being, and foster learning environments where students and staff feel safe, capable, and supported.

School Active Shooter Drills finds that while drills aim to enhance preparedness, they often vary dramatically in intensity and design, from simple safety walk-throughs to unannounced, high-simulation events. Such inconsistencies can heighten anxiety, distress, and confusion, especially among vulnerable student populations. The report underscores that developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed practices are essential, and drills involving realistic simulations or deception should be avoided entirely.

School Active Shooter Drills outlines actionable recommendations for state and local policymakers, school leaders, researchers, and federal agencies, including banning harmful practices, supporting staff training, ensuring equitable inclusion, and increasing access to mental health resources. This report also calls for national guidance and sustained research to strengthen the evidence base and help schools foster safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environments so that schools not only prepare students and staff for emergencies but also protect their mental, emotional, and behavioral well-being.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on the Impact of Active Shooter Drills on Student Health and Wellbeing. 2025. p253.

Edited by Murdoch Watney

The chapters in this volume focus on the future of law and related disciplines: human rights and access to medical care, corruption and money laundering in state procurement, counterfeit medical products, IPR waiver on COVID-19 vaccines, emergency powers, freedom of expression, prison healthcare, the impact on labour law, access to courts and digital court processes, access to education and the impact on insurance law are but a few possible topics which are addressed.

Johannesburg, UJ Press, 2022. 288p.

By Charles Fain Lehman

Crime, particularly violent crime, is a pressing concern for the American people. The surge in homicide and associated violence in the past three years has made voters skittish and prompted aggressive partisan finger-pointing. This increase has not, however, prompted significant investment in our criminal justice system. Ironically, as this report argues, this increase in violent crime is itself a product of fiscal neglect of that same system over the past decade.

Across a variety of measures, in fact, the American criminal justice system needs an upgrade. Police staffing rates have been dropping since the Great Recession; prisons and jails are increasingly violent; court backlogs keep growing; essential crime data are not collected; and essential criminology research is not conducted. These shortcomings contribute not only to the recent increase in violence but to America’s long-term violence and crime problems, problems that cost us tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

For too long, policymakers at all levels have failed to attend to this problem. Instead, both the political left and right have subsumed criminal justice issues into the larger culture war, fighting over the worst excesses of the police or the horrors of criminal victimization. Rather, they should look to past examples of federal policymaking in which lawmakers have used the power of the purse to dramatically improve the criminal justice system’s capacity to control crime. Doing so again could ameliorate many of the major concerns voiced by both sides in the criminal justice debate.

As such, this report proposes an ambitious, $12-billion, five-year plan to bring the criminal justice system up to date. 

New York: Manhattan Institute. 2023, 33pg