The police procedural is a recent addition to detective fiction. This is because “[b]efore the 1980s the police novel was a minor, and somewhat maligned, stepchild in the field of crime fiction.”[5] As one of the early police procedural novels, Ed McBain’s Cop Hater was a factor in how detective fiction came to embrace the police procedural. In doing so, it had to deal with the attitudes that caused cop characters to be considered unsuitable protagonists. This process was facilitated by efforts to make the police characters relatable, and the procedural methods they use accessible. In doing so, McBain wrote a novel that paved the way for acceptance of the police detective.
The early detective novels were very much against the police. As was claimed within Cop Hater, “a cop is a symbol of law and order”, which should make the police detective the most natural choice to be the detective. Yet in the earlier eras of detective fiction, the detectives typically worked outside of the law. Historically, the police were not publicly seen as a group which were competent enough to be trusted to deal with these matters. This may have been justified in context, given that the early constables mostly worked with the information others gave them, rather than seeking it themselves [6]. The early detectives were romanticised, often as geniuses, for working outside this seemingly corrupt system [1]. The issue of public opinion has lingered for the modern police novel to address. The
Michael Dowd, dubbed the name “Dirtiest Cop in New York City”, prospered enough than any US President’s annual salary, calculating by the amount of money he stole in robberies he and his partner, Kenny Eurell, planned in their patrol car to the eight grand a week they were paid from a drug gang leader. He and his fellow partners-in-crime would use police tactics to rob dealers. Certainly, Dowd was not only intelligent in his mischievous ways, but he had balls and didn’t rat out on his partners, which made him fearless of the consequences that might follow. He may be nervous at times, but was never feared of being caught. He was determined, demanding, obnoxious, greedy individual, and would go after anyone that threatened him and owed him money.
If you grew up in an average middle-class town in the United States you were probably raised on the premise that the police were there to protect and fight crime, however, in many of today’s urban centers throughout the country, the tension between the police and the citizens has a very different relationship. The term ‘police’ brings many images to mind, while the objective of the police is to prevent and detect crime, this is far from the way so many Americans feel. Far from the original purpose of the police, the use of brutal and sometimes lethal force has evoked questions regarding the skewed system and the relationship between both in the communities. Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the issue in the article, The Paranoid Style of American Policing, often bringing up complex issues, and effectively brings the issues to life through anecdotes. Coates presents a logical, thought out and well-executed argument surrounding the cracked police system in America. Due to the well-supported thesis, the structure of the argument, and lack of fallacies, Coates position is adequately supported through the use
Peter Moskos‘, Cop in The Hood, is the story of a sociologist going native by going through the Baltimore police academy, becoming a cop and working for over a year. The book follows Moskos chronological journey, from the academy to the street and the last part of the book is dedicated to a pretty thorough analysis of the War on Drugs.
It is impossible to follow every guideline for a police procedural novel when writing on a true event. Features considered important to the police procedural sub-genre may not be present within the real life crime, and adding details for the procedural sub-genre VIOLATES/TARNISHES the credibility of the true crime aspects of the novel. Despite the difficulties of blending a true crime and a crime fiction sub-genre, with some compromise on the guidelines of both genres, Capote completed In Cold Blood, a well-balanced novel that describes a true crime event from a police procedural standpoint.
Chapter 1 of Character and Cops, Delattre writes, that the police are essential to society, the police are required to be the ones who keep law and order. Delattre explains that throughout the book he uses his twenty five years of experiences working with people in criminal justice, to explain and answer moral questions that arise working in the criminal justice field. He then outlines what he will elaborate on in each chapter later on, such ethics pertaining to individuals leading all the way to problems from society. Delattre, at the end of the chapter, reinforces his experience, by writing that he has worked with and seen many honorable and ethically good cops, but at the same time, he has seen his fair share of corrupt and ethically bad cops.
In Jerome H. Skolnick’s “A Sketch of the Policeman’s ‘Working Personality’”, Skolnick explores the view that because their role contains the two important variables of danger and authority, officers develop a distinctive view of the world compared to those of other professions. He then goes on to illustrate how, what he calls the “working personality”, affects the actions of police officers.
This essay will introduce two competing perspectives of policing, they are the orthodox and revisionist perspectives. This essay will then relate the orthodox and revisionist perspectives to the themes of lack of structure, industrialisation and finally hostility. It will then discuss whether the creation of the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 was an effective solution to the changes within society as well as the challenges brought about through crime and disorder. The orthodox view is that the Metropolitan Police were, in fact, a rational decision made to adapt to the needs of the society. They argue that the establishment of the ‘new’ police was inevitable. The revisionist view would state that the ‘new’ police were not a rational decision. They believed that crime and disorder were not increasing, it was just that the ways of counting crime were largely different to previously. The revisionists also believe that the new system was in part beneficial for which to tackle issues that may have occasioned due to the new ‘dangerous class’ (Monkkonen, 1981, p147). In this essay, there will be reference made to the Brixton Riots in 1981 with a clear explanation as to how the orthodox and revisionist perspectives relate to modern policing activities.
Social criticism can be involved in detective fiction, we see equality of the sexes being laughed at. Men in “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell story, make fun of women, and Glaspell is deliberately critiquing the way men see women. Also, Klein argues that in detective fiction stories the detective is a detective male and the victim is always female. Which refers to in most detective stories women are just the laughing victims in the story and not the hero or seen as the favorite.
Readers who have never picked up on the Dashiell Hammett detective novel The Maltese Falcon 1930 or seen the classic 1941 film adaptation, which follows the novel almost verbatim, can feel a strong sense of familiarity, faced for the first time in history. In this book, Hammett invented the hard-boiled private eye genre, introducing many of the elements that readers have come to expect from detective stories: mysterious, attractive woman whose love can be a trap , search for exotic icon that people are willing to kill the detective, who plays both sides of the law, to find the truth , but it is ultimately driven by a strong moral code , and shootings and beatings enough for readers to share the feeling of danger Detective . For decades , countless writers have copied the themes and motifs Hammett may rarely come anywhere near him almost perfect blend of cynicism and excitement.
While American and British authors developed the two distinct schools of detective fiction, known as “hard-boiled and “golden age,” simultaneously, the British works served to continue traditions established by earlier authors while American works formed their own distinct identity. Though a niche category, detective works reflect the morality and culture of the societies their authors lived in. Written in the time period after World War I, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and “The Gutting of Couffignal”, and Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble Is My Business” adapt their detectives to a new harsh reality of urban life. In “hard-boiled” works, the detective is more realistic than the detective in “golden age” works according to the
The dictionary definition of the police is “the organized civil force of a state, concerned with maintenance of law and order, the detection and prevention of crime, etc,” (Collins English Dictionary, 2002). This definition states the minimum of what the police actually do. Providing support for families, protecting society from criminals and responding to calls 24 hours a day 7 days a week are just some of the other roles that police have to deal with. In this essay the evolution of the police will be discussed as well as how the police are facing challenges.
In the Bronx, there are countless of unsolved crime at the police department precinct, just waiting to be solved. However, due to the shortage of policeman power in the precincts located in the Bronx, and with many detectives with a caseload of about 300 to 400 cases per year, it’s impossible for the detectives to keep-up. According to the deployment analysis obtained by The New York Times most of the detective have a caseload of twice as the recommended for precincts with such high violence rate with the department. “The Times's deployment analysis grew out of a series of articles about murder in the 40th Precinct, a two-square-mile section of the South Bronx, where three detectives last year carried more than 400 cases and many others had loads in the high 300's, markedly more than the 150 cases per year the department recommends for precincts with high rates of violent crime.”
The detective genre is recognizable by the mystery that it represents or establishes. Every word of a fiction novel is chosen with a purpose, and that purpose on a detective novel is to create suspense. The excerpts from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, Murder Is My Business by Lynette Prucha, and Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley, create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. Even though they all fit into this category, there are some differences that make each novel unique. The imagery that the authors offer in the excerpts helps the reader to distinguish the similarities and the differences.
This report shall examine the role of the police in the criminal justice system. For background it will detail a brief history of the development of the police then look at the later development of police powers of arrest, detention and of stop and search. Further to this it will examine the role of the police in miscarriages of justice and the effects of these miscarriages on the development of safeguards for people detained by the police. Also the measures taken to prevent further miscarriages of justice such as the development of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to decide if the evidence is there and a prosecution is likely to be successful.
Police forces or Law enforcers have been used for centuries all around the world but America took particular interest in the English’s policing system. America’s policing ideas and process began