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Full-Text Articles in Law
On Beauty And Policing, India Thusi
On Beauty And Policing, India Thusi
Articles by Maurer Faculty
“To protect and serve” is the motto of police departments from Los Angeles to Cape Town. When police officers deviate from the twin goals of protection and service, for example by using excessive force or by maintaining hostile relations with the community, scholars recommend more training, more oversight, or more resources in policing. However, police appear to be motivated by a superseding goal in the area of sex work policing. In some places, the policing of sex workers is connected to police officers’ perceptions of beauty, producing a hierarchy of desirable bodies as enforced by those sworn to protect and …
Blue Lives & The Permanence Of Racism, India Thusi
Blue Lives & The Permanence Of Racism, India Thusi
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In true dystopian form, the killing of unarmed Black people by the police has sparked a national narrative about the suffering of police officers. “Blue Lives Matter” has become the rallying call for those offended by the suggestion that we should hold police officers accountable for killing unarmed Black people. According to a December 2016 poll, 61% of Americans believed that there was a “war on police,” and 68% of Whites had a favorable view of the police as compared to 40% of Blacks. Lawmakers around the country have been proposing Blue Lives Matter laws that make it a hate …
Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell
Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell
Articles by Maurer Faculty
The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans—Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others—at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing.
The construction of African-American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police …