Introduction

• Author: Delores Jones-Brown,Madeleine Novich
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368717747066
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• Subject Matter: Introduction

Introduction

Delores Jones-Brown

1

and

Madeleine Novich

2

Understandingwhat policing looks and feels like to those whoare heavily policed is an

often ignored component of mainstream policing discourse. As the nation’s president

calls for a national policing strategy to include the aggressive use of stop and frisk,

1

as

an effective means of achieving “law and order,” senior criminology/criminal justice

scholars recognize that this is an old refrain that led to a complex array of lawlessness

and disorder in the 1960s.

2

His message is indicative of the American lack of imagi-

nation or genuinecare when it comes to certain vulnerablepopulations who are a part of

the body politic. The empirical research presented in this special issue contributes to a

body of knowledge(see, e.g., Brunson, 2007; Brunson & Miller, 2006; Gau& Brunson,

2015; Rios, 2011, 2017; Shedd, 2015) that gives voice to those who are policed the

most, but whohave had the least say in defining“effective” policing. The participants in

the various studies go beyond the mainstream notion of “community” representation,

which for law enforcement typically means business owners, homeowners, church-

goers, and the employed,

3

to encompass a networkof highly policed young people who

find themselves in geographic, demographic, and other socially defined spaces that

increase their risk of police contact regardless of the legality of their personal conduct.

First, the Kerrison, Cobbina & Bender paper rebuts the popular notion that youth of

color can avoid police contact simply by “pulling up their pants” and engaging with

the politics of respectability. The article addresses the current circumstance where

youth are blamed for their police contact, while the implicit (or overtly) racialized

nature of urban policing strategies and tactics

4

is ignored. Kerrison, Cobbina &

Bender find that some youth are able to reject this self-blame even when it comes from

elders and family within their own communities. The findings from their research

should be used as part of an important shifting of the existing paradigm about

proactive policing and its role in “public” “safety”.

1

Department of Law, Police Science & CJA, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

2

Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, Newark, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Delores Jones-Brown, Departmentof Law, Police Science & CJA, John JayCollege of Criminal Justice, 529W.

59th Street, New York,NY 10019.

Email: djbrown@jjay.cuny.edu

Race and Justice

2018, Vol. 8(1) 3-6

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368717747066

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