Policing

A blog for the policy area of Policing

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Piven’s Theory on Social Movements Explains Policing

Piven’s theory has three parts: numerous members of society perceive the system as losing legitimacy, people who normally believe they cannot change the system then suddenly view an opportunity for change, and people who previously viewed themselves as helpless believe they have the ability to produce a desired change. I think the idea of policing has changed overtime because of this theory. Policing formed as a sort of social movement because people believed in all of these things. They believed that the system over top of them wasn’t either doing enough or they were being oppressive in their manner of policing, this perfectly shows the first part of Piven’s theory. The second part of Piven’s theory also works really well with the idea that policing is a social movement, this is because many people in the world sometimes don’t know how to help and policing is a way for them to immediately do something to change the world around them. The last part of Piven’s theory also works really well for policing becoming a movement as people being helpless could immediately feel that this could change their situation and others like them.

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Social Movements Growing as Legitimacy of Policing Continues to Decline

Legitimacy has been a structure to political theory since the days of countless monarchies within the known world of Kings and Queens. Legitimacy of a Kingdom during the feudal era of Europe was such a major aspect of politics it could completely change the trajectory of the country. Legitimacy is seen as something that must be attained and when it is lost the ramifications are serious. Piven’s theory on social movements states that when multiple members of a society believe a system is losing legitimacy they will start a movement. Right now the legitimacy of policing is being seen as non-existent. Social movements revolving around policing are massive household names, including movements like Black Lives Matter and Blue Live Matter which is a positive movement for policing. It's obvious in America that those who are are movements like black lives matter have seen the fall of policing’s legitimacy and now have created a massive social movement against the delegitimized street-level bureaucrats.

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Why Social Goods are the Life Blood of Policing

Social goods are goods that we can not physically see like groceries, but are instead a good that people can feel and experience that makes life better. One of the main types of social goods is trust. Now looking at America today we can see that his trust has broken down very heavily as time has moved along to the present. Social goods create a happier society and policing is a major policy issue that can produce abundant social goods. Other types of social goods are social cohesion, tolerance, fellowships, solidarity, and reciprocity. Now, policing is currently seen as a huge policy topic as all of the social goods that could be produced for the public have begun to break down. Social cohesion breaks down as the police break apart communities and the relationships among them rather than promoting them. It also breaks down social cohesion as communities do not have solidarity caused by certain police tactics. Looking at just three of these social goods we can tell why they are so important to policing. When policing can produce these social goods for society it becomes a non-issue policy. However today, policing is seen as something that can’t produce any social good making life much worse rather than better.

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The Problem with Effective Altruism and Policing

Effective altruism is “a philosophy and social movement that advocates using evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others,” (effectivealtruism.org). Looking at this statement seems like policing and effective altruism would be a perfect match and sometimes this can be a true statement. However, effective altruism is all about looking at the numbers and margins of how things could effectively work. As I said before this can help in certain times, but people can’t be seen as just numbers to be added up or taken away from a total. Effort to humanely help the issue of policing is a personal issue and not an issue of statistics. Making an effective effort to help is important, however that can’t be at the cost of lives. When looking at things through an empirical lens brings up quotes by one of the worst leaders in history, Joseph Stalin. “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Dehumanizing the death of people becomes one of the biggest tragedies of all, as people begin to see other people as numbers rather than individuals.

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Bureaucratic Politics Effecting Policing

Bureaucratic politics is a major issue that faces policing in its whole. The politics that happen between agencies and even with the individuals that use the agency are an affront to what the policy of policing should stand for. Policing is about helping Americans in ways that protect their civil liberties and keep them safe from all imaginable dangers. However, with bureaucratic politics happening real work does not, with members of any police forces like higher-ups attempting to jockey there way into better more powerful positions the job is not being done. Another bad aspect of this is usually the position that police officers take is one that is cultivated by the culture that police officers are in when on the job. With blue lives matter becoming a staple among republican members of the community and police officers. Obviously, police forces are becoming more right-wing which will create an extreme imbalance among ideology which helps in every work environment.

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Social Policy Learning in Policing

Social policy learning is all about how learning how social causes of problems and the possible ways of intervention to solve these issues. Right now a major issue facing the American people is civil rights and racial injustice. Currently, policing is seeing this issue in full force, as more and more killings of innocent black Americans seem to be constantly occurring across the nation. Obviously, with such a major issue facing Americans they look at who is causing the issue, and police forces across the country are in the scope. Most would agree that issues of racial injustice involving the police are too often being exposed across this country, however, learning the problem is only half the battle. Luckily even with this major social problem we face today, possible interventions right now include large blanket ideas like abolishing and defunding the police. However, using social learning this glaring issue has been determined as an issue within policing and luckily as ideas that will hopefully change the issue.

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Co-production in Policing

Co-production is all about how a public service and its users can better use each other’s assets and resources to maximize the efficiency and positivity of the outcomes for both parties. Policing right now is being looked at with new ideas besides just police forces. People that use the police force for anything are using the public service and with co-production policing can become a more efficient and positive experience. A great measure that is used for co-production in policing is community oversight boards or committees. This allows communities to take some of the power and use to see what the police are doing and make changes that they believe will help the policing body and the community as a whole. As of June 27th Laramie, Wyoming has an oversight board over the Laramie Police Department. Something like this will hopefully bring transparency and satisfaction to the community at large.

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Police are the Epitome of Street Level Bureaucrats

A target population has policies that are created by top-level government officials, however, these officials do not enforce or implement the policies they create because that is the job of a street-level bureaucrat. Police officers are the ones on the streets implementing the new policies at a level that is in contact with a target population. These policies usually are created by the Supreme court precedents or Congressional decisions. The policies come from the highest officials, but without the police to enforce said policies the laws mean nothing. However, street-level bureaucrats must understand the policies that they are implementing to make the policies actually effective. Right now, police officers do not need to understand the law in its entirety to be hired. I believe the implementation process of laws is extremely important, but if a change is made by high-level bureaucrats and the street-level bureaucrats can not implement correctly through malicious or ignorant actions; the policy becomes useless and the population targeted suffers.

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Understanding Bounded Rationality in Policing

Bounded Rationality is how the decision-making process is affected by the information available about the subject and how cognitive and time limitations affect how the amount of info is processed. The policy area of policing has a major limitation in many situations because of bounded rationality. Officers or community members who police areas of a town or city sometimes have time to do research and gain a lot of information on suspects in crimes, however, sometimes they need to make a split decision on the extremely limited info that they have only just gained. Detectives attempting to solve a murder have a much larger amount of information and more time to assess it than a police officer arriving at a situation where someone draws a weapon. Bounded rationality will tell us that a decision made by the detectives will be better thought out and will hopefully have a positive outcome, while the police officer’s decision will probably have a negative outcome as he has less time, less info, and in a stressed state of mind. Decisions result in actions and bounded rationality will greatly affect these decisions especially in policing. 

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Focus Events in Policing Are Too Common

A focus event is a sudden event that raises large amounts of public attention towards a problem that can be harmful. Right now, massive focusing events are happening all across the country. The biggest event that has taken place in recent times is the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor. After the Death of Taylor, huge riots broke out across the country in major cities and even small ones. Taylor is another name on a huge list of deaths by police officers, and this is becoming a terrible norm. These wrongful deaths are a possible two-edged sword as well since if the officers who perpetrated these terrible crimes are not brought to justice massive protests and riots will usually follow them. Policing right now is constantly being hit with massive focus events, and with them, I believe that their commonality is becoming another thing Americans can become desensitized to. Focus events becoming a common thing has good aspects, as stated before, it raises public attention, but it’s too common for people to no disregard as an ongoing event and not different focusing events.