Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

The Street Perspective: A Conversation With The Police, Patrick L. Baude

IUSTITIA

Professor Baude's purpose in this discussion is to elicit police officers' comments on what members of the legal profession ought to know about the influence of the "street perspective" in shaping those officers' attitudes towards the criminal justice system and the role they play in it. It is police insistence on the broad validity of insights which only "the street" can provide that accounts for the considerable gulf between "front-line" enforcement officers and other functionaries in (and students of) that system. Law students (and no doubt lawyers) seem uncomfortable with the notion that our system cannot adequately be understood without …