Public Policy
Book Details

Violence and Police Culture

Tony Coady, Steven James, Seumas Miller and Michael O’Keefe (eds)

A collection of papers by a group of eminent writers on questions associated with the police use of violence in the course of police work.

Opinion

‘. . .an excellent snapshot of the issue of police violence and police culture according to some of Australia’s leading police theorists.’ (Rick Sarre, Law Society Journal, August 2001)

About this Title

Violence and policing are inevitably associated. Criminals use violence not only against innocent members of the public, but also against the police themselves. For our own protection and theirs, we have given police a licence to use force, sometimes with lethal consequences.

But the exercise of this licence is fraught with risk to the community. The disturbing record of police shootings in Victoria, and irresponsible police violence elsewhere in recent years, vividly illustrate this risk. The public outcry against such events is understandable. To find a solution, we need to analyse the contexts and the cultural background of the use of police violence, and to think hard about its causes and proper limits.

In Violence and Police Culture, eminent contributors offer valuable insights and experience to the growing debate. While Australian in origin and emphasis, the book addresses a public issue that resonates as far afield as London, New York, Tokyo and Belfast.

Violence and Police Culture argues that there are features of police culture which foster abuse of the right to use violence. The book makes positive suggestions about institutional changes that might alleviate the problems bedevilling what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called ‘the right of the sword’.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction
1 Historical Influences on Australian Policing
John Blackler
2 The Police Use of Force: Contexts and Constraints
Ian Warren and Steve James
3 Positive Police Culture: Correcting Perceptions
Neil O'Loughlin and Peter Billing
4 Backstage Punishment: Police Violence, Occupational Culture and Criminal Justice
Janet Chan
5 An Impotent Conceit: Law, Culture and the Regulation of Police Violence
Andrew J. Goldsmith
6 Legal Regulation of the Police Culture of Violence: Rhetoric, Remedies and Redress
Ian Freckelton
7 Keeping the Peace and Making War: The Police and Military - Rhetoric and Reality
Jude McCulloch
8 Shootings by Police in Victoria: The Ethical Issues
Seamus Miller
9 Police Violence and the Loyal Code of Silence
John Kleinig
10 Dirty Harry and Dirty Hands
Andrew Alexandra
11 What Dirt?
C.A.J. Coady

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Professor Tony Coady is ARC Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Commonwealth Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Dr Steve James is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Melbourne. Professor Seumas Miller is Director of the Australian Research Council Commonwealth Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (Charles Sturt University).

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978-0-522-84788-8