Research Catalog

Title

Street justice : a history of police violence in New York City / Marilynn Johnson.

Author

Johnson, Marilynn S.

Publication

Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press, c2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

365 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

In this study of police brutality in New York City, Marilynn Johnson explores the changing patterns of police use of force over the past 160 years, including streat beatings, organized violence against protestors, and the notorious third degree. She argues that the idea of police brutality--what exactly it is, who its victims are, and why it occurs--is historically constructed. In the late nineteenth century police brutality was understood as an outgrowth of the moral and political corruption of Tammany Hall; in the heavy immigration years of the early twentieth century it was redefined as a racial/ethnic issue; and during Prohibition police violence was connected to police corruption related to the underground liquor trade and the "war on crime" the federal government declared in response. Providing a history of police brutality up to the present day, Street justice emphasizes the understandings brought to the subject by its victims, and reveals a long and disturbing history of police misconduct against minorities. But Johnson also argues that the culture of policing can be changed when enough political pressure is brought to bear on the problem.

Subject

Police brutality > New York > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-345) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The Clubbers and the Clubbed": Police Violence in the 19th Century -- Riots and the Racialization of Police Brutality, 1900-1911 -- Brutality and Reform in the Progressive Era -- Prohibition, the War on Crime, and the Fight Against the Third Degree -- Police, Labor, and Radicals in the Great Depression -- The Resurgence of Race -- Storming the Barricades: The 1960s -- Will the Cycle be Unbroken?

ISBN

0807050229 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2003014312

OCLC

52514365

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library