Policing and the Carceral State

Police in the United States have come under greater public scrutiny in recent years, particularly as cell-phone videos make visible abuses by police, prompting nation-wide protests for social justice, police reform, and abolition. Increased scholarly attention to the police centers on racial profiling, `broken windows' policing strategies and mass incarceration, the surveillance state, and violent policing of political protests. While police represent state authority, ordinary policing practices are notoriously difficult to study, thereby eliding variable conditions and contradictions. This course interrogates policing and the carceral state by focusing on the purpose of the police, quotidian policing practices, and territorial control in diverse U.S. and global contexts. Course readings emphasize ethnographies of policing, along with key texts from critical geography and legal studies, to elucidate multiple topographies of policing, control, and neglect at work in governing contemporary societies. Prerequisites: By instructor consent. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student in this course