Police Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

The stated rationale for policing street gangs in Montreal has always been “prevention” rather than actual incidents

March 24, 2025 • by Benoit Décary-Secours and Anne-Marie Livingstone

The evolution of criminological research on gangs in Quebec mirrors events elsewhere. It began in the late 1980s with a media frenzy that attracted the attention of political elites and became the object of government policy and research....

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

Prisons and Police

Why School Security Makes Students Less Safe

Much has been said about police failures in Uvalde. But that failure occurred before they even arrived

July 6, 2022 • by Zeynep Gönen

What proposals to “harden the schools” succeed at is building out a police and penal state, one that has been growing exponentially since the 1970s, into social institutions where it targets poor and racialized populations....

Why School Security Makes Students Less Safe

Columnists

What Campus Police Really Do

Private university security forces do mostly deliver social services—and it’s a problem

May 26, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ This week marks a year since former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. In the twelve months since a renewed Black Lives Matter movement brought lethal racism back to the forefront of white America’s consciousness, many of us who are white have learned to see policing, at its most ...

Race

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

At last, a policeman is held accountable for murdering a Black American. But the process of imagining an end to lethal policing has only begun

April 21, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ My greatest fear as I waited for the verdict in the George Floyd case yesterday was not that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin wasn’t going to be convicted of something. The prosecution had carefully left two back doors open for the jury, alternative charges that would have allowed the ...

Democracy

Detroit’s Project Green Light and the “New Jim Code”

Why video surveillance and digital technology intensify racism

October 1, 2020 • by Vince Carducci

————— Over the last three and a half years, the City of Detroit has greatly expanded Project Green Light, an initiative of the Detroit Police Department (DPD), along with local businesses and other organizations, to use video surveillance and digital technology to fight crime. Since the first cameras went live in ...

Detroit’s Project Green Light and the “New Jim Code”

New York City

For Safer Streets, Invest in Community Anti-Violence Groups

Community Based Organizations underappreciated role in urban policy

September 28, 2020 • by Talib Hudson

Recent months have seen unprecedentedly widespread protests of police violence against Black people. Unthinkable just a short time ago, calls to defund or even abolish police have become louder and are gaining traction in mainstream policy discussions. Unfortunately, a number of cities around the country are also experiencing spikes in ...

For Safer Streets, Invest in Community Anti-Violence Groups

Higher Ed

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor

Freedom to think for oneself is still a right, not a privilege

July 16, 2020 • by Joshua T. Katz

In Congress, on July 4, 1776, came the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Signed by 56 men, many of whom were considered national heroes just a few minutes ago, it opens with a long and elegant sentence whose first words every American child knows, or used ...

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor

Prisons and Police

Police Abolition — or Electronic Surveillance?

RoboCop returns

July 9, 2020 • by Micol Seigel

These moves may yield genuine improvements in public life in the United States, something other than the same old tired reforms -- civilian review boards, community policing, recruitment of Black and brown cadets, training and so on -- all of which have proven to be ineffective. But even as the nation ...

Police Abolition — or Electronic Surveillance?

Activism

An American Reckoning

The fire this time

June 4, 2020 • by Deva Woodly

In 1844, James Russell Lowell penned the anti-slavery poem “The Present Crisis” in response to the political tumult leading up to the Civil War. Inspired by Lowell’s poem, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called its official magazine The Crisis, with W. E. B. Du Bois as ...

Democracy

The Penal State and Authoritarianism in Turkey

The Justice and Democracy Party relies on the unrule of law

April 23, 2020 • by Zeynep Gönen

The long history of the authoritarian state in Turkey is full of examples of human rights abuses: among them are the prohibition of expression, penalization of thought, and repression of social movements. Reinforced by periodic military dictatorships, as well as the war on the Kurdish guerrilla movement, Turkey’s authoritarian state ...

The Penal State and Authoritarianism in Turkey

Feature

Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

Past Present Episode 127

April 24, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the life and legacy of Barbara Bush, Starbucks’ race problem, and the U.S. Census.

...

Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

International Women's Strike NYC

Heleodora: Street Vendors Project

International Women’s Strike Interview Project

March 1, 2018 • by International Women's Strike NYC

In this project, IWS-NYC members perform interviews with women organizers from worker centers and cooperatives, as part of a process of militant knowledge co-production. We are particularly interested in unpacking the conditions that both enable and limit autonomous labor organizing and self-determination, as well as the way in which feminist ...