- Comparative Policing

Catalog description

Explores basic questions at the heart of modern police institutions: Why do we have police forces? Why are different police forces in different countries structured the way they are? Are police able to “protect and serve” all the citizens of their states equally, or are they biased in terms of race, gender and sexual identity, class and other social identities? This course examines these questions in comparative political context; specifically, by comparing the experience of policing in the United States with that of in Russia, Brazil, Germany, the Philippines, and other states. The course is attuned to the question of how and why police institutions either empower citizens by providing safety and justice, or threaten citizens by exercising their power unequally, illegally or unjustly. Pays particular attention to the way that world historical trends such as colonialism, chattel slavery, the Cold War, and globalization produce understandings of both domestic and international security and powerful practices of white supremacy and anti-Blackness that influence the structure and functioning of policing in different states.