Tom R. Tyler, a professor at Yale Law School, argued that, contrary to populat opinion, people don't obey the law because they fear punishment but rather because they believe authorities have legitimacy, the right to tell them what to do.  In order for the authorities to maintain legitimacy, they must have the trust of the populace.  The most important factor in accomplishing this is the "people's subjective judgments about the fairness of the procedures through which the police and the courts exercise their authority" (Tyler, 2003, p. 284).  This perception of fairness is crucial to having a citizenry buy into the legitimacy of the police and the courts.  The police and courts must not only be fair and impartial, but they must also be seen to be so. 

The importance of procedural justice in policing is crucial to fostering and maintaining the legitimacy of the criminal justice system as a whole and the legitimacy of the police in particular.  Referred to variously as community policing, partnership policing, problem-solving policing, relationship-based policing, guardian policing, and trust policing, this family of approaches seeks to increase the "buy in" for police legitimacy by involving the local community, becoming part of the community, being a positive everyday force within the community, treating the members of the community with respect and recognition (e.g., knowing their names), and often participating in the life of the community by patrolling on foot, talking with residents, helping with their problems, and letting them know that the police both hear and share their concerns.  Instead of police officers being either in a station or a patrol car, community policing effforts often have officers in storefronts, housing projects, and other pulic places where they are seen by the local population and where non-violent interaction occurs frequently. 

• Rosenberg, Tina. “A Strategy to Build Police-Citizen Trust.” The New York Times 26 July 2016.
• Tyler, Tom R. Why People Obey the Law. New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1990;  the themes of this book have been updated in Tyler's article “Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law.” Crime and Justice 30 (2003): 283-357.
• Beck, Charlie, and Connie Rice. “How Community Policing Can Work” The New York Times. 12 August 2016.

No one--well, almost no one--defends the idea of the police as an occupying army, but this is certainly the way in which they have been experienced for decades in many communities of color.  The police are seen as outsiders whose mission is to control those who live in the local communities and to prevent them from doing things that will ultimately harm those with power and privilege.  Thus the police protect merchants based outside the community who continue to reap profits from stores in poorer areas.  There is comparatively little conern, so it appears to those in the communities of color, if the residents kill one another, as long as they do not strike out against those outside the community, those with privilege, status, money, and political power.  For many decades, in poor neighborhoods of color, the police were outsiders, a different race or ethnicity, sometimes speaking a different language.  They looked upon the local citizens as a threat, either as potential criminals or potential allies of criminals against the police.  The police were not perceived as responsible to the local citizenry, but to "downtown," the (white) power structure.  Indeed, crimes committed by the police against the local citizens were largely ignored, only worth attention when they were directed against those who held the real power in the city. The local community saw no reason to "buy into" the police, to give the police legitimacy, because the police were not seen as impartial arbiters of justice, but rather as concerned with maintaining the control of the white elite over the minorities. 

In contrast, community-oriented procedural justice models of policing emphasize a "buy in" from both police and community.  The police must see themselves as the allies and protectors of the citizens of their neighborhood, answerable primarily to them, willing to listen to and respect their views--in short, genuinely to serve and protect.  The community, on the other hand, must buy into the police, recognizing their legitimacy and supporting their actions in the community.  They must see the police as an expression not only of the law (to which they assent) but also of the community's priorities and interests.  They have to buy into the notion that the police are an expression of their self-government and accord them the respect that is their due.  In keeping with this, the community must supply some of its own members to be police officers, for this is one of the ways in which policiing gains legitimacy. 

There is another factor that should be noted here.  In contrast to many of the individuals who work in the technical side of law enforement, police officers are "sworn" to uphold the law.  This means that when they put on the badge and uniform, they set aside their personal likes and dislikes, and act impartially, not favoring family or friends over strangers.  This is the core of what it means to be sworn to uphold the law, and there is a moral nobility to this calling. 

The other component of this impartiality is found in the law itself, which must be crafted in such a way that it does not favor one group over another.  A prime example of partiality, of the failure of the law to achieve the ideal of impartiality, was when drug offenses involving crack (typically found in minority communities) were punished far more severely than offenses involving cocaine (typically found in more affluent, white communities).  Another exmaple of this partiality in the law occurs when certain laws are enforced with disproportinate severity--for example, driving with a broken tail light. 

These are two very differnet ways of understanding the role of policing in society, especially policing in minority communities.  I use the term "minority" communities here as the obverse of the majoirty communities of the economic and political elite.  These may be minoirty communities by virtue of the race or ethnicity of their members, by economic class, or by religious belief. 

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?" Juvenal the Roman poet asked in his Satires--loosely translated as "Who is going to guard the guardians?"  Juvenal was probably thinking of the issue in terms of custodians of marital fidelity, but the poliitcal dimension of this question had been obvious since Plato's time and one of the themes of Plato's Republic.  Once a certain group is placed in charge of the security of others, who will monitor them?  If you have bodyguards, who will insure the honesty and integrity of the bodyguards?  Or the King's Guard?  This is a perenntial problem in the corporate world, the military world, politics, and certainly in espionage. 

In contemporary policing, a division such as Internal Affairs had the responsibility of insuring that the other police behaved honestly while on the job.  Eventually civili review boards were added to the mix, and now sometimes there are community advisory boards who monitor events before the fact, not simply having some transgression appears to have occurred.  Each of these is an attempt to establish a separate line of authority and responsibility that is not contorlled by the main police apparatus.

In the twenty-first century, a new answer has emerged: the cell phone video.  Citizens are now videotaping the police, watching the watchers, in a way that was impractical even a decade earlier.  Video has become so easy,, cheap, and of such high quality that many individuals may be videotaping the same event--and loading those videos into the cloud before they can be confiscated.  This has been a game-changer in regard to watching the watchers. 

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After years of TV shows highlighting forensic investigations and DNA matches, we are all familiar with DNA matching.  But the next step in DNA-based investigations is more controversial: familial DNA searches that can lead police to a relative of the person being sought and, from that link, to the target of the investigation.  The following article from the LA Times provides an excellent overview of the recent developments in this area, highlighting California's approach to the issue.

• Gerber, Marisa. “The Controversial DNA Search That Helped Nab the ‘Grim Sleeper’ Is Winning Over Skeptics .” Los Angeles Times 25 Oct. 2016 : 1–7. Web. <http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-familial-dna-20161023-snap-story.html>.

The advantages of such searches are clear: they allow police to track down offenders who are difficult to catch and who are often serial offenders. 

But the challenges associated with familial DNA searches are also significant.  Overall, a significantly higher percentage of the samples in the DNA databasses come from African Americans and Hispanic Americans.  This raises concerns about discrimination.

In addition, the means of obtaining familial DNA samples can be of concern.  In one case, police manages to subpoena a pap smear from a suspected murder's daughter. 

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In a number of towns and cities, the revenue collected from aggressive policing is an important revenue source. 

• Markowwitz, Eric. “The Link Between Money and Aggressive Policing". New Yorker 11 Aug. 2014. Web. <http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-link-between-money-and-aggressive-policing>.

The number of times people get away with crimes is surprsingly high.  Here is a chart from the FBI on clearance rates for various kinds of crimes:

The situation is, however, far worse than this suggests, since only about 60% of all violent crimes (excluding homicides) are actually reported to the police (and thus appear in these numbers), according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

In addition, as the Wall Street Journal reported, for decades killings of civilians by police officers were not even listed.  A growing awareness of this discrepancy led to sites such as The Counted, maintained by The Guardian, that track civilian deaths caused by police officers.

For more information on crime clearance rates in your locality, see the NRP story on Crime Cearance Rates.  This contains links to find out about clearance rates in your area.

Prisons typically do not use the term "solitary confinement" anymore, but rather use terms such as "prison segregaton" "disciplinary segregaton," or "restrtictive housing."  Most states, as well as the federal government, have supermax facilities, reminiscent of Bentham's Panopticon.  This is one of the factors that make it difficult to determine exactly how many prisoners are in solitary confinement at any given time.  The best estimate for 2014 seems to be 80,000 to 100,000 individuals, according to a report by the Liman Project and the Associatoin of State Correctional Administrators.

John McCain, who was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years, said that the solitary confinement he endured was worse than the beatings and other abuse to whcih he was regularly subjected.  "It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”  (Quoted in Gawande's article Hell Hole.)

What special issues do women in prison face?  See "Women in Detention:: The Need for National Reform"