Rethinking the place of crime in police patrol: a re-reading of classic police ethnographies
Both in the policing literature and criminology more broadly, it is a taken-for-granted fact—an entrenched ‘truism’—that patrol policing has little to do with crime. This ‘truth’ is a product of fieldwork on the public police begun in the early-1950s. These works, thus, are of immense importance to...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2017
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In: |
The British journal of criminology
Year: 2017, Volume: 57, Issue: 4, Pages: 867-884 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Keywords: |
Summary: | Both in the policing literature and criminology more broadly, it is a taken-for-granted fact—an entrenched ‘truism’—that patrol policing has little to do with crime. This ‘truth’ is a product of fieldwork on the public police begun in the early-1950s. These works, thus, are of immense importance to criminology. In this paper, I undertake a re-reading of several classic police ethnographies and argue that there is a disjuncture between what is claimed and revealed. These texts show that the patrol police appear to deal with a significant amount of what I call crime work, the minimization and marginalization of which I seek to make sense of. |
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ISSN: | 1464-3529 |
DOI: | 10.1093/bjc/azw028 |