In this text, the editors analyze the diverse situations that police forces operate under and the challenges that they face in different kinds of democracies. This cross-cultural comparison of various systems highlights the universal observation that police are a anomaly in a democracy and explores how various influences-for example, large-scale social violence, a zeal for crime fighting, and vulnerability to temptation-often find police incapable of behaving in a democratic manner. Challenges of Policing Democracies goes beyond just showing the similarities and differences of the policing challenges democratic societies face, it also examines the responses and remedies adopted by police in various countries at different levels of democratic achievement and how every society struggles with the challenges of preserving democratic values without sacrificing the effectiveness of policing.

In countries around the world, from the United States to the Philippines to Chile, police forces are at the center of social unrest and debates about democracy and rule of law. This book examines the persistence of authoritarian policing in Latin America to explain why police violence and malfeasance remain pervasive decades after democratization. It also examines the conditions under which reform can occur. Drawing on rich comparative analysis and evidence from Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, the book opens up the 'black box' of police bureaucracies to show how police forces exert power and cultivate relationships with politicians, as well as how social inequality impedes change. González shows that authoritarian policing persists not in spite of democracy but in part because of democratic processes and public demand. When societal preferences over the distribution of security and coercion are fragmented along existing social cleavages, politicians possess few incentives to enact reform.

Everyone is for "democratic policing"; everyone is against a "police state." But what do those terms mean, and what should they mean? The first half of this book traces the connections between the changing conceptions of American democracy over the past half-century and the roughly contemporaneous shifts in ideas about the police--linking, on the one hand, the downfall of democratic pluralism and the growing popularity of participatory and deliberative democracy with, on the other hand, the shift away from the post-war model of professional law enforcement and the movement toward a new orthodoxy of community policing. The second half of the book explores how a richer set of ideas about policing might change our thinking about a range of problems and controversies associated with the police, ranging from racial profiling and the proliferation of private security, to affirmative action and the internal governance of law enforcement agencies.

How does society hold its police to account? It’s a vital part of upholding law and liberty but changing modes of policing delivery and new technologies call for fresh thinking about the way we guard our guards. This much-needed new book from leading criminology professor Michael Rowe, part of the ‘Key Themes in Policing’ series, explores issues of governance, discipline and transparency. The landmark new study: • Showcases how social change and rising inequalities make it more difficult to ensure meaningful accountability; • Addresses the impact of Evidence-Based Policing strategies on the direction and control of officers; • Sets out a game-changing agenda for ensuring democratic and answerable policing. For policing students and practitioners, it’s an essential guide to modern-day accountability.

Every day the media floods the airwaves with their often-contradictory version of the role and behavior of the police force. Based on this, you might think that police officers either brutally enforce their own interpretation of the nation‘s laws or use all the modern tools available to carefully and persistently uncover the special clues that lead

The police are perhaps the most visible representation of government. They are charged with what has been characterized as an "impossible" mandate -- control and prevent crime, keep the peace, provide public services -- and do so within the constraints of democratic principles. The police are trusted to use deadly force when it is called for and are allowed access to our homes in cases of emergency. In fact, police departments are one of the few government agencies that can be mobilized by a simple phone call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are ubiquitous within our society, but their actions are often not well understood. The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing brings together research on the development and operation of policing in the United States and elsewhere. Accomplished policing researchers Michael D. Reisig and Robert J. Kane have assembled a cast of renowned scholars to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the institution of policing. The different sections of the Handbook explore policing contexts, strategies, authority, and issues relating to race and ethnicity. The Handbook also includes reviews of the research methodologies used by policing scholars and considerations of the factors that will ultimately shape the future of policing, thus providing persuasive insights into why and how policing has developed, what it is today, and what to expect in the future. Aimed at a wide audience of scholars and students in criminology and criminal justice, as well as police professionals, the Handbook serves as the definitive resource for information on this important institution.

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies.

This provocative book presents compelling evidence that the fundamental problem behind environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Climate change threatens the future of civilization, but humanity is impotent in effecting solutions. Even in those nations with a commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, they continue to rise. This failure mirrors those in many other spheres that deplete the fish of the sea, erode fertile land, destroy native forests, pollute rivers and streams, and utilize the world's natural resources beyond their replacement rate. In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government—and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance—an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society. Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures—for example, in medicine and in corporate empires—that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life. But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.

The police in Taiwan played a critical role in the largely peaceful transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy. While the temptation to intervene in domestic politics was great, the top-down pressure to maintain a neutral standing facilitated an orderly regime change. This is the first monograph to examine the role of the police as a linkage between the state and civil society during the democratic transition and the role of the police in contemporary Taiwan. Starting with a brief history of Taiwan, this book examines the development of policing in Taiwan from a comparative, environmental, historical, operational, philosophical and political perspective; considers the role of the police in the democratic transition; and draws comparisons between police cultures in the East and in the West – both now and in the past. Taiwan operates as a modern country within an East Asian culture and this book shows that Taiwan’s move towards democracy may have political ramifications for the rest of the nations in the area. Including references to literature on policing in China and the U.S, this book about Taiwan police may serve as a springboard for academics and students to learn about similar cultures in this important area of the world. Policing in Taiwan will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of criminology, criminal justice, policing studies and Asian studies, as well as the general reader.