The New World of Police Accountability

Police misconduct is nothing new in the United States and other developed countries. Use of excessive force, unjustified shootings, race discrimination, and a general lack of acc ountability for officer conduct have been serious problems since the first police departments were created in the early nineteenth century. Although today’s media coverage of these major police offenses portrays otherwise, significant progress has been made in reducing police misconduct. The New World of Police Accountability is the first book to provide an original and comprehensive analysis of some of the most important developments in policing over the past ten years. Samuel Walker synthesizes the major developments in the area of police accountability and argues that these developments represent a new period in the history of police reform that promises to address the historic problems of police abuse. This text assesses both the achievements and limitations of police accountability and reshapes the conventional wisdom on this topic. The book covers such issues as federal law suits against the police, consent decrees, citizen oversight of the police, and early intervention systems.