Description:

Policing has become one of the urgent issues of our time, the target of dramatic movements and front-page coverage from coast to coast in the United States, and, indeed, across the world. Now a star-studded, wide-ranging collection of writers and activists offers a global response, describing ongoing struggles over policing from New York to Ferguson to Los Angeles, as well as London, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Mexico City. This book, combining first-hand accounts from organisers with the research of eminent scholars and contributions by leading artists, traces the global rise of the 'broken-windows' style of policing, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton, who was appointed to the post in 1993 and then reappointed twenty years later in 2013. Initially praised as a comprehensive model of community policing, it purports to prevent major crimes by first criminalising small signs of disorder. In practice, this doctrine has broadened police power and contributed to the contemporary crisis of policing that has been sparked by notorious incidents of police brutality and killings.