Description
Book SynopsisMicol Seigel redefines policing as violence work, showing how it is shaped by its role of channeling state violence and how its status as a civilian institution obscures its ties to militarization.
Trade Review"An exceptionally sophisticated exploration of the nature of policing in relation to 'violence work.' . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty."
-- D. O. Friedrichs * Choice *
"[
Violence Work] reveals a great deal about what we do and do not know about state-sponsored violence as well as how best to get there. . . . Seigel portrays state repression in a relatively new light, leading to refreshing insights about theory, data sources, and unexamined hypotheses. The book kills fascists because if you follow the logic contained within it, you are led directly to perpetrators of violence, as well as the varying types of institutions in which they are found." -- Christian Davenport * Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics *
“Violence Work is an eye-opening, detailed and timely book that, for its historical approach, is an unusual appraisal of police legitimacy, which may not only to attract the attention of scholars and students of political science and criminal justice but also of policymakers, especially in this time of discussion of dismantling and defunding the police.”
-- Nusret M. Sahin * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction. Policing and State Power 1
1. The Office of Public Safety, the LEAA, and US Police 25
2. Civilian or Military? Distinction by Design 52
3. "Industrial Security" in Alaska: The Great Public-Private Divide 73
4. Corporate States and Government Markets for Saudi Arabian Oil 99
5. Professors for Police: The Growth of Criminal Justice Education 121
6. Exiles at Home: A Refugee Structure of Feeling 146
Conclusion. Reckoning with Police Lethality 179
Appendix 189
Abbreviations 191
Notes 193
Bibliography 249
Index 293
