History of Policing America

Laurence Armand French, Phd, is professor emeritus of psychology at Western New Mexico University and senior research associate at the JusticeWorks Institute at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH. He has taught criminology, criminal justice, sociology, and psychology at various universities, including minority-serving universities and has won awards for this minority-based research. He is Senior Fulbright Scholar assigned to the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the 2009/2010 academic year. He has written many articles and books, including Frog Town: Portrait of a French Canadian Parish in New England (R&L, 2014), Running the Border Gauntlet (2010) and Native American Justice (R&L, 2003). He received the 1999 National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research award for his work in assessing substance abuse among minorities in the U.S. southwest.

French (emer., psychology, Western New Mexico Univ.) does not offer just another historical survey of policing. He has written a loosely chronological account of the injustices perpetrated by the justice system against Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans (among others) from the Colonial period to the present. He traces the roots of this discriminatory enforcement of the law to early colonists’ Puritan culture, which fostered the embrace of Manifest Destiny and white (Anglo-Saxon Protestant) supremacy. Under the direction of these WASP elites, the police, courts, armed forces, and other legal (and extralegal) entities have regularly used violence to control other classes and races. . . French’s catalog of abuses serves to remind readers of the social and political context in which policing must be studied. . . his recommendations that reforms be based on a more sophisticated understanding of bias, and that psychological assessments of personnel be used to identify prejudice, appear sound.Summing Up: Recommended. . . Undergraduates and general readers.

• Part I: Origins of U.S. Law Enforcement: Militias, Military, Marshals, and SheriffsChapter 1: Introduction: Colonial Roots in Policing America Chapter 2: Introduction to the Origins of American Jurisprudence Chapter 3: Growing Pains—1783–1865: Insurrections, Rebellions, and Indian Removal Chapter 4: Post–Civil War Unrest and Social Control during the Nineteenth Century Part II: Law and Order in the Americas and Beyond, 1898–1946Chapter 5: U.S. Colonial Expansionism in the Caribbean and Pacific Chapter 6: Reinforcing WASP White Supremacy: Eugenics and Prohibition Chapter 7: Post–World War II Challenges to Law Enforcement Part III: Civil Rights Aftermath: Increased Militarization and Racial Myths EnhancementChapter 8: The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act Chapter 9: Role of Academia in Validating “Institutional Racism” Chapter 10: The War on Drugs and Its Escalation Chapter 11: Factors Contributing to the Militarization of the PolicePart IV: Twenty-First-Century ConcernsChapter 12: Understanding Group Dynamics, Biases, Prejudices, and Discrimination Chapter 13: Assessing Law Enforcement Personnel Chapter 14: Politics and Policing Chapter 15: Recommendations for American Law Enforcement Postscript: An Ethno-Methodological Note