Radical and Critical Criminology's Treatment of Municipal Policing

Abstract

Municipal policing in advanced industrialized countries is searching for a new paradigm. Traditional methods of administration, investigation, and patrol are often criticized for being outdated and ineffective, and the latest of experiments, community policing and CompStat, are encountering strong skepticism and even opposition in policing circles and beyond.This situation does not bode well for the current practice and future of policing and law enforcement. So, then, how do we improve policing? We could conduct a focus group or administer some sort of questionnaire like a Delphi study to police administrators or police scholars. Short of this option, among a variety of recommendations, perhaps the time is ripe to reexamine the ideological foundations of policing research, writing, and commentary (hereafter research) to see if there are additional insights that can be gleaned in order to make appropriate recommendations for changes in policing. Ideological biases, if left unchecked, produce poor or misguided policies and practices.Given the importance of this body of work for our understanding of law enforcement, I briefly review the literature on municipal policing in these three Anglo-American democracies, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, by arguing that it can be classified into three types; by reviewing and critiquing each of these approaches; and by suggesting how a radical/critical interpretation of policing might be improved and how we might utilize this information to change policing.