April 2012
60 posts
Policing and its effect on the periphery of...
In a scholarly work on the new policing methods being currently used, the author makes the argument that many police departments nowadays are implementing policies that make neighborhoods look safer without actually addressing the root causes of crime. These police departments often do this by enforcing civility laws and ordinances prohibiting certain behaviors in, and types of people from,...
Powers of Policing
This week’s readings focused on police power and what legitimates the police’s potentially overusing it. The Broken Windows theory illustrates one idea behind this authority: Crime will most likely occur where smaller crimes remain untreated. Police attempt to avoid the negative consequences of this theory by aggressively pursuing all crimes, which also includes pursuing crimes that have not yet...
Segregation or Safety?
The focus of reading was based around how the United States has mirrored social control techniques in an attempt to reduce the crime rate and other negative variables that attribute to a negative social environment. One of the arguments made by Mike Davis, regarding his description of post liberal Los Angeles in the 90’s, critiques stated that, “these techniques are used to channel the socially...
Police Power
The readings for this week’s class were about police power. Police power is a highly controversial issue in the U.S. This is an issue, unlike issues such as global warming or neoliberalism, that directly affects the lives of every day citizens throughout the country. The biggest issue with police power is racial profiling by the police. Meaning, targeting minorities under suspicion that they...
Who Policies the Police?
With the development of every society there is a need for a set of rules and laws to be established to keep and maintain order. Without enforcement of these laws however, society quickly falls into disarray. This is where police and law officials come into play and the idea of policing begins. However, what are the limits of policing actions and what happens when policing goes too far? With...
Prohibition and Social Control
One of the primary aims of Policing is Social Control: the ability of the state to regulate the behavior of its citizens. The entire order of society is predicated on the maintenance of certain laws, either created through a social contract or by the legislature. We see it as our duty as citizens to follow the laws of the state in order to further order the world around us. We give up our freedom...
Prejudice Policing
Most Americans have been taught from a young age that the police are put in place to protect our rights and safety from others looking to harm us. In many cases this claim holds true; police often arrest individuals for committing a wide variety of crimes. We are also urged to police as well, in order to maintain order where police officers cannot. As we age and are exposed to new information, it...
Invasion of Police Privacy
It has always been stated that living in the United States is a privilege due to the fact that we have freedom of speech and are thought to be protected under the law with complete privacy laws. However, the days of needing a warrant in order to invade one’s privacy has now come to an end. With the new ‘stop and frisk’ law, government officials made it legal to frisk anyone of illegal...
Police Power
The article I focused on this week was “The New Jim Crow,” by Michelle Alexander. The overview of the article is that racial history repeats itself. Alexander argues that our current society is no different than that of the days of segregation. While in 1850 African-Americans were enslaved, today there are even larger numbers of African-Americans under correctional control. Because of this,...
Police Power
The balance between legitimate police technology and procedure and due process is a precarious one, which has the power to transform social control into political control. This often has a high social cost, whose price in paid by both the domestic and international citizens. “The requirements of due process will not primarily be considered in international police operations”(Deflem), such as...
March 2012
43 posts
Drone Use in the USA
Interesting article about drone use in the United States.
-Harris
Dystopia? Are we there yet?
Remember “The Terminator”? Remember when John Connor, who has been transported to the present from the future, is describing life on future earth for Sarah Connor? The landscape is ravaged by war. Humans dodge the enemy by darting around blown up vehicles and sliding around walls, desperate to evade detection. Food and water are scarce. Life is lived day after day in the pathetic act of just...
Drone Wars and Their Mental Effect
This week’s readings about the types of wars that are currently being waged make two essential arguments about its implications. The first is that the reliance on technology, more specifically drones, makes war much less risky for a war’s initiators and thus more tempting to them and dangerous to civilians located in areas where the conflict is. The second argument...
Here to Stay?
The theme of war’s pervasiveness, in war zones and non war zones alike, represents the most prominent theme from the readings. The articles discussed the normalization of war and the tools that render war so quotidian and implicit in every day society. These tools include technology that distance attackers from targets and render the latter more abstract. Additionally, these tools include...
http://www.vice.com/vice-news/sofex-the-business-of-war-part-1
Drones: Are We Ensuring Future Enemies or...
According to “War and Peace” by Derek Gregory, two new types of war have emerged after the Cold War. The first “transforms advanced state militaries (particularly in the global North) through an emphasis on stripped-down, highly specialized forces deploying cutting-edge technology with unprecedented precision. The other is waged by non-state militias and guerrilla forces...
Law and Modern Warfare
As we move forward into a future of rapid technological advancement and military capability, it is becoming increasingly obvious that many of the defining qualities of what is considered warfare have been rendered nearly obsolete, and are being quickly replaced by a new set of characteristics that would seem alien and impossible to previous generations. Large scale hand-to-hand combat involving...
War After Warfare
In his article, Derek Gregory, presents the fact that wars go on far longer than when treaties are signed and troops are withdrawn. He uses the example of landmines, which have a long term effect on the landscape, use-ability, and safety of the residents of areas that they were allocated. Landmines serve as a constant reminder of past wars, and can be portrayed as a nation’s lasting...
War and Not War
Since the end of World War II the definition of a war has changed drastically. Wars up to this point were distinct groups of people fighting against each other in battles where peoples lives from both sides were constantly at risk, and usually there was a clear winner when one side would run out of resources or surrender. However, with the advancements of technology and weaponry,...
Global War
Behind every attack in a global war has the strategic intent to gain some type of control or power or gain recognition of a specific issue that has been glazed over. War is a political and economic scheme to exploit and penetrate borders in order to portray a sense of a threatening higher power and induce complete destruction. In order for a war to begin, there needs to be proper...
