“Police science” is not a term that will be familiar to most people. Everyone knows that forensic science forms part of police work – indeed it has a long and honorable history. But as well as including forensic science, police science encompasses criminology, psychology, criminal justice, correctional administration and penology, jurisprudence, and any other “ologies” and sciences in the ever‐growing police science field.
The second edition of Encyclopedia of Police Science was published in 1996. However, events such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the US have created major changes to policing, including moving policing from a local to a global interest, and thus all books published prior to 9/11 have, to a large extent, become out of date. So the publication of the third edition of this work is therefore timely.
Policing is constantly changing as a result of the information age and its resulting technology. In the nineteenth century police technology involved a strong pair of shoes, a truncheon, maybe a firearm, and “walking the beat”. The policeman collected and acted on information as an individual, rather than as a police system. It was only with the introduction of cars and radios that the police obtained greater mobility, although it did not lead to more information as the radios tended to be used simply for managing police officers at a distance, rather than for the gathering of information about crime. Even with their global dimension, modern‐day police agencies still have to cope with “ordinary crime”. They are still the organization that people call when they are confronted with life's crimes as well as life's annoyances. Far from the global stage are police interventions with young people, family violence and other forms of interpersonal problem solving. Police do much work in schools in attempting to ensure that young people stay away from crime. The subject of police science deals with the public acceptance of police methods, concerns racial profiling, zero tolerance, and other police practices that have raised the question of the division between the police and those who are policed, particularly if those policed come from minority ethnic or socially and economically disadvantaged communities.
The introduction to Encyclopedia of Police Science contains a useful overview of the subject matter which includes Broadening the Police Role, Policing in an Information Age, The Scope of Policing: From Street Corner to World Stage, Policing as Practice, and Scientific Policing. The overview is interesting, and it makes one wish that each subject covered were longer – some sections are about a third of a page – but, on the other hand, the subjects can be found within the body of the work. Since the 1970s there has been an explosion of research on the police, mainly from the US, Canada, Western Europe, and Australia, and the editor has, in this work, sought to capture the current state of research on policing.
The index is 146 pages in length – and it is particularly important that the index is comprehensive in this encyclopedia, as the order of the entries are not necessarily logical – apart from the fact, of course, that they are in alphabetical order. For example, if the reader wishes to find out about the use of force by police, and, in particular, excessive force, I would suggest that the reader would logically look for “F” for “Force” whereas in this work it is listed under “E” for “Excessive Force”, and yet there is no “F” for “Force” in the body of the work! However, use of the index produces a comprehensive listing under the heading “Force”, including “appropriate”, “coercive”, “excessive”, “physical”, and “weapon‐based”.
The layout of the entries is a two‐column format with good‐sized readable font. Each alphabetical entry has References and Further Reading, and See Also for other references to the subject within the volumes. The entries also include the name of the contributor, which may then be checked under the list of contributors if necessary. There is an enormous breadth of coverage in this edition with 354 topics, 196 of them being new and 127 updated. It is difficult in a review such as this to do the work justice (unintentional pun).
Even when one is not a resident of the US, it is impossible to be totally oblivious of American police procedures from exposure to American television cop shows and Hollywood movies (whether accurate or not!). So it is interesting to learn more about the “Miranda warning” from this work (it's the bit when the cops have got their man!). Miranda v. Arizona (384 US 436, 1966) is considered by many to be the most important Supreme Court decision of the last half of the twentieth century. The Miranda warning is the right to remain silent, on which debate still persists with continually evolving case law.
Police cynicism seems to be a subject one would not think of looking up in a book – and it was found in this work by browsing (something we lose in online or computerized encyclopedias where items are found by direct search!). The subject of police cynicism was first explored scientifically by Arthur Niederhoffer (1967) using an instrument called the F‐scale to examine the tendency of police subculture to foster cynicism and authoritarianism. “Cynicism is ‘learned as part of socialization into the police occupation’”. “To do police work is to deal constantly with liar”.
Have American police always been armed? The entry on Firearms: History says “no”. Nineteenth century municipal patrolmen did not routinely carry handguns at first – although by the early 1900s the official and unofficial norm was to carry a handgun. The rest of the entry covers Technological Development, Arming of the US Police, and Proficiency Training, Regulation and Control.
Encyclopedia of Police Science does not try to be something for everyone, and is not an attempt to be a universal work on the police. Whilst other countries' police and methods may be mentioned, it is a book which is firmly American, dealing largely with American policing issues, and American legislation and case law, all from an American viewpoint. However, this is not to say that it will be of no interest to anyone else. Clearly there are issues which are universal, and for which the American perspective will be well worth inputting, including the debate on zero tolerance policing. Students studying on courses for police training, criminology, and sociology should find areas of interest in this work, or certainly pointers towards further research.
