Month: April 2021

Public Health Violence Prevention: Supporting Law Enforcement | USU

As frustrations over inequalities in policing and law enforcement continue despite attempted reforms (Beckett, 2016), many are asking for a more effective approach. A 2018 issue statement from the American Public Health Association
(2018) highlights that violence is a public health issue that will not go away without the influence of a public health approach. The integrated biological-psychological-social model of health recognizes the complexity in the ways individuals are influenced by their situations, with violence as the unfortunate result of the wrong mix of circumstances. The public health approach to violence focuses on prevention as part of the solution.
— Read on extension.usu.edu/heart/research/violence-prevention-supporting-law-enforcement

Collective Bargaining Rights, Policing, and Civilian Deaths by Jamein Cunningham, Donna Feir, Rob Gillezeau :: SSRN

Do collective bargaining rights for law enforcement result in more civilian deaths at the hands of the police? Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century. We find no impact on various crime rate measures and suggestive evidence of a decline in police employment, consistent with increasing compensation. Our results indicate that the adoption of collective bargaining rights for law enforcement can explain approximately 10 percent of the total non-white civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement between 1959 and 1988.
— Read on papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm

Citizens, Suspects, and Enemies: Examining Police Militarization – Texas National Security Review

Concern about the increasing militarization of police has grown in recent years. Much of this concern focuses on the material aspects of militarization: the greater use of military equipment and tactics by police officers. While this development deserves attention, a subtler form of militarization operates on the cultural level. Here, police adopt an adversarial stance toward minority communities, whose members are regarded as presumptive objects of suspicion. The combination of material and cultural militarization in turn has a potential symbolic dimension. It can communicate that members of minority communities are threats to society, just as military enemies are threats to the United States. This conception of racial and ethnic minorities treats them as outside the social contract rather than as fellow citizens
— Read on tnsr.org/2020/12/citizens-suspects-and-enemies-examining-police-militarization/