Origins of American Policing

Catalog description

This course situates contemporary problems of policing in the long sweep from the Boston Massacre to modern times. Drawing on work by historians and social scientists, as well as primary sources, the course traces the development of policing with a consideration of three origin stories: (1) state-building and political order, (2) the protection of racial hierarchy, and (3) the construction of class boundaries. Topics include criminal enforcement in the American Revolution; the birth of urban police forces; law enforcement’s role in slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow; 20th century reformers and anti-vice crusades; the FBI, national security state, and immigration control; and the bipartisan war on crime in the 1980s and beyond.