Class #5: Maintaining Order and the System of Policing
Discussion Questions for Class on September 9
Readings: Blumberg, "The Practice of Law as a Con Game" and Irwin, "Managing Rabble"

These writing assignments are meant to help you think about the readings and to prepare you for class discussions. For that reason, when you write a response it is important that you give your opinions and that you relate your thoughts to the reading. Remember that these are exam questions and that they are graded as such. You ought to write them as though you are writing questions on a midterm or a final exam.

Respond to one of the following questions by writing a response on the class Discussion Board on Blackboard at least one hour before class on the date the question is listed. Put your name in the text of the question and give the question number as listed below. Without these I can't tell who wrote the question or what you are responding to. You then have until Midnight on the following Sunday of that week to revise your response if you wish to do so and to submit it for grading. To submit your responses, send them via email to milofsky@bucknell.edu.

Your final version of this question is due by midnight, Sunday, September 13.

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5-1 Do police have a right and a responsibility to act on their suspicions (as opposed to objective evidence that someone has engaged in illegal behavior) to stop a person and investigate their clothes, their car, and other belongings?

Consider the following issues.  You do not have to incorporate them into your answer.

Police have a responsibility to maintain order as well as to enforce laws. If certain subgroups in the population are statistically more likely to disrupt society, do police have a responsibility to scrutinize that part of the population more closely? We have read about racial typing of blacks in this article. Racial typing also occurs in the wake of September 11 with people who appear to be of middle eastern descent. Is there any difference between the racial typing of blacks or middle easterners?

One influence on your answer is how safe or dangerous you think are conditions in America. Supposing you were a Jew living in Israel. Would you support aggressive search procedures directed at Palestiniians? Suppose you were a Palestinian living on the West Bank. Would you support aggressive search procedures direted at Jews?

Those of us who have been part of Bucknell in Northern Ireland have witnessed intense hostility between Catholics and Protestants in that country. While we were there, we talked to police who said that every afternoon, Catholic kids come up to throw stones at the police and the Protestant housing project. Do police have justification when they act aggressively to limit this kind of uncivil activity?

5-2 Consider the point of view of population groups that are targets of racial typing sorts of investigations like those described in Irwin. How might pro-active policing change the way these individuals think about the right and opportunities of being citizens?

Consider the following issues.  You do not have to incorporate them into your answer.

What you need here is to run through in your mind the kinds of restriction on freedom a minority person is likely to experience. Do not limit your imagining to police stopping you on the New Jersey Turnpike. Think about how shopping is affected or how walking in neighborhoods where there are few people like you.

Consider now where minority people ought to take the excesses of people in their racial, ethnhic (or gender?) category into account when they evaluate the intrusive behaviors of police and others. I'm thinking of the accepting comments made by many Arab-Americans post-September 11 when they talked about aggressive searchings they received trying to board aircraft. Some blacks have similarly made comments about the need to acknowledge the truly dangerous behavior of some young, inner city black men. Is this a matter of identifying with the aggressor and forgiving bigoted behavior? Or is it a fair-minded response to the society's need to provide protection for all citizens?

5-3 Irwin's chapter, "Managing Rabble", tells us about the police using law enforcement to manage and control low income and minority populations. How would you analyze his chapter in terms of the rights discussion in Hunter and Milofsky?

5-4 How does Irwin's account of law enforcement as control fit with Roach's four-model theory of crime and law enforcement that we read on September 2?

Irwin presents law enforcement as a class conflict in which individuals who are arrested often have done nothing wrong. Does Roach's theory work if there is no specific crime, criminal action, or criminal individual to focus upon?

The following questions apply if you think you might want to visit the Union County Courts as one of your field placements. While these questions are beyond what we really can answer at this stage of the course, this material should help inform your observations when you do visit the courts and they can shape the way we talk to District Justice Leo Armbruster. You should also consider these issue when you visit other criminal justice settings, like the North Central Secure Treatment Unit.

5-5 How would you respond if I said that justice, in the sense that it is presented by a TV show like Law and Order, is not a very important part of the process by which the status of those accused of crimes is evaluated and acted upon?

I would really like it if your answer was not just a knee-jerk, stereotypic response that this article is outrageous. It is a reasonable description of the way our system actually works. The police and the courts, in Lewisburg at least, have a sort of parental role in relationship to offenders (youthful ones especially) who need to be reigned in and controlled. But certainly justice is not served, at least not the way we see it portrayed on TV. Is that a problem?

5-6 Blumberg implies that defense attorneys are not doing all they might to defend their clients, suggesting that they are instruments of the system as opposed to agents for their clients. There is a critical edge to this analyses. What would it mean if this critical attitude were warranted in Union County? What I'm wondering is whether we can use these accounts for explaining how the courts work while also accepting that those running the court truly are trying to be fair to those whose cases are tried as well as to county residents in general.