American Police Administration At Mid-Century
1950; Wiley; Volume: 10; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/972814
ISSN1540-6210
Autores Tópico(s)Policing Practices and Perceptions
ResumoaM ID-CENTURY seems a not inappropriate time to survey the sprawling, complex, expensive, inefficient, and confused pattern of vertical and horizontal duplication, fragmentation, and overlapping which is the American police system. At this mid-point in the twentieth century, some 40,0001 separate public law enforcement agencies, on five levels of government, employing 200,000 men and women, and costing approximately $1 billion per annum, are struggling with somewhat indifferent success against a veritable army of criminals and their political allies. Meanwhile, an apathetic, sometimes antipathetic, public complacently accepts each year a crime bill estimated at between $20 and $30 billion, a total of nearly two million larcenies, auto thefts, homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, and other serious crimes, and a toll of 32,000 traffic fatalities. Invidious comparisons with Scotland Yard, the Surete, and other foreign police agencies are neither desirable nor valuable, for no acceptable criteria of police efficiency or performance have been standardized. Nor can any significant share of the blame be apportioned to American police officers, who comprise by and large as conscientious, courageous, and honest a body of men as will be encountered in any trade, occupation, or profession. Whence, then, the problem? I
Referência(s)