TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowlegments
Part One: Policing Contingencies
Policing Contingencies - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0001
[dramaturgy, police, semiotics, frame analysis, actions, structures, social reality]
Dramaturgy sees life as a kind of minitheater; it is a perspective that employs this theatrical metaphor, to explore the performances—the communication of messages and symbolic representations to an audience—that convey impressions that shape subsequent interactions. It concerns symbolic action that refers to what is represented as well as other matters and is predicated on trust. An encounter with a police officer initially is based on trust, but the interaction also echoes and relies upon what is known about “police” and “policing.” Because action itself can convey a rich texture of ambiguous messages, some method is needed to pin down meaning or see how it is framed and encoded. This chapter uses semiotics, or the science of signs, and frame analysis to explicate the structure of meaning that connects actions and structures. The concept of key, which indicates what is going on, or how the social reality presented is to be understood, is used to explain the realities that policing conveys and with which it lives. (pages 3 - 31)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Aspects of the Anglo-American Police Organization - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0002
[Anglo–American policing, police organization, contradictions, media, symbolization, rhetorical moves, representation]
This chapter examines changes in policing. It begins with a definition of policing and a sketch of police organization, because they set the context for seeing the other changes in the media, technology, and the police role. It then lists sixteen features of Anglo–American policing, which pattern the nature of change and the symbolization, or representation, of changes unfolding in the past thirty years. In many respects, the structure and function of policing have little changed in the last thirty years. Indicative of the tensions and anomalies in policing, matters called contradictions that arise from an evolving structure, sediments of past adjustments, compromises, and sentiments, are a series of claims made by the police. These are rhetorical moves that in brief, almost encoded, fashion elevate their power, virtue, even-handedness, modesty, and self-effacing nature and mark for appreciation their efficiency and accessibility as an organization. These rhetorical moves conceal as well as reveal and are in effect mini-ideologies that point to underlying unresolved contradictions. (pages 32 - 58)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Part Two: Picturing Policing
Media, Reflexivity, and the Masndate - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0003
[police, policing, imagery, media coverage]
This chapter argues for changes in the quality and quantity of imagery of policing in the media; the presence of the media in everyday policing; effects of the way the police as collective representations are being portrayed, both generally and in respect to given incidents; and the pattern of media coverage. Having set the stage of policing in a dramatic world and the emerging role of the media, it then turns to the specific police-relevant aspects of the media and media-relevant aspects of policing. It argues that a fundamental change in policing in the last ten years and extending prior to that for more than twenty years is a result of the influence of the media. (pages 61 - 69)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Dynamics of Police Reflection - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0004
[frame analysis, policing, police-media dialogue, social control, Goffman, visual environment]
This chapter uses frame analysis to examine how policing is “seen,” what the dynamics of this seeing are, and how the image(s) of policing has changed in the last thirty years. It is part of the movement toward mediated social control and its effects. The bulk of the chapter is given over to a frame analysis of how policing is shown. Using Goffman's Frame Analysis, it is argued that policing is framed in four quite distinctive ways. The aim in describing these ways of keying, and their internal and external variants, as well as the police-media dialogue, is to suggest changes in the complexity of the visual environment of modern policing. (pages 70 - 106)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Part Three: Technologies and Information
The Car and Driver as the Basic Police Technology - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0005
[police, policing, car, driver, road officers, interpersonal skills, abstraction, alternative realities]
Police technologies historically have developed to increase the probability that the police will be present when the untoward arises. This reification and ideological commitment to the “road officer” means that enormous time, effort, and expenditure have been devoted to the car and driver, and amazingly little on what is done in the car and why. This chapter shifts focus and level of abstraction to put the reader in the car with the driver. Since the driver and the vehicle bound the immediate world of policing, the vehicle produces a narrowing and blinding worldview that obviates many alternative realities, many of which impinge upon policing as an organization. While the fundamental technology is interpersonal skills and talk, it is in the car that the policing experience is shaped for officers, and there all officers begin their careers. (pages 109 - 122)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Horizons of Technology - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0006
[police technology, modern policing, police information, weaponry, mobility, transformative devices, analytic devices]
The nature of police information, gathered in a context, means that innovations in technology do not have results consistent with an engineering-based information-driven conception of the impact of information systems on organizational efficacy. The primary contingency of policing, the focus and theme of modern policing, patterns the work. A review of the types of technology that have been attractive to police suggests that mobility and weaponry still are considered the fundamentals and that training is least innovative. The transformative devices and new analytic devices have promise. A history of IT shows that a great critical mass of data or facts and some information are being gathered with no purpose, aim, or consequence. The core of policing, the patrol function, sets and determines how, why, and where what information is obtained, how it is processed, and what is and can be done with it. The introduction of new and more refined information systems is inconsistent with present practice. Future shifts toward prevention and software, mechanics, or equipment alone will not accomplish problem solving. (pages 123 - 143)
This chapter is available at:
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Processes: Information Technology as a Source of Drama - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0007
[police, balance of power, information technology, organizational change, hierarchy, command officers]
This chapter focuses on the stages and dynamics of police adaptation to technology and suggests that active forces shape technology and that the process can be both a cause and an effect of organizational change. It shows that that police officers, while at the bottom of the hierarchy, if not in control of the balance of power, assert their power in spite of increased use of IT. Patrol officers' counterstrategies are aligned against the shaping constraints of information technology. Patrol officers' powers remain only slightly diminished by attempts of command officers to alter the current balance of power with new information technologies. (pages 144 - 174)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Part Four: Police Roles and Change
Police Roles and Change - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0008
[organizational change, police department, community policing, policing reform, drama, control, command]
In this chapter, the nature of compliance and legitimacy during an organizational transition in a police department is explored ethnographically, using a case study of community policing in Western (a pseudonym for the Midwestern city). Reform and reorganization in Western, including four chiefs and three deputy chiefs in seven years, were constant from 1992 through 2001. Policing reform, especially “community policing,” has implications for performances, routines, and teamwork, but also for the drama of control and command. (pages 177 - 207)
This chapter is available at:
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Risk, Trust, and Reflection - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0009
[trust, policing, media, technology, social change, crime mapping, crime analysis]
This chapter examines the place of trust in policing and how changes in the media, the technology, and the role are altering the meaning and indicia of trust in policing. It argues that social change in policing over the last thirty years can be understood only by examining the background of trust and changes that are now ongoing in policing. Examples of developments in crime mapping and crime analysis are used to suggest some of the ongoing changes. (pages 208 - 232)
This chapter is available at:
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Part Five: Reflections
Reprise - Peter K. Manning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503523.003.0010
[police, community policing, media, politics, information technologies, abstraction]
This book is a collection of observations around several themes that hinge on uncertainty and trust in policing as they illuminate the changes in policing over the last thirty years. Much has been made of the role of the media, politics, the new information technologies, and the apparent changes associated with community policing. This chapter considers the role of increasing abstraction as it bears on the changing pattern of police work. Insofar as abstraction is the central driving force in the analysis of new crimes, and new forms of crime—terrorism, bioterrorism, cybercrimes, and computer-based crimes—it is essential that police understand the power of abstraction. (pages 235 - 250)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Appendix A: Methods and Dramaturgy
Appendix B: Data Sources and Limits
References
Index
