Abstract
As the institution responsible for exercising the state monopoly on violence within US borders, the legitimacy of policing depends on its accountability through the democratic process. Ideally, police in a democracy are authorized by the voting public to use force in a manner that is limited, justifiable, and clearly in service of the aims of public safety and law enforcement—in other words, to prevent the social harms associated with criminal behavior. A combination of factors including structural inequality, historical associations with white supremacy, and hyperlocal oversight structures present significant challenges to police legitimacy, especially in highly policed communities of color (Stoughton et al., 2020). Despite the existence of various models and mechanisms that provide the potential for meaningful community oversight of police activity, abolitionist perspectives that argue for a radically different approach to public safety are gaining strength. Enhancing police legitimacy and accountability therefore depends on reducing broader race-based social, political, and economic inequities; establishing consistent national standards for police practices; ensuring strong civilian oversight across jurisdictions; and promoting procedural justice as the fundamental guiding principle for police interactions with the communities they serve.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
To say that the United States has a history of White supremacist governance is a simple statement of fact: the legal underpinnings of historical regimes such as slavery and Jim Crow segregation were explicitly white supremacist in their logic, rationale, and intent (Gates, 2019). Whether contemporary systems and structures of American governance—on the local, state, or federal level—are actively White supremacist is in most cases an arguable question, and an assertion not generally provable via reference to direct evidence in the form of laws or similar official documents. I choose to use the term in a contemporary context because it reflects my assessment of the indirect evidence (persistent race-based inequities across a wide range of social and economic indicators produced by approaches to governance that bolster White privilege, discriminatory and racist rhetoric on the part of elected officials, etc.), which I find overwhelmingly in support of its accuracy. See, e.g., Darity & Mullen, 2020.
- 2.
The subject of whether and when to capitalize the names of racial groups (primarily “White” and “Black”) has received considerable attention in recent discourse surrounding issues of racial justice. I follow here the APA standard, which is to capitalize the terms “White” and “Black” as proper names denoting racial categories. This is an editorial decision applied to this volume as a whole; my personal preference would be to follow the recent decision of the New York Times and capitalize “Black” while leaving “white” lower case. See Coleman, 2020 for a nuanced and comprehensive explanation of the Times’ decision in this matter, with which I concur.
- 3.
Jim Crow was an early nineteenth century stage caricature, performed by White actors in blackface, whose name became synonymous with the many negative stereotypes projected onto African Americans. The name was later used to categorize the suite of post-Reconstruction laws mandating racial segregation in the former Confederate states of the US South. These apartheid laws targeting African Americans persisted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. For a comprehensive history of the development of these laws, see Gates, 2019.
- 4.
Some 20 million Americans, or around 9% of the nation’s adult population, regularly carry guns in public. Around 66 million Americans, or about a third of the adult population, own guns, and two thirds of these cite personal protection as one of their reasons for doing so (Parker et al., 2017).
- 5.
Police abolition does not imply the abandonment of public safety or law enforcement, but rather is part of a larger abolitionist discourse that presents “a way of thinking about social justice that takes seriously the damaging power [...] of the criminal legal system [and] understands how it serves to create oppression rather than safety or protection” (Richie & Martensen, 2020, p. 14). It has become closely tied to a policy position that advocates defunding: “divesting money from the back end solution of policing and investing it on the front end” (Duffy Rice, 2020) in social programs that reduce crime by building community capacity. Importantly, most of its key proponents acknowledge the necessity of “professionals responsible with holding accountable those who violate the social contract in the extreme—rape or murder—and an improved investigative system to catch perpetrators” (Duffy Rice, 2020).
- 6.
Recent investigative journalism by the Marshall Project and its partners suggests that this phenomenon has not been consigned to history. Police dog bites continue to be an underexamined but particularly egregious form of police violence. See Van Sickle et al., 2020.
- 7.
“Officers personally satisfied just 0.02% of the more than $735 million awarded to plaintiffs over a six-year period in suits alleging constitutional violations and corresponding state tort claims, including assault, battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” (Schwartz, 2016, p. 1147).
- 8.
The most important of these is the Black Lives Matter movement, a rallying cry and organizing principle that arose from the protests in Ferguson, Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown. The movement continues to be a powerful force in racial justice activism. See Lebron (2017).
- 9.
References
18 U.S.C. Section 1385. (1878). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1385
Ba, B. A., & Rivera, R. (2019, October 19). The effect of police oversight in crime and allegations of misconduct: Evidence from Chicago. University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law and Economic. Research Paper No. 19–42. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3317952.
Beauchamp, Z. (2020, July 7). What the police really believe. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/7/21293259/police-racism-violence-ideology-george-floyd
Bonilla-Silva, E., & Mayorga, S. (2011). On (not) belonging: Why citizenship does not remedy racial inequality. In M.-K. Jung, J. Costa Vargas, & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), State of white supremacy: Racism, governance, and the United States (pp. 77–92). Stanford University Press.
Brucato, B. (2014). Fabricating the color line in a white democracy: From slave catchers to petty sovereigns. Theoria, 61(141), 30–54. https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2014.6114103
Chammah, M., & Aspinwall, C. (2020, June 8). The short, fraught history of the “Thin Blue Line” American flag. The Marshall Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/08/the-short-fraught-history-of-the-thin-blue-line-american-flag
Coleman, N. (2020, July 5). Why we’re capitalizing Black. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html
Darity, W. A., & Mullen, K. (2020). From here to equality: Reparations for black Americans in the twenty-first century. UNC Press.
Davis, A. Y., & Rodriguez, D. (2000). The challenge of prison abolition: A conversation. Social Justice, 27(3), 212–218.
Duffy Rice, J. (2020, August 25). The abolition movement. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/the-abolition-movement
Ferrandino, J. (2020). Getting away with murder: Homicide clearance by arrest in Chicago and its community areas. Homicide Studies. Advance online publication. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767920941563.
Finn, P. (2001). Citizen review of police: Approaches and implementation. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/184430.pdf
Fisk, C. L., & Richardson, L. S. (2017). Police unions. George Washington Law Review, 85(3), 712–799. http://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/85-Geo.-Wash.-L.-Rev.-712.pdf
Fontaine, J., Esthappan, S., La Vigne, N., Lawrence, D. S., & Jannetta, J. (2019, November). Updated: Views of the police and neighborhood conditions. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/100706/2019.11.11_ni_community_survey_brief_final_0.pdf
Forman, J., Jr. (2017). Locking up our own: Crime and punishment in Black America. Farrar, Staus and Giroux.
Gates, H. L. (2019). Stony the road: Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow. Penguin Press.
German, M. (2020, August 27). Hidden in plain sight: Racism, white supremacy, and far-right militancy in law enforcement. Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law
Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. University of California Press.
Giroux, H. A. (2017). White nationalism, armed culture and state violence in the age of Donald Trump. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 43(9), 887–910. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453717702800
Gordon-Reed, A. (2018, January/February). America’s original sin: Slavery and the legacy of white supremacy. Foreign Affairs.https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-12-12/americas-original-sin
Hansford, J. (2015). The whole system is guilty as hell: Interrupting a legacy of racist police culture through a human rights lens. Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, 2015, 13–18. https://hjaap.hkspublications.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/02/HJAAP-2015.pdf
Hawkins, H., & Thomas, R. (2013). White policing of black populations: A history of race and social control in America. In E. Cashmore & E. McLaughlin (Eds.), Out of order? Policing Black people (pp. 65–86). Routledge. (Original work published 1991).
Herman Peck, S. (2019, March 25). Post-Heller Second Amendment jurisprudence. Congressional Research Service. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44618.pdf
Hoerner, E., & Tulsky, R. (2019, July 19). Cops around the country are posting racist and violent comments on Facebook. Injustice Watch. https://www.injusticewatch.org/interactives/cops-troubling-facebook-posts-revealed/
Huber, L. P. (2016). “Make America great again!”: Donald Trump, racist nativism and the virulent adherence to white supremacy amid U.S. demographic change. Charleston Law Review, 10(2), 215–249.
Ignatiev, N. (2009). How the Irish became white.: Routledge. (Original work published 1995).
James, N., & Harrington, B. (2020, June 1). What role might the federal government play in law enforcement reform? Congressional Research Service. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10572.pdf
Jannetta, J., Esthappan, S., Fontaine, J., Lynch, M., & La Vigne, N. (2019, August). Learning to build police-community trust: Implementation assessment findings from the evaluation of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/learning-build-police-community-trust/view/full_report
Johnson, M. (2020, November 1). Breonna Taylor grand juror remarks underscore system unfairness, say critics. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/523660-breonna-taylor-grand-juror-remarks-underscore-system-unfairness-say
Karpiak, K. G., & Garriott, W. (2018). The anthropology of police. Routledge.
Lane, R. (1992). Urban police and crime in nineteenth-century America. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 15, 1–50. https://doi.org/10.1086/449192
Lathrop, D., & Flagg, A. (2017, August 14). Killings of Black men by whites are far more likely to be ruled “justifiable”. The Marshall Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/14/killings-of-black-men-by-whites-are-far-more-likely-to-be-ruled-justifiable
Lebron, C. J. (2017). The making of Black Lives Matter: A brief history of an idea. Oxford University Press.
Lou, M., & Jones, J. (2019, June 19). Philadelphia, St. Louis Police Departments roiled by racist and hateful Facebook posts. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/philadelphia-social-media-officers-leave-trnd/index.html
McCoy, C. (2020, August 31). A simple step to change police culture: Disarm. The Crime Report. https://thecrimereport.org/2020/08/31/a-simple-step-to-change-police-culture-disarm/
Meares, T. (2017). Policing and procedural justice: Shaping citizens’ identities to increase democratic participation. Northwestern University Law Review, 111(6), 1525–1536. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol111/iss6/8/
Monkkonen, E. H. (1992). History of urban police. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 15, 547–580. https://doi.org/10.1086/449201
Moon, C. (2008). Narrating political reconciliation: South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. Lexington Books.
Moore, M. H., & Braga, A. A. (2003). Measuring and improving police performance: The lessons of Compstat and its progeny. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 26(3), 439–453. https://doi.org/10.1108/13639510310489485/
Moore, M. H., & Braga, A. A. (2004). Police performance measurement: A normative framework. Criminal Justice Ethics, 23(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0731129X.2004.9992156
Nagin, D. S., & Telep, C. W. (2020). Procedural justice and legal compliance: A revisionist perspective. Criminology and Public Policy, 19(3), 761–786. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12499
Oh, S. (2020, September 16). What it’s going to take to fix policing. Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-its-going-take-fix-policing
Pare, P.-P., Felson, R. B., & Ouimet, M. (2007). Community variation in crime clearance: A multilevel analysis with comments on assessing police performance. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 23(3), 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-007-9028-0
Pareene, A. (2020, August 28). The police are pretty sure they’re going to get away with it. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/159142/portsmouth-virginia-police-louise-lucas-lisa-lucas-burke
Parker, K., Menasce Horowitz, J., Igielnik, R., Oliphant, J. B., & Brown, A. (2017, June 22). The demographics of gun ownership. Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
Pfeifer, M. J. (2004). Rough justice: Lynching and American society, 1874–1947. University of Illinois Press.
Quattlebaum, M., Meares, T. L., & Tyler, T. (2018). Principles of procedurally just policing. The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/justice/principles_of_procedurally_just_policing_report.pdf
Reddock, J. (2017). Truth, justice, and reconciliation in response to police shootings of African Americans in the United States. The Journal of Race and Policy, 13(1), 42–57.
Reichel, P. L. (1988). Southern slave patrols as a transitional police type. American Journal of Police, 7(2), 51–78.
Richie, B. E., & Martensen, K. M. (2020). Resisting carcerality, embracing abolition: Implications for feminist social work practice. Affilia Journal of Women and Social Work, 35(1), 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109919897576
Robertson, C. (2017). Restoring public confidence in the criminal justice system: Policing prosecutions when prosecutors prosecute police. Emory Law Journal, 67(4), 853–887. https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/elj/vol67/iss4/5/
Saad, L. (2019, August 14). What percentage of Americans own guns? Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx
Schrader, S. (2019). To protect and serve themselves: Police in US politics since the 1960s. Public Culture, 31(3), 601–623. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-7532667
Schwartz, J. C. (2016). How governments pay: Lawsuits, budgets, and police reform. UCLA Law Review, 63, 1144–1298. https://www.uclalawreview.org/how-governments-pay-lawsuits-budgets-and-police-reform/
Seigel, M. (2017). The dilemma of ‘racial profiling’: An abolitionist police history. Contemporary Criminal Justice Review, 20(4), 474–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2017.1383773
Serwer, A. (2020, October). The new reconstruction. The Atlantic.https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/the-next-reconstruction/615475/
Solomon, J., Kaplan, D., & Hancock, L. E. (2019). Expressions of American white ethnonationalism in support for “Blue Lives atter”. Geopolitics. Advance online publication. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1642876.
Stageman, D. L. (2019). The punishment marketplace: Competing for capitalized power in locally controlled immigration enforcement. Theoretical Criminology, 23(3), 394–414. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617733729
Stoughton, S. W. (2017). The blurred blue line: Reform in an era of public & private policing. American Journal of Criminal Law, 44(2), 117–155.
Stoughton, S. W., Noble, J. J., & Alpert, G. P. (2020, June 3). How to actually fix America’s police. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-actually-fix-americas-police/612520/
Tankebe, J. (2012). Viewing things differently: The dimensions of public perceptions of police legitimacy. Criminology, 51(1), 103–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2012.00291.x
Tankebe, J., Reisig, M. D., & Wang, X. (2016). A multidimensional model of police legitimacy: A cross-cultural assessment. Law and Human Behavior, 40(1), 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000153
Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why people obey the law. Yale University Press. (Original work published 1990).
Van Sickle, A., Stephens, C., Martin, R., Brozost-Kelleher, D., & Fan, A. (2020, October 2). When police violence is a dog bite. The Marshall Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/10/02/when-police-violence-is-a-dog-bite
Vitale, A. (2017). The end of policing. Verso Books.
Weber, M., & Owen, D. S. (2004). The vocation lectures. Hackett Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stageman, D.L. (2022). Enhancing Police Accountability and Legitimacy. In: Jeglic, E., Calkins, C. (eds) Handbook of Issues in Criminal Justice Reform in the United States. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77565-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77565-0_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-77564-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-77565-0
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)