The Police and the State: Security, Social Cooperation, and the Public Good

✍ Scribed by Brandon del Pozo

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 261
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

As we wrestle with the role and limits of policing, a political philosopher who spent over two decades as a New York City police officer and Vermont chief of police presents a normative account of what it means to police a pluralist democracy. Invoking his vast experience, Brandon del Pozo argues that we all have the prerogative to use force to protect others, but police embody the government's unique duty to do so effectively and with restraint. He recasts order maintenance as brokering and enforcing the fair terms of social cooperation in our public spaces, for the protection of minority interests, and for a society where diverse conceptions of the good can flourish. The reasons why we police, he says, must be ones that all citizens can evaluate as equals. His book explains the democratic commitments of policing, and lays the groundwork for meaningful police innovation and reform.

✦ Table of Contents

Copyright
Contents
Introduction: Toward a Theory of the Police
1 The Role of the Police
Shortcomings of “Law Enforcement” and “Investigatory” Conceptions
Gaps in the “Moral Rights” and “Social Peacekeeping” Conceptions
Backing into the Police Role by Examining Police Practices
Properly Politicizing the Language of Police Practice
Reconciling the Ideal Role of the Police With Policing’s Unjust Practices
The Police Role and Its Implications for Coercion
2 The First Power of the Police: Impartial Protection and Rescue
Minimalist States as Exemplars of the State’s Duty to Protect and Rescue
Locke, Nozick, and Weber: From Nature to the State, from Prerogative to Duty
The Duty to Protect as Deontological, Rather than Contractual or Utilitarian
Active Shooters, Terrorism, and the Conflation of Police and Military Duties
The Duty to Retreat Further Distinguishes Citizens from the Police
Undoing the Citizen Duty to Retreat as a Devolution to the State of Nature
Police Professionalism as the Means by Which to Resolve the Tensions of the State
Protection and Rescue as the First Civil Right
3 The Second Power of the Police: Arrest for Adjudication
The Police as the Court’s Extension into the World
The Role of the Court
The Shifting Ends of Exercising the Second Power
The Police as Epistemologists with Uncertain Ends
The Second Power of the Police as an Imprimatur to Stay
4 The Third Power of the Police: Brokering and Enforcing Social Cooperation
Cooperation and Public Spaces
A Taxonomy of Cooperative Public Endeavors
The Taxonomy’s Implications for Contractualist Objections
The Law as a Guide and a Framework for Social Cooperation
A Pillow Fight as a Practical Example of the Value of Underdetermined Laws
Brokerage versus Enforcement, and Honoring Democratic Pluralism
Concerns of Class, Race, Access to Public Space, and Social Cooperation
The Hazards of Informal Social Control as an Alternative to Policing
Three Values Guiding Police Brokerage and Enforcement of Social Cooperation
Fair Access to Public Spaces as a Social Condition of Freedom
The Third Power as an Acknowledgment of a Hegelian Conception of the Police
Abolitionist Theory, or How to Back into Policing without Really Trying
5 Democratic Priorities, Relationships, and Tensions: Seven Cases of Policing
Not Arresting Black Lives Matter Protesters Who Block Traffic during Rush Hour
Reducing the Car Stops a Police Department Makes as a Way to Decrease the Negative Consequences of This Typeof Enforcement for a Community
Sanctuary City Policies That Explicitly Limit Police Department Cooperation with Federal Immigration Enforcement Officials
A Decision Not to Voucher Condoms as Evidence When Making Prostitution Arrests
Not Arresting Suspects for Prostitution When There Is Cause to Believe the Suspects Are Being Trafficked into Doing So
Not Arresting Individuals in Possession of Personal-Use Quantities of Unprescribed Addiction Treatment Medication
Advocating for the Redesign of Smartphones to Deter Theft
6 The Bases of, and Reasons for Seeking, Police Legitimacy
Legitimacy: Normative, Descriptive, Political, and Popular
The Emotional and Democratic Bases of Descriptive Legitimacy
Normative Legitimacy as the Natural Ground of Policing
Legitimacy and the Independent Requirements of Natural Rights and Moral Duties
Legitimacy, and the Government as Complainant on Behalf of the People
Coakley’s Critique: Legitimacy Only Matters When You Have a Good Reason to Disobey
Descriptive Legitimacy in Tension with the Need for Civil Disobedience and a Duty to Resist
Descriptive Legitimacy as a Moot Point: Errors in Ontology and International Experiments
Distinguishing a Willingness to Obey the Law from the Authority to Enforce It
The Value of Legitimacy in Times of Uncertainty
The Value of Legitimacy in Securing Cooperation
Legitimacy and Support for the Overall Project of Policing
Popular Legitimacy Depends on Substantive Justice
Returning to the Need for a Political Philosophy of Policing
7 Procedural Justice in Policing Revisited
Clarity about the Goals of Procedural Justice in Policing
The Four Precepts of Tylerian Justice
Procedural Justice in the Courtroom in Tension with the Tylerian Conception
Tylerian Justice’s Tension with Advice to Remain Silent
The Law’s Recognition of the Limits of Procedure in Matters of Public Safety
Procedural Justice as Qualitatively Indistinguishable from Charismatic Appeal
Sometimes, Tylerian Justice Does Not Affirm a Person’s Dignity
Procedural Justice and Other Languages of Policing: An Incommensurability Problem
Tylerian Travails into the Realm of Normative Legitimacy
Returning to the Pursuit of Legitimacy through Substantive Justice
Conclusion: Policing as Substantive Justice that Yields Normative Legitimacy
8 Policing with Public Reason
The Inherent Roots of Public Reason in Policing
The Idea of Public Reason as a Justificatory Method
Justification through Truth or Consent, and the Alternative of Public Reason
Returning to the Suitability of Public Reason in Police Transactions
Civility as a Moral Duty of Public Reason
Civility as a Cudgel to Suppress Dissent and Prolong Oppression
Public Reason as the Best Natural Grounds for Policing, amidst Various Objections
Cultivating Legitimacy by Providing the Right Reasons
Public Spaces, Public Reasons, and the Limits of Statute
The Limits of Public Reason
Conflicts between Public Reason and Democratic Process
Backing Away from Procedure and into Public Reason
9 Policing Populism, Protecting Pluralism
Special Interests
Majoritarianism
Democratic Policing and the Threat of Populism
Conclusion: Discretion and the Ultraminimal State
10 Primary Goods, Policing States in Transition, and Natural Experiments
Protection, Rescue, and Primary Goods
States in Transition as Natural Experiments in the Delivery of Protection and Rescue
Criminal Justice as Secondary to Protection, Rescue, and Brokering Cooperation
Health Care, Medicine, and Policing as Intuitively Comparable Goods
Rescue, Treatment, and Policing as Conceptually Intertwined
Primary Goods in the Minarchist State
Policing the Least Well-off: A Reconsideration of the Difference Principle
Policing as a Positive Intervention with Iatrogenic Effects
Building a Police Capacity for Public Reason
Conclusion: Policing, Public Health, and Justice
References
Index