This book offers a global history of civilian, military and gendarmerie-style policing around the First World War. Whilst many aspects of the Great War have been revisited in light of the centenary, and in spite of the recent growth of modern policing history, the role and fate of police forces in the conflict has been largely forgotten. Yet the war affected all European and extra-European police forces. Despite their diversity, all were confronted with transnational factors and forms of disorder, and suffered generally from mass-conscription. During the conflict, societies and states were faced with a crisis situation of unprecedented magnitude with mass mechanised killing on the battle field, and starvation, occupation, destruction, and in some cases even revolution, on the home front. Based on a wide geographical and chronological scope – from the late nineteenth century to the interwar years – this collection of essays explores the policing of European belligerent countries, alongside their empires, and neutral countries. The book’s approach crosses traditional boundaries between neutral and belligerent nations, centres and peripheries, and frontline and rear areas. It focuses on the involvement and wartime transformations of these law-enforcement forces, thus highlighting underlying changes in police organisation, identity and practices across this period.

Policing and War in Europe marks a new departure in Criminal Justice History. These seven chapter essays, together with the reviews of twelve major works in the area, establish the series as a major forum for exploring new areas of research in the criminal justice area in its historical, criminological, legal, and social aspects. Common themes and issues that emerge from the study of policing and warring from the perspectives of both the nation state and the local community are explored. Elaine Reynolds and Barry Godfrey examine the daily work of nightwatchmen, and private and public police in bringing order to the streets in times of peace and war. Mark Clapson and Clive Emsley examine the problem of the policeman's image in the culture of his community, and Richard Ireland illustrates how scientific advances in crime detection brought the stereotyping of criminals rather than their arrest and conviction. Michael Broers and David Smith reveal the dramatic impact that world war brought to the problem of policing occupied territory, while Simon Kitson demonstrates the dangers that can occur when the civilian police are used to invigilate racist policies of a totalitarian regime. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with legal, political, and military history, criminal justice studies, sociology and criminology, and criminal law.

A comprehensive history of Continental police systems, in the context of political and diplomatic history.

A striking new interpretation of colonial policing and political violence in three empires between the two world wars.

Violent crime has been rising sharply in many American cities after two decades of decline. Homicides jumped nearly 17 percent in 2015 in the largest 50 cities, the biggest one-year increase since 1993. The reason is what Heather Mac Donald first identified nationally as the “Ferguson effect”: Since the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, officers have been backing off of proactive policing, and criminals are becoming emboldened. This book expands on Mac Donald’s groundbreaking and controversial reporting on the Ferguson effect and the criminal-justice system. It deconstructs the central narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males. On the contrary, it is criminals and gangbangers who are responsible for the high black homicide death rate. The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of “mass incarceration.” A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s data-driven, accountable police department. Mac Donald gives voice to the many residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that race-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. This book is a call for a more honest and informed debate about policing, crime, and race.

The police force is one of the most distrusted institutions in Pakistan, notorious for its corruption and brutality. In both colonial and postcolonial contexts, directives to confront security threats have empowered law enforcement agents, while the lack of adequate reform has upheld institutional weaknesses. This exploration of policing in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and financial capital, reveals many colonial continuities. Both civilian and military regimes continue to ensure the suppression of the policed via this institution, itself established to militarily subjugate and exploit in the interests of the ruling class. However, contemporary policing practice is not a simple product of its colonial heritage: it has also evolved to confront new challenges and political realities. Based on extensive fieldwork and almost 150 interviews, this ethnographic study reveals a distinctly "postcolonial condition of policing." Mutually reinforcing phenomena of militarisation and informality have been exacerbated by an insecure state that routinely conflates combatting crime, maintaining public order and ensuring national security. This is evident not only in spectacular displays of violence and malpractice, but also in police officers' routine work. Caught in the middle of the country's armed conflicts, their encounters with both state and society are a story of insecurity and uncertainty.

After war, police forces are often unable or unwilling to put pressure on suspected war criminals, organized crime groups, and other spoilers of sustainable peace. This book sheds light on the role of international military forces in post-conflict law enforcement. Drawing on numerous interviews, it shows that EU and NATO military forces have not systematically fought serious crime in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. International actors need to better balance their own interests as well as the requirement to separate military and police functions with the urgent need to protect individuals in war-torn countries. The policy recommendations in the book are aimed at contributing to more effective, efficient, and legitimate peace operations in the Balkans and beyond.