The Manners and Customs of the Police

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Donald Black

The text uses the sociological theory of law to predict and explain police behavior in such settings as police patrol, investigations, and the handling of vice, juveniles, traffic, and rebellion. The text considers how cases come to the attention of police and other legal officials and indicates the implications of these patterns for social control through law. The field study was conducted in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1966. Thirty-six observers with backgrounds in law, social science, and police administration systematically recorded routine encounters between uniformed patrol officers and citizens. The observers accompanied patrol officers on all work shifts everyday for 7 weeks in each city. (Evening shifts were given added weight because of their known higher rates of police activity.) From the total of 5,713 recorded incidents, subsamples were selected to determine how official crime rates are generated and how police handle disputes between such persons as husbands and wives, parents and children, and neighbors. This report and analysis discusses these findings along with more recent research. Although the text notes the growing demand for dispute settlement in the United States by police, it delineates techniques by which people are encouraged to handle their own conflicts instead of relying on those in authority. Strategies that ultimately encourage self-help include cutting back on police response to domestic and 'street corner' disputes, designing of physical space to maximize natural surveillance, and introducing electronic communication.

NY. ACADEMIC PRESS. 1980. 284p.